A Sermon for Dayspring Baptist Church By Chris Fillingham “Gregory of Nyssa – Further Up. Further In.” 4th in the Series: For All the Saints Philippians 3:10-14 November 24, 2019

If you’re a fan of C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, and especially if you love the way the series comes to an end, then you have St. Gregory of Nyssa to thank.

***** C.S. Lewis actually ties the end of the series together with the beginning… just the way our bibles do. The bible starts with a Garden, the Garden of Eden. And it ends coming back home to God… in a garden… Only it seems bigger this time… there is the River of Life and a Tree of Life… and the New Jerusalem. Heaven and Earth have become one, in the garden.

In the Chronicles of Narnia… Book 1 tells the story of Aslan the Great Lion creating Narnia, and the talking animals, and how a lamppost ended up in the middle of a forest, and from where the white witch came. It explains all that.

And in this book you discover that there was never supposed to be a White Witch in Narnia. That wasn’t Aslan’s intention… It happened because a boy named Digory had awakened the Witch in another world… and one thing led to another… and she ended up following him to discover the new world of Narnia.

So, after that happens, Aslan told Digory that he had to go on a quest to keep the White Witch at bay from destroying Narnia before it could grow and develop.

Aslan explains that where the land of Narnia ends, there is a great waterfall that comes down. Beyond that, up the cliffs of that waterfall, is the Western Wild. Through the mountains beyond that, there is a green valley with a blue lake, walled in by mountains of ice. At the far end of the lake there is a steep, green, grassy hill. At the top of the hill is a garden, encircled with a wall and a golden gate.

1 In the middle of that garden, there is a special tree with a special fruit. Digory had to go into the garden, to the tree, and pluck an apple, and bring it back.

And as you read the story of Digory making his way to the garden, and finding the tree, it’s pretty clear this is the Garden of Eden. There’s a great temptation with the fruit… and I won’t give away everything that happened, except to say that eventually Digory makes it back to Aslan, the great lion. And the story of Narnia continues.

Now maybe you haven’t read book 1 in that series. Maybe you only know the story of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Or the story of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. or Prince Caspian. Maybe you’ve only seen the movies.

But, there are actually 7 books in this series… and they are so full of great adventures, and heroic moments, and beautiful insights into our own spiritual journey and relationship with God… that we see embodied in Aslan.

In fact, if you haven’t read these books as an adult… I would highly recommend you do sometime as a spiritual practice. In every book there are rich metaphors that have so much to say to our souls … and that can be both deeply moving and healing. ***** But like almost all adventures, in all the worlds we know… Narnia cannot go on forever. And book 7, The Last Battle, tells us the story of the end of all of Narnia.

By the time book 7 starts, generations have gone by since anyone had seen Aslan. And so someone starts using an impersonation of Aslan the Lion to gain more power and control. Lies and deceit sow confusion among all the peoples of Narnia.

It’s hard to tell what is real and what isn’t anymore… [just as it can be in our world when lies and deceit are sown].

2 As this happens in Narnia, the great enemies of the Narnians, the Calormenes, begin to sneak in and take over.

And one dark night, a battle breaks out between the last King and those who’ve remained faithful… and the Calormenes. They’re fighting on an open hill around a mysterious stable, a stable that means death for all who enter.

As they battle, hope begins to fall… And one by one the children and King Tirian, the King of Narnia, and the last of the faithful Narnian animals… are shoved across the dark threshold, into the stable, and the door of death is slammed shut behind them..

It’s a shocking moment.

After 7 books of great adventure, and wise trees, and talking animals, and holy callings from Aslan, and redemption and salvation and new beginnings… all our last characters… are thrust through death’s door.

The world that wasn’t supposed to end, has ended.

And so now what?

*****

That’s the question we ask…. every time we’re faced with death’s door, isn’t it? What will happen now that they are gone? And what will happen when we… are the ones who are on the other side of that door?

