Video for October 30th, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
As I record this, we’re recovering from a joyful grandchildren visit. They are delightful and full of life, but they make me glad I had children 35 years ago when I had more energy! In those days our respective parents lived a long way away and long car journeys were the norm. We had cause to give thanks to Stephen Fry’s warm tones as he read the whole Harry Potter canon on cassette (remember those) to fill those long drives. I know some people find the world J.K. Rowling describes uncomfortable with its use of pagan tropes and magical imagery. Personally, I don’t see it as any different to CS Lewis’ Narnia stories, and equally easy to mine for Christian analogy.
For those unfamiliar, she pictures a world where two incompatible world views and practices exist side by side and occasionally overlap. The wizarding world has its own set of laws which govern the interactions of people and objects and whole range of fantastical creatures, some visible some not. Some wizards take an interest in the science of our world, regarding as a quirky curiosity. Our human world, the world of muggles, exists in the shadows of the reality inhabited by the wizarding characters. Occasionally in the stories, magic can infuse aspects of our world. There are flying cars and emails and letters are replaced by notes carried by owls. There are mentions of a Minister of Magic who liaises with the muggle authorities, particularly when an excess of magical enthusiasm causes significant damage requiring repair or spells to erase muggle memories.
The analogy is far from perfect, but I am reminded of this fictional culture clash when I read John 1. In verse five, “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” or as some versions translate, understood it. And verse ten, “he was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him”. Elsewhere, St. Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians muses as to why the Gospel, so glaringly obvious to him, is missed completely by his Jewish brothers and sisters. “For to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts.” I can just about remember a time before I followed Christ. I’m sure I heard the truths of the gospel explained in RE lessons and sung about in assembly hymns, but which made not the slightest sense to me at all. Both Paul and Jesus recognise that the conversion of the heart is not an intellectual process but a spiritual one. God has left sufficient clues in the natural world where the eternal and temporal overlap that connections can be made, but like the world of Harry Potter, large tracts of the spiritual hinterland only become visible when you experience them for yourself. This creates an issue for us when we seek to commend Christian faith to our friends and neighbours. Apologetics, the demonstration that faith is intrinsically reasonable, has a part to play, but very few people in my experience have been argued into the Kingdom of God. This is because Christian discipleship – the journey on which Jesus invites us, is not just intellectual assent to a few credal truths. We place our trust in these things being true for sure, but discipleship is an act of the will. It is an active surrender to the direction and leadership of Jesus Christ in every part of our lives. Such progressive submission takes a lifetime to work on and is never complete this side of glory. It sometimes feels a catch 22. You never really begin to grasp the truths of Christianity unless you submit your life to Jesus Christ and you never really submit your life to Jesus Christ until you (at least at a rudimentary level) accept certain truths about Christianity!
In the Harry Potter stories, Harry lives in the muggle world until the magical world inexplicably breaks in with an extraordinary message delivered by an owl! That which was hitherto invisible starts to be seen. In one sense our year of engagement has been about this process of disclosure. As we live out the five marks of mission: proclaiming the kingdom, growing as disciples and living that out through care for the poor, working for justice and caring for the earth, something of the eternal becomes visible in the here and now. But its the Holy Spirit who brooded over the waters at creation who ultimately makes the connections that lead us from darkness into light.
+Richard