Aesop, writing in ancient Greece, sixth century BC, probably did not read Genesis 3 where the serpent engages Eve in slithery conversation. But Aesop gets credit as creator of the literary genre known as fable, where the line of difference between humans and animals becomes blurred in order to tell some truth about us and our world.

If you remember Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland, Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus tales or Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, or The Wizard of Oz, or even Charles Shultz’ Peanuts family, with snoopy, like me you are dating yourself. But if you like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Beauty and the Beast, you are very current.

Today I call your attention to the British writer C. S. Lewis, serious explorer of many dimensions of our Christian faith and now his Chronicles of Narnia, published in the l950’s, are coming soon to a theatre near you, produced by Walt Disney productions. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe opens next Friday (December 9, 2005) and is a good example of how an artist can tap into our human imagination to invite us to explore some truth about us and our world. In this case the truth of our own Christian Gospel.

Each of our scripture texts challenges God’s people to welcome God breaking through the normal boundaries of human awareness to bring salvation unto us. Isaiah brings comfort and gentle nurture, as a shepherd cuddles his sheep in his arms, to Israel getting all too used to living as aliens in exile in Babylon. II Peter boldly proclaims that God’s time is not the same as our time. We live in created time, chronos time. God lives as creator in another time dimension, kairos time, and so we should remember that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. John the Baptist is God’s voice crying in the wilderness, calling for God’s people to adopt a new mind set. He calls for repentance, reorientation of consciousness, baptism in water, preparing for the coming baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Each voice fits this Advent Season, when God is calling us to prepare ourselves, get ready for salvation coming upon us in God’s gift of his only begotten son born in Bethlehem. But we humans are stuck in our normal mind-set. We live as in a straightjacket, bound up tightly within ideas, habits, desires all too comfortable and reassuring to us. How can we loosen up our minds and hearts and welcome the fresh wind of God’s Holy Spirit blowing upon and within us?

We can do this by turning on to the meaning of repentance in the Greek word metanoia,. Forget whatever the word repent means in your past/present vocabulary. Use your God-given gift of imagination and turn on to possibility thinking like Isaiah, II Peter, and John the Baptist invite us to do. Soar out of, away from, and above our deep ruts we are used to.

C. S. Lewis invites us to open the door of the wardrobe and step into and through the wardrobe into another world, the alternative universe of Narnia. Explore where your imagination leads you as this artist/writer leads us.

Four youngsters stumble upon the wardrobe in a dusty attic room. Jesus says we should welcome little children and when we do, we welcome Jesus, and Jesus says we should expect to become as little children in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Curiosity and imagination may be the best tools God has given us, created as we are in God’s very own image and likeness.

Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter are sent away from the city of London during the German air raids to safety in the county house of a crusty old professor. Lucy first stumbles through the wardrobe into Narnia, then Edmund. Lucy and Edmund have different experiences in Narnia, and then all four children stumble through the wardrobe and find themselves caught up in the fiercest struggle between good and evil you can ever imagine. And this is the point. Imagination shares God’s truth with us. But we have to welcome our imagination and follow where it leads us.

Lucy, the youngest child, first stumbles through the wardrobe into Narnia. She meets a fawn who welcomes her and explains how Narnia is perpetual Winter, but Christmas never comes, because the white queen controls everything. Lucy realizes she must escape this strange world and returns through he wardrobe back to the attic, where no time at all has passed. She squeals out her story, but no one believes her. Imagination seems too strange.

Next Edmund goes through the wardrobe into Narnia. He meets the beautiful white queen herself, who gives him Turkish Delight to eat, promises to make him her prince, and makes him promise to bring his sisters and brother back with him. This beautiful white queen looks so good, but wait a minute, she may be up to some mischief, and the fawn has already warned Lucy this queen is pretty bad.

Finally, all four youngsters stumble through the wardrobe, taking long coats with them, because it’s so cold in frozen Narnia. A little bird leads them through the woods to meet two friendly beavers. Mr. and Mrs. Beaver welcome Lucy, Susan, Edmund and Peter to their cave where they live in a warm, cozy home. Mr. Beaver catches fresh fish for dinner. Mrs. Beaver leaves her sewing machine to make a delicious dinner for their guests. During dinner, everyone is so happy; plumb pudding for desert! And Mr. Beaver explains to the youngsters how Narnia is ruled by the white queen, who is really a wicked witch. And everyone who opposes her she turns to stone. But word has it, Aslan is returning and Aslan the true ruler of Narnia will make everything and everyone good again.

Suddenly they realize that Edmund is missing. Edmund has run away because he does not believe Mr. Beaver’s explanation. Edmund trusts the white queen because she gives him Turkish Delight and promise to make him her prince when he brings his two sisters and his brother to her. What Edmund does not know is she wants to capture them and kill them so they will not inherit the four thrones of Cair Paravel. Edmund runs to tell the white queen about Aslan returning.

Mr. Beaver knows why Edmund has left. Mr. Beaver knows the white queen will come soon to capture Lucy, Susan and Peter. They must leave at once to go to meet Aslan before the wicked queen can find them. They pack up some picnic food and set out on their journey. On the way they meet Father Christmas, who knows Aslan is returning, and Father Christmas brings presents to everyone, a sword for Peter, a bow and arrows for Susan, a magic cordial for Lucy, for Father Christmas knows they will all have to fight with Aslan against the wicked witch.

