How many people have read Lord of the Rings? I fell in love with this series in Florida at a WT Grants at a mall. I thought Florida was too hot and once I found Tolkien, I could not be budged. At least I was a cheap kid to entertain. JRR Tolkien was a Christian and professor of English at Oxford. The Lord of the Rings grapples with the problem of evil such as we know in our day, evil politicians and businessmen inspired by a Satanic figure and the trials and wounds of the righteous who struggle against them. Saruman, who appears to be righteous, turns out to be evil and some of the paths that seem necessary like the Redhorn Gate and Moria turn out to be fraught with danger.
Tolkien himself had been wounded in World War 2, so he knew first hand how grim the story of our lives can be. You may be wondering how people can get through three large volumes of intense struggle and that is what we are going to think about in worship today. Tolkien placed eucatastrophes in his books, moments of sheer peace and glory where the heroes relaxed, ate too much, recovered their strength and got new resources for the journey. Tolkien was not a Methodist so pipe smoking is one of the favorite activities of his characters.
Our question for today is when did you have your last eucatastrophe? The Sunday worship celebrations are a small sample of what we need to stay equipped for the dragons that much be slain. I suspect everyone here knows of the project at work that went wrong, the sickness that quietly gnaws at life, or the family relationships that grieve the heart regularly. What I’m not sure we seek enough is the Christian doctrine of eucatastrophes, those moments of glory that give you the strength you need to fight the battle you’re in.
Today’s reading in the gospel of Mark is about an eucatastrophe. The disciples surely needed it as Peter, James, and John walk with Jesus up the mountain. You and I need it too and I pray that everyone departs today with a willingness to be swept off your feet occasionally by the love and power of the risen Christ.
The temptation of all Christians is to whittle the gospel down to something that is manageable. We just can’t resist it. When I was a child, we went to the holiness church, but many of our relatives went to the formal churches, Methodist and Presbyterian. You had to wear a better type of clothes to go in those churches and we knew my grandmother’s gingham dress wouldn’t fit there. The worship of God is even more set in stone with the Catholic and Episcopal worship. Have you ever noticed that a faithful Catholic doesn’t need the prayer book? They know all the responses. There is never a surprise.
Even the churches that boast of submission to the Holy Spirit manage the work of the Spirit. My roommate in college was Plymouth Brethren. They never plan their service in advance. Different men in the congregation will offer a song, prayer, or short sermon as the Spirit moves. It was fascinating to see how the Spirit always moves to offer two hymns, prayer, sermon, offering, and hymn every Sunday.
The account in Mark 9 is not a managed event, it is a true eucatastrophe. The disciples are terrified and Peter remembers it years later in 2 Peter 1. Mark records the event in its correct geographical setting on Mount Hermon in Syria. This was not some dream or hypnosis of the disciples, it was a temporary glimpse of the glory and victory to come. I believe that there is someone here today who knows very intimately the dangers of your road ahead but you are scared to lift up your head and see the glory of the risen Christ. We worship the Lord of all of human history who counters all the human violence, sin, and failure with God’s promise to be faithful and deliver you.
One of Thomas Jefferson’s less noble projects was to cut out the portions of the Bible that did not seem believable. In 1819, he began to edit the Jefferson Bible, now in the Library of the Smithsonian. The Jefferson Bible retains all the commands of the Bible to be just and good without any of the power that would cause it to occur. Perhaps this is why he owned slaves while he proclaimed that the practice was evil. He wrote, “We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” Yes, that is the religion that you get if you are scared by the power and glory of a miracle making God.
The eucatastrophe does not make you better or worse, it simply gives you vital energy to keep your faith that God will make everything right. Peter denied Christ three times after the Mount of Transfiguration. When I was a child, our small group of churches invited the Lebanon Valley Gospel Band to camp meetings. They had 50 instruments and three tubas, and took many familiar gospel songs and it truly was an eucatastrophe. The noise shook your very bones and as the band got excited, some of the trumpets and clarinets began to run around the tabernacle as they played. The bandleader danced on the altar rail a couple of times as he led. Once, even the tubas left the platform and marched around as they played.
Several people in New York were so impressed that they began to follow the band to different engagements. They discovered that the band members were just like other Christians with their trials, issues, and in some cases, sexual affairs. The eucatastrophe is not reserved just for the most godly people – it is for anyone who has the courage to search for or accept one.
Annie Dillard has always fascinated and horrified me, a Christian writer with the unflinching views of the human condition that I find distasteful, but I’m so drawn to her view of God. She writes, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets! Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews! For the sleeping God may awake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us to where we can never return.”
My prayer is that the waking God will draw you to where you can never return. The people of the Bible who got something done worth doing accepted the uncontrolled moments of eucatastrophe. “Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian; and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush;” “Behold, the Lord passed by Elijah, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.”
Are you willing to fight to hold on in this time? Are you held back by your immigration status, or your health, or your debts? If you experience eucatastrophes, your vision gets so clear that you can hold on. When Jesus worked miracles for the sick, and over the forces of nature, he showed that the present order of the world is not permanent. The shining cloud, the dazzling white clothes indicate that you are heading to victory and glory.
Peter James and John are being prepared for their task. They are pictured together three times in Mark, in the raising of Jairus’ daughter, the mount of Transfiguration, and waiting with Jesus in Gethsemane. They will need their absolute conviction that Jesus is the risen King of Kings to finish their task on earth. The challenge was so great in Tolkien that the heroes needed the eucatastrophe of the Last Homely House of Elrond and the beauty of Lothlorien. The disciples needed to see Jesus clothed in light with Moses and Elijah. Don’t you need some preparation from God to faithfully complete yours?
