The Rev. Noah Van Niel
Christ and St. Luke’s
August 28th, 2022
Proper 17 (C): Sirach 10:12-18; Psalm 112; Hebrews 13:1-8; 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14
In our house we have recently begun reading the Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, to my oldest son. This is a parenting milestone I have long looked forward to since one of my most vivid and fondest childhood memories was having my father read those same stories to me when I was a boy. Though it comes second in the narrative order of the books, we have begun with the first composed and most famous of the septet, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. It has been so much fun to enter back into that magical world with Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy; a world that is at once strange and familiar, which is so often the case when we revisit something from our past later on in life. The story is unchanged, but we have changed, and so we experience it as new and old at the same time. I was also excited to revisit these stories because it was only in my 20’s that I learned Lewis had written them as Christian allegories, and given my current occupation, I was curious to see where and how those themes would reveal themselves.
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