Christ in the Hallows -- FPC sermon excerpt

Lord Voldemort possesses the secret to immortality: Dark, magical objects called Horcruxes.

And Harry Potter is out to destroy them.

The final movie of the Harry Potter series contains a spectacular battle, one that takes place between the evil and good forces of the wizarding world. Called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2, the movie opens this Friday, July 15. In this conclusion to the series, the stakes are high, the action is intense, and none of the heroes is safe. Harry himself may be called on to make the ultimate sacrifice as he enters a deadly showdown with Lord Voldemort.

Good versus evil. Righteousness versus sin. Life versus death.

It seems to me that this adventure has a truly biblical feel to it.

Nancy and I just returned on Monday from the Celtic Pilgrimage to Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England, a trip which took us very close to the imaginary land of Harry Potter. In fact, last Sunday we saw the railroad tracks that movie-makers have used to film the train to the wizarding school known as Hogwarts.

It is pretty clear that Harry Potter is supposed to make us think about Jesus, in both his personality and his actions. Think about it:

- Harry is linked to both wizards and Muggles. Jesus is connected to both God and humanity.

- Harry’s enemy is the evil Voldemort. Jesus’ enemy is Satan.

- Harry endures the pain of the “Cruciatus” curse. Jesus endures the pain of the cross.

- Harry spends three days in a coma after battling Voldemort. Jesus spends three days in a tomb before being resurrected.

“Harry is [a] hero of faith,” says John Killinger, author of God, the Devil, and Harry Potter. He is “a wounded hero, a very modest one, who is ready to sacrifice himself completely in behalf of others.” He opposes Lord Voldemort, the personification of evil, with all his strength.

Jesus Christ is clearly present, in the Hallows.

In this final movie, Harry makes discoveries about three magical objects called the Deathly Hallows. I think the children of our congregation can describe them much better than I can. As I understand it, the three objects include the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Cloak of Invisibility. As the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ended, Lord Voldemort obtained the incredibly powerful Elder Wand.

Now the contest for the Deathly Hallows is a matter of life and death.

A similar struggle erupts in Paul’s letter to the Romans, a book that many people find to be as complex and confusing as the Horcruxes and Hallows of Harry Potter. “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do,” writes Paul: “by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (8:3-4).

The law. Weakened by the flesh. God’s own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh. The just requirement of the law. Walking according to the Spirit.

Such terminology is every bit as confusing as the language of the Deathly Hallows.

Paul’s letter begins to make sense, however, when we see it as a battle between Sin and God, a fight with as much shock and awe as the final chapter of the Harry Potter series. Biblical scholar Beverly Roberts Gaventa argues that Sin should be written with a capital “S” in Romans, because it is an “upper-case Power that enslaves humankind and stands over against God. Here, Sin is among those anti-God powers whose final defeat the resurrection of Jesus Christ inaugurates and guarantees.”

Sin can be pictured as Lord Voldemort, enslaving humankind and standing against all that is good. His final defeat is going to require a death and a resurrection.