Can We Hear Gandalf?

  

On the final page of The Hobbit, Tolkien gives us this interchange between Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf:

 

“Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a fashion!” said Bilbo.

 

“Of course!” said Gandalf. “And why should not they prove true? Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”

 

“Thank goodness!” said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.”

 

C.S. Lewis with his Narniad, and J.R.R. Tolkien with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, have given us narratives of wonder, awe, koinonia, friendship, and sacrifice. The subtitle of The Hobbit is There and Back Again, a title we could give the Gospel with its Incarnation and return to the Father.

 

“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God.” John 13:3.

 

“I came forth from the Father and have come into the world; I am leaving the world again and going to the Father.” John 16:28.

 

In Hebrews Chapter Two, one of the great chapters on the Incarnation, we see that Jesus is not ashamed to call us His brothers and sisters because we have the same Father, and that He came to free us from the fear of death which had made us slaves. What a tragedy that we diminish the work and love of Jesus Christ by not accepting this glorious Gospel of our Father “bringing many sons to glory.”

 

Note the response of the disciples to Jesus in John 16:29 – 30:

 

“His disciples said, ‘Lo, now You are speaking plainly and are not using a figure of speech. Now we know that You know all things, and have no need for anyone to question You; by this we believe that You came from God.”

 

Somehow, someway, when Jesus spoke of coming from the Father and returning to the Father, the disciples identified with His words; what He was saying was plain to them – what is a mystery to many was obvious to the disciples.

 

Jesus uses the language of sonship, as do the New Testament writers; why then, do we use the language of slavery, of not fully accepting our justification, sanctification, glorification, and being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ as His saints? (Romans 8:28 – 30). The Creation is awaiting the “manifestation of the sons of God (Romans 8:12 – 23), and yet we are taught, and we teach others, to deny this glorious identity in Jesus  Christ, and in denying our identity we deny our calling, we deny our destiny; we have a faulty ontology, we do not know our Ture Nature in the Trinity; we have a faulty teleology, we do not know our True calling.

 

Jesus not only calls us into His Nature, He calls us into His destiny, His calling: “As You sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.” John 17:18.

 

“So Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” John 20:21.

 

Give me a people who know the above and I’ll give you a people who are on mission; they learn to “be” the Presence of God in their families, their communities, their schools, and their workplaces. They learn to be the Presence of God in their local churches and the global Church. Witnessing becomes an organic Way of Life because it is who they are, it is their Nature to witness for they know they come from God and are returning to God in Christ. They learn to breathe the breath of the Trinity as they partake of the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4; see also John chapters 13 – 17).

 

Hence John can write that he wants the recipients of his letter to “have fellowship (koinonia) with us; and indeed our fellowship (koinonia) is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). Do we have this confidence? That if people have koinonia with us that they will also have koinonia with the Trinity? Did John get this wrong? Do we know our True Nature, or are we sons and daughters living out of garbage cans and dumpsters? Are we teaching others to dumpster dive the way scuba instructors teach their students?

 

Well, back to Bilbo and Gandalf; Bilbo’s great adventure was about more than Bilbo, and our lives, our calling, is about more than us – individually, as families, and as congregations and denominations or “movements.” As Bilbo will realize in The Lord of the Rings, there is more to come, and as the quest unfolds it requires a willingness to lay down one’s life as a Way of Life – knowing that this life is not about us. This ought to free us to lay our lives down for our brethren (1 John 3:16) and free us from preoccupation with ourselves and our own congregations and denominations and doctrinal distinctives – for the prayer of Jesus, and the key to faithful witness, is our unity in the Trinity (John 17) and our love for one another (John 13:34 – 35). As Francis Schaffer used to say, the world has a right to judge us based on our love for one another and our unity…I’d say we have failing grades.

 

“You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”

 

Yes, this is true…but as we see in The Lord of the Rings, little hobbits can become great deliverers when they surrender to their calling.

 

I want to thank my friend Stan Bohall who, a few months ago, drew my attention to this passage in The Hobbit.