The Gospel according to Harry Potter

With the recent release of the movie “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” a PulpitBytes reader asked that I make available again a sermon I preached the weekend the first Potter film was released. Here it is, from November 18, 2001.

Song of Solomon 8:6-7
John 15:12-13

It’s all the rage right now. Even before it opened in theaters this weekend it was turning up on television and in the newspaper. Children were talking about it at school, at basketball practice and at soccer practice. Wherever two or more were gathered, it was the topic of conversation. “It,” of course, is the movie “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” It is a thoroughly astonishing and wonderfully entertaining two-and-a-half hours of family-friendly-fun-filled hilarity, lavish and enchanting scenery, and lots of scary stuff to keep you on your toes.

Not everyone likes Harry Potter, of course. For one thing, the books are long, as children's literature goes. In fact, they are written for middle-schoolers, but elementary school kids are reading them in droves. And the books get harder to read, and they get darker and rougher in language and in content as the series progresses. They are not for everyone.

For another thing, this Potter character just doesn’t ring everyone’s bell. A year or more ago a columnist in Gentleman’s Quarterly called Harry Potter “an effeminate little twit.” I didn't think that was a particularly gentlemanly thing to say. I guess some guys are just more attracted to Stallone and Schwarzenegger. Harry doesn’t have bulging biceps and pecs. There’s nothing macho about him. He’s a heckuva Quidditch player, but without his Nimbus 2000 or his invisibility cloak he wouldn't stand a chance on a football field or a wrestling mat or in a tough-guy competition. For some reason, some guys just need more “manly” heroes than others do. And besides, as every girl who has read the books or seen the movie knows, if it weren’t for Hermione Granger, Harry Potter would be a goner. For example, he would not have survived the attack of the 12-foot mountain troll in the girls’ bathroom if it hadn’t been for Hermione. Don’t ask me what he was doing in the girls’ bathroom; read the book or see the movie.

And finally, of course, among those who don’t like Harry Potter are the theological thought police who have appointed themselves the defenders of the orthodoxy of your faith and mine. In 1999, there were more formal attempts to remove the Harry Potter books from school and public libraries than any other book or series. They contain and promote witchcraft, the thought-police contend. It’s a good thing these intrepid detectives don’t read the Bible, or we would be in trouble.

Certainly, they must never read 1 Samuel 28. 1 Samuel 28 contains an intriguing little story set after the death of Samuel, the last of the great judges and the first of the great king-maker and king-breaker prophets who were also advisors to ancient Israel’s royalty. Not long after Samuel died and was buried in his home town of Ramah, we read, “Meanwhile the Philistines had mustered and pitched camp at Shunem. [King] Saul mustered all Israel and they camped at Gilboa. When Saul saw the Philistine camp he was afraid and there was great trembling in his heart. Saul consulted the Lord, but the Lord gave him no answer, either by dream or oracle or prophet. The Saul said to his servants, ‘Find a woman who is a necromancer for me to go and consult her.’ His servants replied, ‘There is a necromancer at Endor.’ And so Saul, disguising himself and changing his clothes, set out accompanied by two men; their visit to the woman took place at night. ‘Disclose the future to me,’ he said, ‘by means of a ghost. Conjure up the one I shall name to you.’ The woman answered, ‘Look, you know what Saul had done, how he has swept the necromancers and wizards out of the country; why are you setting a trap for my life, then, to have me killed?’ But Saul swore to her by the Lord, ‘As the Lord lives,’ he said, ‘no blame shall attach to you for this business.’ Then the woman asked, ‘Whom shall I conjure up for you?’ He replied, ‘Conjure up Samuel.’ Then the woman saw Samuel and, giving a great cry, she said to Saul, ‘Why have you deceived me? You are Saul.’ Then the king said, ‘Do not be afraid! What do you see?’ The woman answered Saul, ‘I see a ghost rising up from the earth.’ ‘What is he like?’ he asked. She answered, ‘It is an old man coming up; he is wrapped in a cloak.’ Then Saul knew it was Samuel and he bowed down his face to the ground and did homage.” And then comes my favorite line in the whole story: “Then Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why have you disturbed my rest, conjuring me up?’” I love it. Poor old Samuel has just gotten good and comfortable in the hereafter, and along comes Saul to stir him up and force him into making an encore appearance as his advisor. “Leave me alone!”