It’s not something we talk about a whole lot, because, the honest truth is, there is so much we don’t know, isn’t there? There are things we hope… but even that is fuzzy, isn’t it? We hope that somehow we will be in heaven with God. … but if we probe very far… we’re not even sure what that means.

I mean, if someone asked you what happens when we die,

3 or what exactly heaven is… what would you say? Do you have a sense of what you even believe about that someday place?

In the 4th century, there was a Christian who did a lot of thinking about those questions, and what he began to say and teach fundamentally changed the way Christianity thought about heaven and, for that matter, really the whole journey of our life with God. ******

Gregory of Nyssa was born around 335 in Cappadocia, Turkey… and became one of three people known as the Cappadocian Fathers.

I’m going to give you a little Christian History Lesson here. The Cappadocian Fathers played a profound role in grounding and explaining the two defining Christian Theological Mysteries: The mystery of Incarnation: that God became human in Jesus. And the mystery of the Trinity: That God is three persons in One Essence: God is relationship of love and self.

In fact, the Cappadocian Fathers are sometimes thought of as the standard bearers for what can be considered orthodox Christian Doctrine. .

But that wasn’t all Gregory did. In fact, one of his most brilliant and most transformational breakthroughs was about what we mean when we talk about realm of heaven.

Now, I’m going to have to ask you to do a little philosophy to get this. So hang in there with me for a moment as we go down this rabbit hole.

Remember that the early church lived in the Greco-Roman World. It was a Helenized world. So, the Roman Empire might have been the government, military, and economic systems in which they lived. But the Greek art, philosophy and thought were the cultural waters and beliefs in which they swam.

And so, since at least the time of Plato, the common belief was that perfection was a static reality. Something that never changes. Because if it were

4 to change, that means either it’s no longer perfect, or it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t the ideal before. Perfection must be unchanging. – Got that?

Along with this, was the idea that everything of this world is a reflection of a perfect ideal reality that exists beyond this world. So, this pulpit then, is just a shadow reflection of the essence of “Pulpit.”

If you see something that is beautiful, it’s a shadow of the essence of “Beauty,” itself, with a capital B. And “Beauty” with a Capital B never changes. It simply is. It’s this perfect essence of Beauty.

Are you with me?

So, if this is in the background of how we define perfection, then heaven must be a static place. Once you get there, you’ve arrived. There is nothing else. You just are, and God just is, in all God’s beauty and goodness and perfection. Fully. Completely. Finally. And now you’re with God, and you’re sitting there for all eternity, every perfect day like the perfect day before it… in the presence of God, world without end.

And maybe that’s how you’ve imagined heaven yourself. Once you get there… the story is over. You’ve arrived. Now you can sit and play your harp for all eternity… because everyone who has ever read the Sunday Comics knows that’s what we do in Heaven.

***** But Gregory was really struck by Paul’s letter to the Philippians we heard earlier… And something about Paul’s words didn’t fit well with this image of perfection and beauty and heaven.… And so, he began to wonder, “Is unchanging perfection really the highest good?”

Because Paul seems to be pointing to something else. In Philippians 3, there’s a kind of holy longing in what Paul writes…

5 And here Paul is, late in life, after years of preaching the gospel and planting churches. Now he’s sitting in a jail cell. And there, Paul writes, “I want to know Christ… and the power of his resurection.”

It’s the deepest longing of his soul… to know Christ… more and more. And it must have been surprising to hear Paul articulate this, because he was the one that taught the Philippians about Christ… like he has introduced so many others to Christ. But there is a longing in him that grew deeper for something more.

Sometimes a taste of something good, makes you ache for even more…. like getting a bite of Grandma Fillingham’s famous homemade cinnamon rolls. You have a bite… and suddenly you want 2 more cinnamon rolls. A taste of something good, makes you ache for even more.

Paul… had tasted… as he writes: “I want to know Christ…” He goes on with that deep longing, “Not that I have already obtained this or reached the goal... But I press on to take hold of it because Christ has taken hold of me. …Beloved, I do not consider to have made it my own, but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Paul longs for more and more…

And it’s that longing… that drives him to forget what is behind and straining toward what lies ahead… that image captures Gregory of Nyssa’s imagination.

