 | The New England Church PulpitNew England Congregational Church UCC |
HARRY POTTER’S CHRISTMAS STORY | December 23, 2001 |
Christmas is not about giving; it isn’t about getting. It is about losing. Christmas is ultimately a story of love and sacrifice. Love is a power that wins by losing. It disarms the enemy by refusing to fight. It dismisses any victory defined as the defeat of one by another. This is not a popular nor particularly appealing image of power, but, as Barbara Brown Taylor says, “the scripture is at least partly to blame.” Jesus comes as a baby destined to be a king, the story tells us, but one whose kingdom is about peace not vengeance or about being right. He submits to death, and thereby affects a power so subtle and so strong and so available to everyone that evil is forever undermined.
Jesus taught us that by losing we win, and by loving we tap into the greatest resource for living.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is ultimately a story about Christmas, a story replete with the classic themes of good verses evil and love verses hatred. Harry Potter was a child destined to greatness, born to wizards of the most noble rank, people given to good deeds and good magic. His father was killed by the evil, power monger Voldemort who sought to take over the world. Not unlike Herod who sought to kill any child who threatened his throne, Voldemort wanted to kill Harry Potter in his infancy, but his mother died in his stead, loving him to the ultimate sacrifice of giving her life to spare his. Voldemort only wounded Harry, who now sports a lightning bolt on his forehead, a sort of baptismal sign that both reminds him of his calling and strikes him with pain in the presence of evil.
The evil Voldemort is disgusted by love. He can’t comprehend it. It stuns him into inaction. One of the ways we recognize evil is by its self-serving, narcissistic manner that uses power for personal gain at the expense of others’s well-being. In the Tao Te Ching we read again these words: ‘Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don’t see the self as self, what do we have to fear? See the world as your self. Have faith in the way things are. Love the world as your self; then you can care for all things’ (11)
Harry finds his way into the dungeon, guarded by “Fluffy” the gentle, three-headed puppy (those of you who have seen the movie catch the understatement here). He is in search of the stone, led by some Force beyond his own knowing. The Sorcerer’s Stone that gives power to its possessor magically finds its way into Harry’s pocket. Voldemort, embodied in professor Quirrell, tries to lure Harry over to the other side in much the same way that Jesus was tempted by Satan to serve himself rather than God. We don’t ever get the sense that Harry gives this serious consideration, for even though it would yield tremendous personal gain, the evil it would rain on human kind would be devastating. Sacrificing his own personal pleasure and standing firmly against the evil force, Harry’s story is the story of Christmas. It is a story of sacrificing love for another, a story of losing that ultimately wins.
“If powerful men and women could center themselves in [the way, the truth, the life], the whole world would be transformed by itself, in its natural rhythms. People would be content with their simple, everyday lives, in harmony, and free of desire. When there is no desire, all things are at peace.” Ultimately, Christmas must be embraced in the larger story of Jesus’s life, that the way to peace is by losing. This is the true Christmas spirit. It is the true Christmas peace. Amen.
–Gary L. McCann
| Copyright © 2001 by Gary L. McCann. All rights reserved. |