Michael
The Return of the King 11th January 2004 The
Epiphany
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The Return of the King
I enjoyed the last film in
the trilogy of the Lord of the Rings but I also found it
disappointing – the battle and the ring’s journey up the mountain
into the lake of fire are all there and are superbly done but in the
book there is more than a battle won by valiant and courageous men,
more than a journey up the mountain and a struggle at the top, and
there is more at stake than force of arms. What was missing from the
film was more telling than what was in it for the triumph of good
over evil is not simply down to a battle won, a beloved obsession –
the ring given up – for when brave Hobbits return to the Shire
there is the scouring of the shire. Evil is still at large, it has
wrought its effects even on the peaceable people of the shire with
their stylish arts and crafts holes in the hills – the wrong people
are running the show, schools and hospitals sold to the highest
bidders, the bouncers and the bandits have taken power and wealth is
piled up through legalised theft - the virtues of a Frodo Baggins,
the weapons of the weak, are cast aside. Reversing all of this is no
easy task and the scouring is a time of reckoning, of judgement, of
punishment and, yes, ultimately of evil trounced and enemies
reconciled. The one big victory calls forth a thousand smaller
struggles and only the one who has learnt that victory is not to the
strong, and true power not to the mighty, can win through.
The Infancy narratives of the New Testament are not like the film of the return of the king – they are a lot more like Tolkien’s original book for in these narratives there is no suggestion that this infant king who was in at the beginning of time, this gentle metaphysical giant who is God in flesh incarnate, enters a world that welcomes him back. How does John have it – he came to his own and his own knew him not, the light shone in the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it though the implication is that it tried. And for Matthew the metaphysical takes more of a back seat but the message is the same – no sooner has the king returned to his creation than those who usurp creation’s rule – the world’s rulers – are struggling over him – some to worship him as the child king who will redeem the nations, some to kill him as a threat to their own power. As a king tries to have Jesus killed the wise men who visit him from a far country bring gifts, such strange gifts which presage a life lived in the face of evil. Gold – the metal of kingship, frankincense, the incense of holiness, and myrrh – the balm of suffering. And to protect the child King the kings deceive their kingly host and ‘returned to their own country by another road’. Just like in a classic Fairy Story, evil is not defeated by unambiguous heroism.
The film the Return of the King is a modern take on the ancient story of the struggle between good and evil – in it good trounces evil and everyone lives happily ever after. But the book is more like a traditional fairy story. Fairy stories are not as fashionable as they once were. They are full of acts of such monstrous doings that our modern culture would keep them for young persons’ ears – child-eating giants, pig eating wolves, incestuous brothers and sisters, narcissistic witches. Like the story of Herod who killed the innocents and drove the holy family into exile, they are full of evil men and evil deeds. They do not hide the true nature of things from small children – on the contrary their art is in presenting the full panoply of the human predicament in mythic form. Death, deviousness, deceit, demons – they are all there and the message is not that these things are easily defeated, or even that their defeat is finally assured but it is in the fact that the heroes and heroines of these stories though they suffer in their struggle with evil, finally experience a better life, a truer good, a deeper fulfilment than the characters they struggle against – evil in the end does not pay, not because its end is always bloody but because in the end the wicked sisters or the wicked witch while acting out their evil fantasies do not find happiness while Cinderella and Snow White do, not because they live ‘happily ever after’ – children are not that easily taken in - but because unlike their wicked opponents they are able to form lasting and loving relationships.
As Bruno Bettleheim points out in his wonderful book The Uses of Enchantment the point about such stories is that they face the child with what the child already knows, but that his parents would hide from her – evil is not without its attractions and enchantments, and evil is not just out there, it is in here.
Contrary to what takes place in many modern childrens’ stories in fairy tales evil is as omnipresent as virtue. In practically every fairy tale good and evil are given body in the form of some figures and their actions, as good and evil are omnipresent in life and the propensities for both are present in every man. It is this duality which poses the moral problem, and requires the struggle to solve it.
Children know that the struggle is within – they need to be assured that they can win but they will not do this if we hide it from them, pretend that goodness is always triumphant. Nor will they learn it if they absorb the message of the modern mythology of redemptive violence – that good wins over evil by knocking it for six, by terminating it or carpet bombing it.
In Washington Cathedral more than two years ago the self-styled Christian leader of the free world announced an intention to ‘rid the world of evil’. This was a deeply troubling statement for as one American commentator put it ‘I can’t even rid my own neighbourhood of evil’ and as another said ‘I can’t rid my own heart of evil’.
‘Evil is real’ Bush
also intoned and we can agree with that statement, but can Bush and
Blair ‘rid the world of evil’ with animal cages for men and
children, sky marshals and computer searches, carpet bombs and
colonial occupation. The point is that evil is not just out there –
it is in here, and the roots of evil are the very fears and obsessive
desires for absolute control that such strategies manifest.
No wonder that the
Christmas number one hit (in the UK) this year was that
extraordinarily beautiful and yet maudlin song from the soundtrack of
the film Donnie Darko – It’s a Mad World. But what about that
pivotal line – ‘the dreams in which I’m dying are the best I
ever had?’ Such nihilism is hardly redemptive. It’s more Gollum
than Gandalf.
And yet given the choice
between Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer and It’s a Mad World, I know
which I would choose. At least there is no pretence, no tinsel, in
the second song – there is some pretty weird stuff going down, and
the first Christmas did not put an end to death and evil, at least
not in the sense of executing their author like an evil dictator
before a kangaroo court. Indeed as we know the return of the king
actually ends with the death of the king and not the death of Herod –
this is not the ending the Israelites imagined, not even the one
Isaiah predicts. Where are the fawning nations when Jesus is on trial
before Herod – not fawning but preparing his death in the form of
the Gentile cross.
And Matthew is not
inclined to hide the truth of this ending from us – he adds to
Isaiah’s Christmas gift list – frankincense and gold - the gift
of myrrh and that is the gift which unlocks the real meaning of what
the astrologers saw for the Egyptians used it in embalming the dead.
As Elliott so wonderfully puts it
were we led all that way
for Birth of Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no
doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were
different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for
us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places,
these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease
here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people
clutching their gods.
I should be glad of
another death.
They go back to their
shires but there is no scouring – they still await the death that
will be cause for gladness.
What of us – we live
after that death and the resurrection also. Was this just once for
all – a mythic struggle that had to be played out in the light of
which all is changed. Well in one sense yes. But in another we still
live in our places, the shires, but we are not meant to find ease
there for the people still clutch their gods and it is now we who are
aliens – resident aliens in a world that has still not acknowledged
that Christ is King; we are no longer at home in the old dispensation
and so ‘we shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our
exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for
the first time.’
And how will we find it? Simplicity, spirituality, tongues of fire are Elliot’s hints in Little Gidding. Christ does not leave us bereft – he too gives gifts and these are gifts which enable us to worship. Like the wise men we are all obsessives – we are creatures, we long to return to the source. And we find so many ways we think will lead us back, will fill the void. But we do best when we follow the astrologers’ example – Jesus is the one who is to be our obsession. There is no other good enough – he is the only one who can be light in our darkness. We must embrace him, make room for him, allow his light to overcome our darkness. The New Year offers a glimmer of hope as in Scotland Burn’s Suppers and St Bride’s festival remind us that the darkness will lift – the light will return. But the light in our lives will only return if we let it, if we take time to attend to the flame, to be drawn to the light. Worship, prayer, silent joyful adoration in the stillness of the morning before the sun is up – these are the gifts we can offer for the return of the king. And they will make us, and him, glad.