Not a Tame Lion - Matthew 10:24-39

If you haven’t been to Narnia lately, I recommend a visit. You can find your way there through a wardrobe, a painting of a ship, a magic ring, and even a puddle, or, perhaps a bit easier, by reading C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. For those who have forgotten or are unfamiliar, Narnia is a magical world parallel to this one. In it animals speak and creatures known to us only through fairytales, such as fauns and unicorns, are alive and well. At the center of Narnia is its true king, a lion named Aslan.

We first meet Aslan at a time when Narnia has been taken over by a White Witch who has cursed the whole land in a permanent winter. But when the human child Lucy discovers Narnia through the back of a wardrobe, she arrives at a time when the winter is beginning to thaw. There are whispers among the animals that Aslan is on the move. When Lucy inquires about Aslan, her newfound Narnian friends tell her about the Lion. A bit frightened, she asks if he is safe. “Course he isn’t safe,” replies a beaver, “but he is good.” In another instance a faun tells Lucy: “He’s wild you know. He’s not a tame lion.”

“He’s not a tame lion.” That is the phrase that came to mind after I read our selection from the Matthew’s gospel for this Sunday. The Chronicles of Narnia is a Christian allegory, and playing off the old phrase, the Lion of Judah, Aslan is clearly its Christ-figure. What Lewis says of Aslan, he means of Jesus. And though we often try to domesticate Jesus, making him a nice, comfortable religious teacher, a grace-filled auxiliary to our ordinary lives, passages like our Gospel today help us remember the truth: Jesus is no tame lion, and though he is good, he is dangerous.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace, but a sword.” “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” These are no tame words. They are wild sayings, unsettling verses. And yet, as we heard at the beginning of the passage, they are couched in the call to live without fear, for whether we live or die, we are in God’s care.

To understand what Jesus is up to here, I thought of one of my favorite Aslan moments. It comes in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Lucy and her brother Edmond are taken back to Narnia through a painting, but this time they are accompanied by their cousin Eustice. Eustice is a brat—self-absorbed, a know it all, he completely misses the wonder of Narnia. That is, until he wanders from his cousins and discovers a cave full of treasure. It is an abandoned dragon’s lair, and Eustice revels in his find, happy to have all of its wealth for himself. He now has all the security gold and jewels can buy.

A cave full of treasure may seem far from our own experience, but we all have our treasure, those places we find security. Earlier in Matthew, when Jesus tells his disciples that they cannot serve God and wealth, he concludes by saying that where our treasure is, there our heart is also. Our treasure may be money, or it may be family, or it may be lots of friends. Whatever you possess that makes you feel secure is your treasure. The common ones for Jesus’s day were wealth, which also included a big family, a network of kin. Children were also a form of security. Lot’s of kids meant you’d be cared for into old age, not to mention a source of legacy. To each of these, Jesus says no. To enter the fresh reality of God’s kingdom, we can’t rely on any of these sources of security. It is only in the love of the God who cares for fallen sparrows that we can find a life beyond worry. But such a life is not without risks. For all of God’s care, sparrows still fall, and the disciples can expect the same kinds of persecution Jesus experienced. Embracing the new life that Jesus is calling us toward will not come without pain.

Eustice learned this lesson the hard way. Happy with his new found wealth, he put some gold bracelets around his arms and fell asleep. When he woke, his arms seared with pain. His skin was now bulging and covered with scales, and the bracelets were far too small for him, cutting into his flesh. A visit to a pool of water confirmed his new truth. Eustice had become a dragon. Trying to save his life, he’d lost it, and become a monster. Now, only Aslan could save him.

And of course, Aslan, dangerous but good, came to free Eustice of his monstrous form. But to do so, he had to rip off the dragon’s flesh in order to free the boy inside. Eustice agreed, and bearing not a sword but fierce claws, Aslan tore into Eustice’s dragon flesh, pulling it off until the boy was free. What Lewis shows with Aslan is what Jesus offers to all of us. Through our attachments to our treasure, we have found ourselves becoming dragons, hording away what we claim as our own without entering into the abundant, generous world of God’s grace. Jesus is calling us to another way, the risky and wild path beyond tameness, where true living is possible. But to return to our human form, we have to let our dragon skin be torn off. It can be a painful process, and yet, in the end, a freeing one.

Reflecting on our Gospel has made me wonder where I seek security, what useless treasures am I clinging to instead of joining the adventure of God’s kingdom? I pray that as I discover those places where the dragon’s skin is beginning to grow, that I will cooperate with our wild God and go through the painful, freeing process of letting go. Christ, not tame or safe, but good and loving, is drawing us toward our true humanity, our wild freedom. In that new life we will be returned to the community of creation, no longer hiding away in our lonely lairs. That is the life Jesus calls us toward, if only we’d be willing to lose our dragon selves, for his sake. Amen.