It’s a fascinating little story, and my point in pointing it out is this: if we are going to ban books that include witchcraft and wizardry, we’ll have to start with the Bible. Where do you think all that devil stuff came from in the first place? The Bible, for heaven’s sake. So along with Harry Potter, we will have to throw out the Bible, William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (remember that old guy with the pointy hat, Merlin?), “Hansel and Gretel,” “Snow White,” The Wizard of Oz, and while we’re at it let’s get rid of Peter Pan—that boy is too old to be flying around in tights. You don’t have to be a civil libertarian to recognize that these people are a menace to society—and even to themselves. They don’t have the sense to think clearly enough about their crusade to recognize that if they succeed, they will end up banning their own Scriptures from school and public libraries!

But not all conservative Christians are so easily frightened by a little imagination and fantasy and magic. A year and a half ago, no less an authority on right thinking on the Christian right than the magazine Christianity Today published an editorial titled “Why We Like Harry Potter,” in which it described the series as “A Book of Virtues with a pre-adolescent funny bone” (June 10, 1999). The editors of Christianity Today were quite correct in their assessment. The virtues of friendship, trust, teamwork, diligent study, compassion, not judging people by appearances, and standing up for what is right are all displayed throughout the series and in the movie too.

But there is more, much more, than virtue alone. For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, there is the gospel. Now, just in case you find it unsettlingly unorthodox, perhaps even heretical, to think that a Christian preacher might find the gospel reflected somewhere outside the Bible, somewhere outside the church, somewhere others find paganism and idolatry reflected, let me call your attention to the book of Acts, chapter 17. In Acts 17, the apostle Paul is in Athens, preaching the gospel. Listen to the beginning of his sermon on the Areopagus, high above the Athenian marketplace, along the Ceremonial Way that leads to the great stairway to the acropolis on which stood the majestic Parthenon, the great temple to the goddess Athena, among other pagan sanctuaries. “Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.’” Do you hear what has happened here? Paul finds a pagan altar that he can use as a vehicle to proclaim the gospel. However unorthodox, however heretical the contemporary theological thought police might find it, Paul fearlessly proclaims that the God of the gospel of Jesus Christ is present and witnessed to even in the most pagan of environments, even in the most pagan of shrines, even in the most pagan of literatures, as later on in his sermon he quotes with approval a Greek philosopher and a Greek poet. Paul was not afraid to find the gospel already present and proclaimed among pagans, outside the Bible, outside the church. So in the tradition of the apostle Paul, I am committed to proclaiming the gospel and celebrating its presence no matter where in the world I might find it. Even in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

In case you are unfamiliar with the basics of the story line in the first volume, let me tell you a little something about it, and then I can tell you the story of how I first heard the gospel according to Harry Potter. At the outset of the story, Harry is a ten-year-old orphan living with his detestable aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley, and their spoiled, lazy and obnoxious son, Dudley. His aunt and uncle make Harry live in a closet under the stairs in their home. They have brought him up to believe that his parents died in a car crash. But on his eleventh birthday, Harry discovers that he is no normal orphan at all. Instead, he is a wizard, quite a famous wizard actually, the son of wizard parents. As an infant, he had been placed on the Dursley’s doorstep the night his parents were killed by an evil wizard named Voldemort, the most fearsome and malevolent dark wizard of his time. According to the story, Harry’s father died resisting Voldemort’s rise to power, and Harry’s mother died attempting to protect Harry from Voldemort. Harry alone survived the attack; and somehow when he survived, Voldemort’s power was broken, a development which made “Harry Potter” the most famous and celebrated name in all of wizardry. But Harry knew nothing of this, until his eleventh birthday. And the rest of the series of books is the unfolding story of how young Harry Potter comes to learn who he really is, what his enormous gifts are, and how he can use them for good with the help of his friends and teachers.