And so Gregory begins to write about it… he makes one of the biggest breakthroughs in the way the Church thought about our spiritual lives and the after-life. He begins to wonder… What if perfection… is not a static, unchanging thing at all? What if perfection… is growing eternally more and more into beauty and life? What if a perfect-static-God is actually less than an eternally expansive God? Wouldn’t there be a bigger God?

6 What if heaven isn’t an arrival, but a journey without end, into deep discoveries of beauty and joy of an eternally expansive God?

And every time we discover more of the beauty of God, where we had been in the past seems like a mere shadow of the real thing? And every time we taste more of the goodness of God… our hunger isn’t satisfied, but grows even deeper? So, that we long even more, and it’s that longing that drives us deeper into God? Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.

Gregory begins to quote these words of Paul over and over again in his writings. And it begins … to reshape how the Church understands our spiritual journeys, both in this life, and on the other side of death’s door. It’s not a one place or another place… but an ongoing journey into the eternal life of God, without end.

Now, the writings of some of these ancient Christians like Gregory of Nyssa can be a little hard to follow. But I want to read to you just one passage from Gregory, because it’s so beautiful. This is the translation from Scott Cairns, a poet and professor at MU in Columbia.

The soul that looks finally to God, conceives a new, mouth-watering desire for [God’s] eternal beauty, and tasting this, she awakens to an ever greater yearning— and ache never to be fully satisfied.

By this sweet hurt, she never ceases

7 to extend herself, to touch those things beyond her reach and ever beckoning. By this she finds herself passing, always, from her present circumstance to enter more deeply the interior, and to find there yet another circumstance awaiting.

And thus, at every point she learns that each new splendor is to be eclipsed by what will come— the ever-exceeding Beautiful that draws, and calls, and leads the beloved to a beauty of her own.1

Gregory of Nyssa… is offering a vision of heaven… that is also connected to our spiritual journey right now.

It’s a vision of what has happened to those we love… and a vision of what will happen to us, that is so much more than, jumping from one reality to another reality, or simply an escape of hell, or sitting on clouds playing harps for an eternity.

It’s a vision of a journey of desire and joy and delight in God that is always leading to more joy and beauty and wonder… that stokes the fires of desire and delight in God. It draws us deeper.

1 Scott Cairns, Love’s Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2007), 40.

8 That’s what I believe awaits us someday. That’s what I believe - those that we have loved and lost now find themselves… each of those saints for who we light a candle at the beginning of this month. now find themselves.

Moment by moment there is a new, joyful delight… that is drawing them deeper and deeper into God. And thus, at every point [they learn] that each new splendor is to be eclipsed by what will come— the ever-exceeding Beautiful that draw, and calls, and leads [our beloveds] to a beauty of [their] own.

*****

For a moment or two, when Tirian, the King of Narnia, was shut inside that dark stable of death, he did not know where he was or even who he was.2 It wasn’t dark inside the stable as he had expected. He was in a strong light that made him blink. And to his surprise, The Queens and Kings of old were standing there around him: Peter the High King, Edmond and Lucy. Eustice and Jill.

But that wasn’t all that was strange. The stable they had entered was only about 12x6 ft. But they were in a grassy spacious place, with blue sky… and beautiful trees… and fruit whose taste was so delicious that it can hardly be described… except to say that they made all the best fruit you and I have ever tasted seem dull, dry, hard, and sour in comparison.

Tirian looked and saw the door through which he had come. It looked at first like a door standing there. A random doorway in a field. But when he went

2 The following is a mixture of quoting and sythensizing from C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle, 149-211.

9 up to the door, and looked through the cracks on the wood, he could see the dark night on the other side that he’d just left. . “It seems,” said Tirian confused, “That the stable seen on the inside and the stable looked at from the outside are two different places…. The inside is bigger than the outside.”3 For those who have read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the stable was similar to the Wardrobe in that way. On the outside, it looked like a small wardrobe. But when you stepped in, a whole world opened up. The inside was larger than the outside. So it was with the stable.