Travel in Narnia becomes very difficult because winter’s snow and ice is thawing, and spring is coming, because Aslan is returning. But the white queen takes Edmund to the stone table to bargain for his life. Everyone gathers and meets Aslan who has returned to rescue Narnia from the wicked queen. But she still rules and warns all Narnia will perish in fire unless she can get her revenge by killing Edmund who is a traitor.

Aslan goes into secret conference with the white queen and bargains with her. She can take her revenge on him and not on Edmund. But Aslan prepares Peter to fight against the queen, who he knows will not give in peacefully. Now the forces of both sides, loyal to the wicked queen and loyal to Aslan gather for the final battle of Armageddon.

Listen to how C. S. Lewis describes in his imagination the forces of evil: "A great crowd was gathered around the stone table. Many carried torches which burned with evil-looking red flames and black smoke. But such people! Ogres with monstrous teeth, and wolves, and bull-headed men; spirits of evil trees and poisonous plants; and other creatures whom I won’t describe because if I did the grown-ups would probably not let you read this book—Cruels and Hags and Incubuses, Wraiths, Horrors, Efreets, Spirites, Orknies, Wooses, and Ettins. In fact here were all those who were on the Witch’s side and whom the wolf had summoned at her command. And right in the middle, standing by the table, was the witch herself. A howl and a gibber of dismay went up from the creatures when they first saw the great lion pacing toward them, and for a moment even the witch herself seemed to be struck with fear. Then she recovered herself and gave a wild, fierce laugh. ‘The fool!’ she cried. ‘The fool has come. Bind him fast.’" They bind Aslan, shear all his mane and fur off him, and lay him stripped naked on the stone table. The wicked witch rises above him and plunges her blade deeply again and again into Aslan, who allows her to kill him. Only Lucy and Susan from the other side have followed to comfort Aslan through this ordeal.

The wicked witch and her forces retreat, to celebrate their triumph. Lucy and Susan sob with sorrow. Aslan is dead. But after a while little field mice crawl up and begin to chew away the bonds that bind Aslan. Lucy and Susan walk away to look at Cair Paravel in the distance. Suddenly they hear a great cracking sound. The stone table splits in two. Aslan stands before them. "Oh, Aslan," cry out Lucy and Susan, aren’t you dead? Are you a ghost? "Do I look like a ghost?" "Oh, you’re real, you’re real," Lucy cries and both girls fling themselves upon him and cover him with kisses.

"But what does it all mean?" asks Susan. "It means, says Aslan, "that though the witch knew the deep magic, there is a magic deeper still which she does not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could look further back, into the stillness and the darkness before time dawned, she would see there a different truth. She would see how when a willing victim who has committed no treachery is killed in a traitor’s stead, the table will crack and death itself will start working backward."

Well, the witch feels betrayed by Aslan, rallies her forces against him, and Lucy and Susan watch as Peter and Edmund join Aslan to defeat once and for all her fierce forces, and Aslan himself puts an end to the wicked witch. Summer time arrives at last in Narnia. The four youngsters are installed on the four thrones of Cair Paravel and rule Narnia with truth and justice for a long, long time.

Then one day, a mysterious white stag beckons the four rulers on an innocent hunting trip and they find themselves before a lamp post and they all come tumbling out of the wardrobe door into the empty attic room, and they are no longer kings and queens in their hunting array but just Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy in their old clothes. It is the same day and the same hour of the day on which they had all gone into the wardrobe to hide.

"And that would have been the very end of the story if it hadn’t been that they felt they really must explain to the professor why four of the coats out of his wardrobe were missing. And the professor, who was a very remarkable man, didn’t tell them not to be silly or not to tell lies, but believed the whole story. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think it will be any good trying to go back through the wardrobe door to get the coats. You won’t get into Narnia again by that route. Nor would the coats be much use by now if you did! Eh? What’s that? Yes, of course you’ll get back to Narnia again someday. Once a king in Narnia, always a king in Nasrnia. But don’t go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don’t try to get there at all. It’ll happen when you’re not looking for it. And don’t talk too much about it even among yourselves. And don’t mention it to anyone else unless you find that they’ve had adventures of the same sort themselves. What’s that? How will you know? Oh, you’ll know all right. Odd things they say—even their looks--will let the secret out. Keep your eyes open. Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools these days?"

And that is the very end of the adventure of the wardrobe. But the professor is right. It is only the beginning of the adventures of Narnia.

Imagination. Metanoia. Change of mind and heart. How better to prepare ourselves in this season of Advent, as Isaiah, as II Peter, as John the Baptist invite us to do. If you go to the movie, or show the DVD for yourself, a quick warning. Advance hype brags how computer technology will make this battle of Armageddon bigger, fancier, and more elaborate than either C. S. Lewis or the Book of Revelation make it. And violence will be magnified far beyond C. S. Lewis’ modest original telling of this story. And both techniques will take away from you and me some of our own responsibility for exercising our imagination. Better to read the book for yourself and let your own imagination do the work instead of Disney.

But however you share the adventures in Narnia, let us take seriously the words of II Peter: "In accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation" (II Peter 3:13-15). Alleluia! and amen!