The Lutheran Hour
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"Eucatastrophe"
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Text: Mark 16:6-7
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He said to them, “Don’t be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth who is crucified. He has arisen. He is not here. See the place where they put him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him just as he told you.” The Gospel according to Mark, chapter 16, verses six and seven.
On a warm summer day, a man in his mid-thirties toils at his desk hunched over a stack of papers. He’s a professor at the local university. It’s not far, so most days he rides his bike into work. But today, he’s grading summer exams from his office at home.
The professor, who had served as a signal officer in the army during the Great War, mustered his attention on the exam he was grading and sees that the young disciple has left an entire page blank, completely deserted, not a word enlisted in his answer, which the professor thought, looking at the stack of ungraded exams on the floor next to him, was a tremendous gift. He was about to award the student with five extra points for his tactical brevity but then, outside the open window, the tree limbs swayed and through their young leaves a gentle yet piercing light glimmered green and gold. And instead, on the blank page, the professor scribbled a single sentence, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” He had no idea what a hobbit was or what they were like, but he thought he’d better go and see. And that was only the beginning.
That humble beginning would grow into the third best-selling story of all time. The year was 1928. The professor’s name was John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, better known as J.R.R. Tolkien. Over the next 25 years, Tolkien would follow that hobbit story line and see it through to the end of a three-part epic, The Lord of the Rings, which would become the third best-selling most printed book of all time. Only two books have been sold or printed more than Tolkien’s. In first place is the Bible, and in a distant second is “The Little Red Book” of quotations by Chairman Mao Zedong who founded the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Now, would you have ever guessed that those three books would be together on a list as the top three bestsellers of all time? You probably would’ve guessed the Bible, but Tolkien and Mao? A fantasy quest with hobbits and orcs and wizards on the one hand and quotations from a communist revolutionary on the other? On the surface, these three books couldn’t be more different, but they do have something in common. Besides being the three most widely circulated written works in history, they share a more important commonality, all three were written to give us hope, to open for us a window into a new world where death has lost its sting. But how they help us hope is where their paths diverge. Chairman Mao finds hope in acquiring more control. Tolkien and the Bible find hope in suffering a eucatastrophe.
I’ll explain what a eucatastrophe is in a moment, but first, let’s talk about Mao’s quest for hope. Mao’s book of quotations, or “The Little Red Book” as it’s called, isn’t just quotations espousing communism. It exemplifies a story of hope. Mao does this most powerfully by retelling what may have been a bedtime story he heard as a boy, the ancient Chinese fable known as “The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains.”
There was once an old man who lived in northern China long, long ago. “Foolish old man of north mountain,” they called him. His house faced south and beyond his doorway stood two great mountains obstructing the way. With great determination, this man led his sons in digging up these mountains with their garden tools. A wise old man saw them and said derisively, “How silly of you to do this. It is quite impossible for you few to dig up these two huge mountains.” The foolish old man replied, “When I die, my sons will carry on. When they die, there will be my grandsons and then their sons and grandsons, and so on, to infinity. High as they are, these mountains cannot grow any higher, and with every bit we dig, they will be that much lower. Why can’t we clear them away?” And so, the foolish old man went on digging every day unshaken in his conviction.
God was moved by this and he sent down two angels who carried the mountains away on their backs. So ends the fable. Then comes Mao’s interpretation. He explains that the mountains are the old traditions and the modern-day nations that get in the way of progress. And he says, “We must persevere and work unceasingly, and we too will touch God’s heart. And our god is none other than the masses of the people. If they stand up and dig together with us, why can’t these mountains be cleared away?”
Now, maybe you’re like me. As someone who’s read George Orwell’s fable, Animal Farm, I’m suspicious of Mao’s interpretation and I become more suspicious when I read how his aggressive policies led to the Great Chinese Famine of 1958 to 1962, which is reported as one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll due to starvation somewhere between 15 and 50 million people added to the millions of other people murdered or imprisoned because they got in the way of progress, not only in China, but also in the former Soviet Union.
Yeah, I’m suspicious. Maybe you are too. Mao’s little red book may be the second most circulated book in history because in Mao’s China everyone was expected to have his own copy and carry it with him on his person at all times. But more than that, it represents an enduring human hope that if we work hard enough, if we don’t give up, if we acquire more control, we can create a new world where death has lost its sting.