Now here’s the story of how I first heard the gospel according to Harry Potter. A couple years ago, one of my sons, then seven years old, brought home Harry Potter and Sorcerer’s Stone, having ordered it—at a considerable discount, I am happy to say—through the Scholastic Book Club. You parents are familiar with those forms that come home from school hawking all manner of books and computer software, all of it entirely educational, of course. I was more than a little curious, having read of the controversy. And so, one evening after he went to bed, I picked up the book to read a little of it, and I couldn’t put it down. Not since I read J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy in high school had I had so much sheer fun in reading. And from that night on, I read along with him, and we talked about what we read as we progressed together through the series. Sometimes I would be ahead of him and sometimes he would be ahead of me, and occasionally we would warn each other about certain chapters not to read before bedtime because they were just too scary.

One day, well into the second or third book, we were discussing who was the most powerful wizard of them all. He was holding out for Albus Dumbledore, the old gray-beard who is headmaster at Hogwarts School. I, on the other hand, was championing young Harry himself. After all, he had survived the attack by Voldemort, and when he could not kill Harry, Voldemort’s powers were broken. Hoping to cement my case for Harry’s power, I asked, “Well, why do you suppose that Voldemort could not kill Harry?” He was quiet for a moment, and I thought I had him stumped. But then he announced: “Because Harry’s mother loved him so much and Harry loved her so much that Voldemort’s evil could not defeat their love.” Did you hear that? A seven year old said, “Because Harry’s mother loved him so much and Harry loved her so much that Voldemort’s evil could not defeat their love.” It was a priceless moment. The shingles fell from my eyes as I realized that the theologically trained father was in analytical shackles, in a spiritual straightjacket fashioned by nineteenth-and twentieth-century intellectual giants from Nietzsche to Foucault, fixated on the analysis of power. But the theologically authentic child proclaimed the gospel: it is not power but love that is the greatest deterrent to evil.

In the movie, Voldemort reveals himself to be the personification of nihilism when he attempts to lure young Harry into becoming his ally with the quintessentially Nietzschean line: “There is no good and evil; there is only power.” But Harry does not fall for that hollow and cynical analysis of human existence and the world, and at the end of the book and the movie alike we learn why. It’s on p. 299 in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. As Harry lies in a hospital bed recovering from injuries sustained in a battle with Voldemort over the sorcerer’s stone, Dumbledore explains to Harry why he has survived yet another encounter with the evil one. Dumbledore says, “Your mother died to save you. . . . love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign . . . to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.” “To have been loved so deeply. . . . will give us some protection forever.”

Right there is the heart of the gospel. The heart of the gospel is the unfathomable depth and saving grace of the love of God. The heart of the gospel is the proclamation that you have been loved so deeply by God through Jesus Christ that you are protected by grace forever. “She sacrificed herself for you,” Dumbledore says to Harry in the movie, a simplified version of his statement in the book. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” says Jesus. Jesus’ death and resurrection are the signs that we have been loved so deeply with a “love [that] is strong as death, [a] passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench [this] love, neither can floods drown it.” Dumbledore is right: love that powerful “leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign.” But it is the “seal upon your heart,” as the Song of Solomon says, that marks you with the love of God.

In the face of senseless and often faceless evil in our world, where commercial jetliners are turned into bombs and a happy trip to the mall last Sunday afternoon left a lovely and vivacious Greenville grandmother dead from a drive-by purse snatching, we are reminded that we do not have the power to forestall death or to avoid it. We do not always get to choose the trials and the troubles that we must face in life. But we do get to choose how we will face them. We can face them with fear and despair. We can face them alone and in isolation. Or we can choose to face death and trouble with the seal of love set on our hearts and on our arms, in a community of caring and a fellowship of love with one another and with God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ. “This is my commandment,” Jesus says, “that you love one another as I have loved you.” To love and “to have been loved so deeply” will indeed protect our hearts and minds and souls forever. And that, my friends, is the gospel, no matter where in the world you find it. Amen.

This material is Copyrighted © 2001 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.