When It Comes to “Materials”, How Dark Is Too Dark?

Lyra is a little girl, chosen by destiny for some great purpose. Her uncle, Lord Asriel, who is actually her father, has discovered a way to connect the parallel universes and is gathering from all of them an army of angels, witches, armored bears, and who or whatever else will join in his great military campaign. The Church, in all the universes, along with many angels and others, supports the authority of the Authority. And the Authority, as it turns out, is God, or actually a broken down old angel named Yahweh, who has been pretending to be God. You see, he rebelled gazillions of years ago and won the Battle of Heaven and, since then, has devoted his energies to misleading everyone about who he really is, and to ruining everything with all his evil laws. But now he is old and decrepit, and only wants it all to be over. And Lyra’s friend, Will, has been chosen by destiny to kill this pretender God, or actually just free him and allow him to die.

Lyra’s destiny is to let all the souls out of the World of the Dead, the scariest of all the parallel universes, so that they can finally really die and become one with everything. She and Will, and Lord Asriel and his army, manage to win their respective battles. This reverses the Battle of Heaven that we always thought was started by Lucifer (the Devil) who fought against the real God who created the one and only universe, but was actually started by this phony God, Yahweh, who was just an angel who wanted to be the boss of everyone.

In the end, God is dead, Lord Asriel is dead, the souls of the dead, which haven’t been quite dead, are dead and dying, which is a good thing, and Will and Lyra are back in their own separate and parallel universes. Though they are broken hearted to be separated, everything is much better because now there is no God, or at least not one who tries to be the Authority and tell everyone what to do.

If all this sounds complicated, it is. And I left out oodles of stuff that’s absolutely essential to the story such as Mrs. Coulter who is Lyra’s mother, the Gyptians, Mary Malone who has an amber spyglass so she can see Dust, harpies, mulefas who are sort of elephants on wheels, and Dust itself which is actually what started the whole business in the first place and turns out to be sin. At least I think that’s what it turns out to be.

I admit that this description of Philip Pullman’s novel, His Dark Materials, is grossly unfair. It’s a three volume story after all, and like Richard Wagner’s great opera, The Ring of the Nibelung, it’s actually much better than it sounds. It’s also a children’s story and, being an adult, I probably missed the point entirely. At any rate, I doubt if I spoiled the plot for anyone who hasn’t read it yet.

The idea that the God Christians and Jews worship, Yahweh by name, is an evil control freak, and must be destroyed, or at least ignored, if people are to live fulfilled lives, is at least as old as humanity, and some say even older. But to teach it to children by making it the premise of a children’s story is a bit of a new twist. And the fact that this story has been published and is being made into a series of motion pictures indicates that there has been a significant cultural shift in recent years. So, how should Christian people engage an idea of this sort? On one extreme I suppose we might try boycotts and book burnings; on the other perhaps we should just lighten up and take a valium? What do you think?

The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Because in recent generations our preachers have been domesticated, we don’t recognize prophetic preaching when we hear it. It grates upon our ears and seems inappropriate in the pulpit of a church. We speak derisively of “fire and brimstone preaching” because, if we ever hear it at all, it’s mean-spirited and arrogant, focused on matters of little consequence. But, when a real prophet holds forth, under the power of the Holy Spirit, with the passion and compassion appropriate to the enterprise, individual lives and entire societies are challenged, and sometimes changed.

And prophetic words are not the province of the preacher alone. Poets, lyricists, novelists, journalists, all who choose words as their medium of expression, are potential channels of the prophetic voice. This is why we protect words, specifically granting freedom of speech; not because we like to hear those with whom we disagree, but because we know instinctively that we so often need to hear what we don’t want to hear.

James Cone, a professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, is one of the prophetic voices that has shaped Jeremiah Wright. He is an advocate of Black Liberation Theology and, therefore, says an awful lot of things an awful lot of folks don’t want to hear. But “professor” derives from “prophet” and Dr. Cone takes his calling seriously. His book The Cross and the Lynching Tree is a prophetic call to black and white America to come to term with this bitter history of abuse that divides and unites them, and to find redemption and reconciliation. This is the calling of the prophet.

