The power of story

1 Corinthians 15

Four years ago, when this scripture last popped up in the lectionary, I preached a sermon on Harry Potter since a verse of this scripture reading is quoted in the final book in the Harry Potter series. In 2020, with everything going on in the world, I feel pretty much like doing that again. But rather than talking about my own journey in coming to see the Harry Potter story as a reflection of the Gospel-story, which might mean something to some of you but probably means nothing to many of you, I thought it would be more useful to talk about why these themes from 1 Corinthians are so powerful both for the Gospels and in stories in general.

The line that appears on the gravestone of Harry Potter’s parents in Godric’s Hollow is 1 Corinthians 15:26, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” For Harry (and, I think, for many of the rest of us), this is a bit of a confusing verse. We know that death is bad, and we understand the importance of death being defeated, but we might wonder: Hasn’t that part happened already? Wasn’t that the point of the cross? And if that part has happened already, then shouldn’t we view death more like a necessary rite of passage—certainly not as an enemy? Harry questions this too, because in his world, the bad guys are the ones trying to conquer death. The villain, Voldemort, has a name that literally means “flees from death,” and he surrounds himself with folks he calls Death Eaters. The good guys, by contrast, understand that death is but the next great adventure (Dumbledore).

So, it’s all very confusing. It’s much like our own tenuous relationship with death. As a Christian, we might well wonder how we are supposed to feel about this thing that seems to have all the power, and, yet, our faith says something different. “Death, where is your sting?” says the scripture.

Well, if we’re being honest, the sting is that death ends the only life we know. That is a very real sting. Even more broadly, death is not just physical deaths. At this moment, we are experiencing the death of expectations, the death of plans, the death of normal, even the death of hopes and dreams. The sting of death is that things are just not right.

I have found that when the world is upside-down, the best cure is a good story. However, I say this not as a means of escape. Too often, we treat stories as if they are either unreal or distant from our lives, especially when we are reading fiction. I believe this is a mistake. As G.K. Chesterton once said, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

A good story speaks to something stronger than death, because the Christian story tells us a tale of something stronger than death. In this way, it doesn’t matter if your favorite story is about wizards or trolls, set in space or some parallel universe, or whether the characters are human or something different. All that matters is whether your story reflects the cross. Is death the most powerful force in the universe? If so, then your story doesn’t work. Is love more powerful than death? OK, now we’re getting somewhere.

Not all of you like to read, and not all of you are feeling much like reading right now, but reading is not the only way we encounter stories. You are telling a story every day by the way you interact with other people, by the things you are helping to create, by every choice you make and every path you take. So, here’s the big question: Is your story a reflection of the story of the cross? Is death winning in your story? Or is it love?

I’m just going to keep preaching on love every single week now, I think, because it is the only trump card we have in the face of stories where death wins. We love because God loves us, but I hope that doesn’t feel like a fluffy thing to say. It’s not a throw-away kind of love. It is love that says, “I will meet you in death.” God’s love is deathly serious, as are the best stories. They pull you in, wrap you up in characters you had never met before, and they make you care. They make you feel things about people who never existed and situations that never occurred.

If it seems weird to be preaching on stories when the world is facing a challenge that is incredibly real, it’s only because we have neglected to take seriously what stories really are. Every story is a litmus test for a world created by God, who loves us, and who sent his son to die for us, and not every story reflects that great story, but so many do. Any story built on the foundation of love reflects the story of Jesus. And you don’t need to apologize for liking that story more than you like reading the Bible! God shows you love in every story that matters.

Nobody embodies this better than Mr. Rogers, and I believe this is why he was so powerful in his quiet, Christian witness. He just showed you what it looks like to tell stories steeped in love, and they looked like tigers and trolleys and mail carriers and simple lessons told while tying his shoes, because he realized at some point in his transition from Presbyterian pastor to PBS personality that his preaching was all the more powerful when it didn’t feel the least bit like preaching at all. He just told stories—stories that reflected God’s love, and that famous quote of his, the one about “looking for the helpers” in the face of terrible situations is a reflection of that deep understanding of who and whose we are.

Don’t let the terror keep you from seeing the good news quite often birthed like a shoot rising from the ashes of things that have passed. This is every single great story. An impossible challenge, incredible odds, death looking for all the world like the champion, and then, something that shouldn’t be unexpected because we have heard the story so many times, and, yet, it always is. Love wins, again and again. And if you want to try to write a different story, it always comes out sadly lacking, because there is only one story out there. It’s the same story God has written on the leaves of the trees and with every spring—death turned to new life.

When I was a college undergrad looking for a topic for a thesis, I found myself turning again to Harry Potter for reasons I didn’t really understand. I mean, I liked the books, but I wasn’t a super fan, really. My thesis ended up being called “The Power of Christian Love in Harry Potter,” and at the time I wrote that thesis, the seventh and final book was yet to be published, and while it wasn’t exactly relevant to my thesis to make guesses about what was going to happen in the seventh book, I nonetheless made several assumptions. Firstly, that good would win; secondly, that it would be love that proved more powerful than death; thirdly, that certain characters (Snape, in particular) would be at least somewhat redeemed; and lastly, that Harry would not need to live to “win.” Every one of those assumptions was proved right in the seventh book not because I’m some future-telling genius, but because the Harry Potter story is the same story as the Gospel story. You could see it coming from a mile away.

The challenge before us today is how to see our stories as a reflection of the story of the cross. We have to ask ourselves: Are we living as if love is more powerful than death? Are we those heroes who are bound by love to one another, or have we slipped into a kind of cynicism that believes nothing so good as love could possibly be true?

The most essential truth of all these stories is that simply living is not winning and neither is accumulating the most toys. Heroes sacrifice for the sake of others. They have to! After all, every true hero is a reflection of Christ no matter how flawed they might be, since Jesus embodied that altruistic heroism better than any other could.

So, be the hero in your own story. Show the world that love wins. Don’t give in to cynicism or any story that suggests death is all there is. Tell your story in light of Christ’s story. You see, it doesn’t matter if you like Harry Potter or not, we all have a story to tell, and, yet, they are the same story—reflections of a greater story. Remember that when the stories on the news suggest that death is winning. Remember that love wins; remember that death is in its place; and remember, that that last enemy’s days are numbered.