Walking with Bilbo – An Invitation to Adventure

Walking with Bilbo – An Invitation to Adventure
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom & Sarah Arthur
January 6 and 7, 2013

Peace Friends!  And happy new year!

Today we begin a new series called Walking with Bilbo, based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit.  How many of you have:

• Seen The Hobbit movie?
• Read the book?
• Seen The Lord of the Rings movies?
• Actually read that trilogy too?

Some of you may be wondering why we as a church are spending four whole weeks on what is essentially a work of children’s fiction, and a fantasy story, at that. You may even be dreading these four weeks, if you’re not a fiction or fantasy lover. Well, it’s my prayer that God will use this series anyway, that you’ll find something to take away from this message. And I think as we unpack it all in the coming weeks, you will.

Let me begin by telling our story of what role this book has played in Sarah’s and my life, and then we can explore some of the spiritual themes in the book as a way to see how God is at work in the world, even the world of fiction.

Why The Hobbit?
Now, it came as something of a surprise to us, when the first Lord of the Rings (LOTR) movies came out ten years ago, that most people were completely unaware that Tolkien was a Christian.  Sarah had studied LOTR and The Hobbit as an English major at Wheaton College where she learned about Tolkien’s faith.  He wrote, “I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic.” And he wasn’t just a Christian in name only. He really believed and lived this stuff—so much so, he was instrumental in the conversion of his friend C.S. Lewis (later author of The Chronicles of Narnia) from atheism to Christianity.  Tolkien wrote occasionally about the spiritual themes in his work.  He said, “In ‘The Lord of the Rings’ the conflict is not basically about ‘freedom,’ though that is naturally involved. It is about God, and His sole right to divine honour.”

It is important to understand that The Hobbit is not a Christian allegory like Pilgrim’s Progress where there is a one to one correlation between things in the story and the Christian life, but The Hobbit does share themes with the Christian journey. Did Tolkien intend for it to be a religious story? No, but when you are a Christian, the flavor of your faith comes through in everything you create. He created his stories as an act of joy, a labor of love, an act of worship, to the glory of God.

So Sarah wrote Walking with Frodo, named after the main character in The Lord of the Rings, and later Walking with Bilbo, named after the main character in The Hobbit, to explore spiritual themes in Tolkien’s works.  These books were originally aimed at a youth audience but people of all ages have appreciated them.

The Theme of Adventure
One of the spiritual themes in The Hobbit is the theme of adventure.  To get you into that theme, especially if you’re not familiar with the story, the trailer for the movie does a pretty good job of summarizing the theme of adventure.

Gandalf said to Bilbo, “I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.”

Hobbits are small human-like creatures—3 foot, 6 inches—who live in an imaginary world called the Shire, which is rather like rural parts of England. Most of them like good food, comfy homes, a good book, a pot of tea, and prefer peace and quiet.

Bilbo is the model hobbit, but with an interesting family history. He is part Baggins, which prefers to stay home and safe; but he is also part Took, which has a history of going on mysterious adventures.

Gandalf’s job is to appeal to the “Took” side of Bilbo. Gandalf has chosen and selected Bilbo to join an adventure with a group of dwarves who want to reclaim their mountain kingdom and their gold from an evil dragon. But Gandalf can’t MAKE Bilbo go on this journey. Gandalf can only extend the invitation. Now it’s up to Bilbo to accept it.

Like Gandalf, God has been in the adventure business for a long time, choosing and selecting unlikely people to participate in the great and small stories of human history.  All throughout the Old Testament, God is calling people.  Then Jesus came on the scene and called twelve disciples:

Luke 5:27-32
Later, as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.

Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many of Levi’s fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them. But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?”

Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”

Difficult to Find
But “it’s very difficult to find anyone” who is willing to accept Jesus’ invitation to adventure–why is that?  Here are four possible reasons.

First, we don’t feel qualified.  But Jesus doesn’t call those who are supposedly qualified, the ones who are the obvious choice, who have their spiritual act together (back to Luke 5:29-32). He calls the ones you least expect, the ones whom the rest of the world has overlooked, whose qualifications and abilities are questionable at best. Tolkien “chose” hobbits, the small and unexpected, to be the bearers of such huge tasks and adventures.  He called this “ennoblement.” Bilbo doesn’t feel qualified to join the dwarves’ expedition. But Gandalf sees something in him that he doesn’t yet see in himself. The journey will ennoble him, offer him the opportunity to be part of a larger, more significant story. And that is enough.