Behind Tirian and Peter and all the rest, came a great voice. The voice of Aslan. “Come Further In. Come Further Up.” Aslan shouted.

And the whole lot of them began to head westward toward the voice. As they did, they were struck by a strange sense that they had been in this land before. But they couldn’t make it out.

Edmond thought some distant mountains reminded him of the one’s in Narnia’s mountain ranges, but Peter noted that these mountains were much bigger than the ones they had known.

Lucy also thought the landscape reminded her of Narnia… “And yet they’re not like Narnia” she said. “They’re different. They have more colors on them and they look further away than I remembered and they’re more… more… oh, I don’t know…”

It was Lord Digory, who was the little boy from Book One, who became a professor, said it best. “More like the real thing, aren’t they?” And the more they looked around, the more they could see it. Of course, where they are is different from the old Narnia. It’s “as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream,” Digory said4.

3 The Last Battle, 161.

10 New Narnia was somehow deeper, more wonderful, more like a place in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. Every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more.

It was the Unicorn who summed up best what everyone was feeling: “I have come home at Last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Come! Come further up, come further in!”4

And they all began to run with a kind of joy and energy they had never known. They could run but never run out of breath… And the further they ran… the faster they were able to run. And they came upon a great waterfall… and somehow were able to splash in the water… and in some mysterious way, swim and run up the great waterfall. Until they reached the top of the cliff… where a long valley opened up before them. “Further up. And Further in.” The Unicorn cried again.

And so they ran faster.. but now they were out of Narnia into the Western Lands, a Land that Peter and Edmond and Lucy and Tirian had never been before. And they kept running… with joy. Running through the valleys and through mountains, and across a great turquoise blue lake. And at the other end of the lake, they came to a great green hill.

And at the top of the hill there was a garden, that was encircled with a wall… and a golden gate. “Further Up. And further In” cried the Unicorn again. And so they ran up the steep hill, until they came to the gate, unsure of what to do. Then, a great horn, wonderfully loud and sweet, blew from somewhere inside that walled garden and the gates swung open.

4 196.

11 And out of those gates, came another one of the most beloved characters in all the great stories of Old. Reepicheep the Mouse. “Welcome, in the Lion’s name” Reepicheep called to them. “Come further up and further in.”

And so they all went into the garden… And in there they found so many of the other characters from all the great stories of Narnia on the inside of the Garden. Tumnus the fawn, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver… and more. There was so much joy and celebration at their reunion… that it took a while before Lucy noticed it. But then as she began to look around, she said at last, “I see now…This garden is like the stable. It is far bigger inside that it was outside.”

“Of course, Daughter of Eve,” said the Fawn. “The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.”

Then, as Lucy looked around the garden, she realized that it wasn’t really a garden at all, but a whole world, with its own rivers and woods and seas and mountains. But it wasn’t a strange world. She knew them all. “OH…” Lucy said. “This is still Narnia, and more real and more beautiful than the Narnia down below, just as it was more real and more beautiful than the Narnia outside the stable door! I see… a world within a world. Narnia within Narnia...”

And as they moved further up and further in… Aslan came bounding toward them…leaping with delight. “Come Further up. Come further in” he called. “The semester is over. The holiday has begun. [That old] dream is ended.: this is the morning.”

And as he spoke these things…. he no longer looked to them like a lion… but something more like life itself…

And as they moved further up and further in… the things that began to happen after that were so great and so beautiful that there are no more words to express.

12 All that can be said is that this was not the end of their story or the story of Narnia… but actually the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: 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 last.

And so it will be, Beloved. For you and for me, for those we have loved and lost… and for all the saints, who are drawn further up and further in… world without end.

At every point we will learn that each new splendor is to be eclipsed by what will come— as Gregory said. The ever-exceeding Beautiful that draws, and calls, and leads the beloved to a beauty of our own.5

Amen.

Silent Reflection:

Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead… ~ Paul

5 Scott Cairns, Love’s Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2007), 40.

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