Sermon Notes — November 4, 2017
All Saints Sunday
Children’s Time
- Who is a Harry Potter fan?
- I’m going to read a scene from the last Harry Potter book that brings out for me the deeper meaning of All Saints Day.
- First, help every here learn a bit about Harry Potter: who are the heroes? (Harry, Hermione, Ron, Professor Dumbledore, and even misfits/outcasts, like Hagrid, Neville, and Luna Lovegood; and even some who have died resisting Voldemort: Harry’s parents, Sirius, Lupin) Who are the bad guys, the villains, the anti-heroes? (Voldemort, the Malfoys, Umbridge, dementors)
- What power do the heroes believe more than any other power? Love
- What power do the anti-heroes believe in more than any other? Wealth and the power to kill those who are considered enemies
- Harry Potter is a very Christian story by believing in the power of love. Most people believe in the things that the anti-heroes in Harry Potter believe in: wealth and big armies. Jesus flips all that and asks us to believe in love.
Sermon
Harry Potter can be compared to the Book of Revelation and the Gospels
- Heroes are anti-heroes and anti-heroes are heroes. All values are flipped in light of faith in the power of love.
- They all get right what the Reformation missed: the values and power of human empire need to get flipped. Followers of the Lamb Slain need to put their ultimate trust in love and nonviolent resistance.
- Who are the heroes of today? All the Saints? Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Heather Heyer (like those who have come through the ordeal in today’s reading from Revelation), our departed loved ones who loved us unconditionally
[The sermon concluded with some comments on my different translation of the Beatitudes and then a reading of the Harry Potter passage.]