Second, we’d rather play it safe. Bilbo would rather stay home where he is comfortable and well-fed and nothing dangerous ever happens. As he says, “We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!” And once he embarks on the adventure, he realizes that he actually underestimated how hard things would really get. If he had known, he would have stayed home. Following Jesus is not safe or easy. It’s not for the faint of heart. Jesus asks us to give up things we’re not willing to give up (habits, sins, attitudes). He also asks us to take on Christian behaviors that sound odd or annoying or downright boring. But the Christian life is anything but boring. G.K. Chesterton has said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried” (Chapter 5, What’s Wrong With The World, 1910).

Third, we like our life the way it is and we don’t want God messing in our business. Tolkien’s friend C. S. Lewis, for a long time before his conversion, thought of God as the “Transcendental Interferer.” God is this powerful being who interferes with your life and makes you do things you don’t want to do. But once Lewis became a Christian, he realized that in Jesus there is freedom: freedom from sin, from fear, from pride, from other things and people having power over you.

Fourth, we’re afraid to take Jesus at his word when he says difficult things like “love your enemies” and “give up everything.”  Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution, is an interesting and unique example of a new kind of Christian who is really seeking to simply follow Jesus even when it is difficult. Claiborne is a Christian and an activist who helped start The Simple Way community in the ghettos of Philadelphia, where he lives and ministers with the poor. He wrote in an article entitled “Jesus wrecked my life:

I know there are people out there who say, “My life was such a mess. I was drinking, partying, sleeping around; and then I met Jesus, and my whole life came together.” God bless those people. But for me, I had it together. I used to be cool (I was prom king, for heaven’s sake). Then I met Jesus, and He wrecked my life.

The more I read the gospel, the more it messed me up, turning everything I believed in, valued and hoped for upside down. I am still recovering from my conversion.

I ended up at Eastern University outside Philadelphia, studying youth ministry and sociology. I had heard one of my college professors say, “Being a Christian is about choosing Jesus and deciding to do something incredibly daring with your life.”

I decided to take Jesus up on the offer. The adventure has taken me from the streets of Calcutta, where I worked with Mother Teresa, to the war zone of Iraq, where I lived through the bombing of Baghdad. Following the footsteps of Jesus, I can’t remember what it feels like to be bored.

http://www.youthworker.com/youth-ministry-resources-ideas/youth-ministry/11552643/

To get a deeper feel for how Claiborne follows Jesus, watch at least the first three minutes of this video:

Responding to the Invitation
Here’s the point of this message: Jesus is calling you to adventure.  For some of us, it may be simply to surrender your life—your habits, choices, attitudes, actions—completely to Jesus, to claim Christ as Lord of your life.  For some of us, like Shane Claiborne, Jesus might be calling you to live a radically different life than the rest of society, in order to take care of the poor or the sick or to meet some other need. You may be called to mission work or inner city ministry or living simply so you have more to give away. For some of us, as Shane said, the call may be simply to love one person well: to take care of an aging relative or to love a difficult coworker or to forgive someone who you never thought you could forgive. Like Mother Teresa, we are called to do “small things with great love”: it’s that simple and that challenging and adventurous.

The question is, will you respond? There is a now famous image of Gandalf standing at the door at Bilbo’s house at Bag End that has been used to promote the movie in theaters. It is a key moment in the story because there would have been no story to tell if Bilbo had not answered the door.

In the book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible, Jesus says, “Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends” (3:10).  There is a famous painting by William Holman Hunt of Jesus at the door titled, “The Light of the World.” The door has no handle, weeds have grown up around it, it has not been opened in a long time and can only be opened from the inside. The viewer is sort of holding one’s breath to see if anyone’s inside, and if that person will respond.

Jesus does not force his way in, but he is waiting at the door of your life, extending an invitation. Not to a boring life. Not to a life in which you’re simply a nicer person than you were before. But to a life of adventure, following God’s call into places and interacting with people and doing things you never dreamed you’d be doing. Like Gandalf, Jesus can’t guarantee that you’ll be safe. He can’t guarantee your reputation. But you’ll have a pile of stories to tell when it’s all over. And in the end you’ll be welcomed into the strong circle of adventurers led by Jesus himself, honored and celebrated for a life well lived.

As Sarah writes in Walking with Bilbo, “Faith is an adventure, not just a one-time choice. Once we hear the knock on the door and step onto the road, there’s no turning back. Life will never be the same again. Are you ready for the adventure?”