Table Talk
Further Up and
Further In
by Mathew Block
Editor, The Canadian Lutheran
I
grew up in Saskatchewan, so you
can understand when I say I don’t
have much mountain climbing
experience. But I have been lucky
enough on a couple of occasions,
while visiting more topologically
diverse provinces, to do a bit of hiking
in the mountains.
If you’ve ever had similar
opportunities, you know there’s
nothing quite like reaching the summit.
The process of getting there may be
slow and arduous, but the payoff is
worth it. From the mountain heights
you can see forever, and suddenly
you understand what is meant by the
phrase “on top of the world.”
Still, you can’t linger there forever.
Eventually you have to come down.
That’s how mountain climbing works.
It’s how much of story-telling
works too: things start slowly, building
up until at last you reach the peak
of the action. That climax might be
victory in battle, or finding buried
treasure, or perhaps a profession of
love: it all depends on the type of story
being told. But the climax is the story’s
highest point. Anything that comes
afterwards is denouement—a decline in
action that brings the story to a close.
But what if it wasn’t? What if,
when you reached the zenith of the
story, you suddenly discovered there
was more story to come? What if,
when you reached the mountain peak,
you discovered more mountain to be
scaled—and that you were not tired in
the least but instead invigorated and
excited for more? What if, just as the
adventure was at an end, you instead
discovered it had only begun?
C.S. Lewis tells a story very much
like that in The Last Battle, the final
book of The Chronicles of Narnia. The
novel is a fantasy take on the end of
the world and the Second Coming of
Christ—except in this case it’s the end
of Narnia and the return of Aslan.
In The Last Battle, we witness the
demise of Narnia. Every living thing
dies, the world returns to chaos as the
waters rush over the land once more,
and in the end even the sun is snuffed
out. A great giant, we read, “stretched
out one arm—very black it looked,
and thousands of miles long—across
the sky till his hand reached the Sun.
He took the Sun and squeezed it in
his hand as you would squeeze an
orange. And instantly there was total
darkness.”
And that’s it. The door is closed
and Narnia is no more. And yet, as
our protagonists learn, there is a new
Narnia just waiting to be discovered.
“Further up and further in!” Aslan
calls to them, and they all run deeper
and deeper into the new world. “But
now,” Lewis writes, “a most strange
thing happened.... The air flew in their
faces as if they were driving fast in a
car without a windscreen. The country
flew past as if they were seeing it from
the windows of an express train. Faster
and faster they raced, but no one got
hot or tired or out of breath.”
The characters in the novel reach
the peak of the story only to find the
story has not yet peaked. The whole
adventure is mountain top; there’s no
decline, no fall, no coming back down.
“All their life in this world and all
their adventures in Narnia had only
been the cover and the title page,”
they learn. “Now at last they were
beginning Chapter One of the Great
Story which no one on earth has read:
which goes on forever: in which every
chapter is better than the one before.”
The story, of course, is a symbol of
our own faith. While we face challenges
of many kinds in this world, Jesus tells
us He has come that we “might have
life, and that more abundantly” (John
10:10). It can be hard to square that
promise with our own experience. Life
more abundantly? Life, as it were, on
a mountain top? Sometimes we feel
closer to the valley depths.
Even so, the promise remains true:
Christ has come that we might have
life. And He gives us this life through
various means. Through baptism, God
unites us to the death of Christ in order
that we might also be united to Him
“in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). His
Word, He tells us, is the sustenance of
this spiritual life (Matthew 4:4). And
through communion, He fills us with
His own body and blood—His very life
given for us—that we too might have
“eternal life” (John 6:56).
These are glimpses of the mountain
top, moments when we see the climax
of our story: God enlivening us with
His own Spirit. But God promises to
raise us up further still. A new heaven
and a new earth! Further up and
further in! More and more life, more
and more abundantly!
The difficulty for us lies in the
recognition that this “raising up”
takes place on the other side of the
grave. From our limited human
perspective, death seems to be the
end of the story—not just coming
down the mountain, but taking a
headlong plummet from its cliffs. We
must remember that death is not The
End. It was not for Christ; nor will
it be for us. The Story goes ever on
and Life goes ever on, as Christ raises
us up to Himself. In that place, there
will be no denouement—no falling
action. No, we will forever stand
on the mountain top, seeking new
heights as we dwell in the presence
of the God who has saved us.
The story is not yet ended. Indeed,
it is only just begun.
THE CANADIAN LUTHERAN May/June 2015
5