Again I direct you to an interview by Bill Moyers as he explores The Cross and the Lynching Tree with its author. Check it out: part one and part two. This is the prophetic voice of the church in America. Where is it in our own country?

Burning the Scroll

In the Book of Jeremiah, chapter 36, we read that the prophet dictated a scroll to Baruch, his secretary, and told him to read it to the people in the Temple in Jerusalem. The essence of the message was very harsh; the Lord is displeased with the nation and, as a result, our demise at the hands of the Babylonians is only a matter of time. In other words, our chickens are coming home to roost. Baruch read the words of the prophet to the people and the ensuing commotion was, in due course, reported to Jehoiakim, the King, who commanded that the scroll be brought to the palace and read in his presence. As each portion was read, the king cut it off and burned it in a firepot in the courtyard in the presence of his officials, until the entire scroll had been consumed.

Prophets are a troublesome lot. They declare, “This is what the Lord has said!”, to anyone and everyone. They offend the king and the people alike, because they say the things we do not want to hear. This is the ideal of the prophetic voice; it speaks “truth” to power, and is answerable only to God. And those who, for whatever reason, want to hear a different word, distance themselves from the prophet, and the words of the prophet, just as Jehoiakim did in such a dramatic way.

In recent weeks we have seen this process in action. For years Barack Obama has sat under the and teaching of a prophetic preacher, Jeremiah Wright. Of course they have had their differences – no thoughtful person agrees with anyone all the time – but they have been close enough that Wright conducted Obama’s wedding, baptized his children, and even provide the title for his second book, The Audacity of Hope. Yet, when the people (the media) became offended by the strident declarations of this “Man of God”, Obama distanced himself from his pastor, insisted that he too was offended, and ultimately disowned his pastor, declaring that if he becomes President he will not seek any counsel from Jeremiah Wright. I understand why Obama has done this. One cannot get elected if he offends his constituency, or is associated with people who do. But it’s disappointing nonetheless.

Monarchs, presidents, prime ministers, and nations need the counsel of prophetic voices. When first encountered the truth is often offensive, or at least inconvenient, so they must learn to listen to things they don’t want to hear. And if they don’t receive the counsel of the prophets they become vulnerable to the self serving counsel of those who only seek to please them. These are the “false prophets” the Bible calls the “ticklers of ears”, and that road leads to disaster.

Think of the prophetic voices of history: Saint Francis and Martin Luther for church reform; William Wilberforce and John Newton (Amazing Grace) for the abolition of slavery; Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Gandhi for the civil wrights movement. We applaud these voices now, but they were despised and rejected in their day.

It would be comforting to think that the person in the White House is receiving some prophetic counsel, but I guess you have to get elected. And, as we all know, democracy would be the perfect form of government if it weren’t for the elections.

A Prophetic Word from Jeremiah, Wright?

In my last posting I mentioned the shock bites we have seen again and again featuring Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, preaching what appear to be very inflammatory and hurtful things. In one of these snippets he is seen declaring that the attacks of 9/11 were “America’s chickens coming home to roost”. This is a fifteen second clip from a thirty-five minute sermon, and I suggested we take the time to listen to Bill Moyer’s interview with Rev. Wright before drawing any conclusions about the meaning of the clip in question.

Since my last posting I have taken the time to go beyond Bill Moyers and listen to the 9/11 sermon in its entirety, and I must say this is one of the most powerful sermons I have ever heard. It is a prophetic word in a time of urgent need and, as far as this preacher is concerned, it’s a masterpiece.

In recent generations, because most of our preachers have been thoroughly domesticated, few of us have ever heard prophetic preaching. This is an opportunity to hear some. It’s shocking, heart breaking, inspiring, challenging and more than a little scary. But much more than that, I believe it is a word from the Lord. So I encourage you to click on the link below which will take you to Roland S. Martin's website where you can listen to the whole sermon. Compare it to the clip you heard, and see how the media have misled the people by manipulating this preacher's words.

In the next few postings I will continue to reflect on the place of prophetic preaching in the life of church and society, but before we go there give a listen.

Jeremiah Wright’s 9/11 Sermon, September 16, 2001