The first and third most circulated books in history follow a different path toward hope. Both Tolkien and the Bible lead us to hope, not by acquiring control, but by suffering a eucatastrophe. Eucatastrophe, spelled E-U-catastrophe. It’s a word Tolkien himself invented. In 1947, Tolkien wrote an essay describing the literary genre he’d been working in, that of fantasy. Tolkien explains how eucatastrophe is the defining mark of a real fantasy story. Now, fantasy stories, unlike the Bible, don’t take place in the world we actually live in, but in a world we might wish to live in or might’ve wished when we were children. Not a world we can control, but one that enchants us with all manner of beasts and birds, shoreless seas and stars uncounted, filled with beauty that is enchantment, perils ever present, joys and sorrows sharp as swords whose richness and strangeness tie the tongue of any traveler who would report them.
Fantasy stories play on deep human desires, the desire to be a small part of something bigger than ourselves, the desire to love and be loved, the desire to live in a world where death has lost its sting. These are all markers of a real fantasy story Tolkien tells us, but the defining mark, the most important element, is eucatastrophe. The prefix E-U means good and “catastrophe” is an unplanned disaster. It’s when our control systems fail, when things don’t go according to plan and our hopes are dashed to pieces. But a eucatastrophe, that’s a disaster that’s somehow also good. It’s a tragedy that unexpectedly brings joy. According to Tolkien, the eucatastrophe is the defining mark of a real fantasy. And so he wrote one into his, which maybe has something to do with why it’s the best-selling fantasy story of all time. And if you haven’t read it or seen the movies, here’s a brief synopsis.
It takes place in the fantasy world of Middle-earth. The main character is a hobbit, a small person who once lived in a hole in the ground but is summoned to a quest by a powerful wizard. Frodo’s mission is to destroy the evil Ring of Power. The ring, which corrupts all who possess it, is being pursued by the Dark Lord who wants to enslave all Middle-earth, and so the only hope is for Frodo to climb Mount Doom and throw the ring into the volcano where it was forged. But spoiler alert, there’s a catastrophe. Frodo fails. Just like everyone else, he is corrupted by the evil power of the ring. He gets to the end of the quest to the top of Mount Doom where he is supposed to throw the thing into the fire, and just when he’s about to do it, he tries to seize control. And in a moment, everything unravels. All their best efforts are wasted. He betrays his friends and steals the ring for himself. Catastrophe.
But then, it happens.
And if you haven’t read it, well, come on now, what are you waiting for? It’s only the best-selling work of fiction in human history! I won’t spoil it for you. But if you have read it, you know that just when hope is lost, a gentle yet piercing light breaks through. Death doesn’t get the last word because there’s a surprising turn to good, a good that was present all along, but hidden. Good, not located in any of the characters, but good in their maker. The good author who’s behind this world, the author who invites his characters to participate in the story even when they choose evil, yet also works through them despite their evil. And when they create catastrophe, he somehow turns it good.
But that’s fantasy. What about the real world?
After Tolkien’s work became a bestseller, critics would sometimes accuse him of escapism. Isn’t it irresponsible for a grown man to create all this elaborate fantasy? Isn’t it all just an escape? To that, Tolkien would reply, “Of course it is an escape, but in a good way. It’s not an escape in the form of desertion like a soldier leaving his post, it’s the escape of a soldier caught behind enemy lines whose duty it is to escape.” You see, Tolkien, the world’s most revered fantasy writer is a devoted follower of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Christ who is crucified and has risen and is going ahead of us. Tolkien believes, as I believe, that we are characters in God’s story of the world. A world created good, but seized by a rebellious power that tempts us with a false hope of control. But Tolkien would see himself enlisted by the light of Jesus Christ, an escapee from that dark power commissioned to help others escape.
Tolkien believed that it was his mission through his writing to recapture others, not by making simple fables, but by writing a single great eucatastrophic witness to the one who is greater. See, Tolkien’s creative writing wasn’t a diversion or a distraction from his devotion to Jesus, it was an expression of it. Fantasy at its best is an imitation of God’s own creative work to make and save the real world with all its enchanting mystery. Tolkien believed, as I believe, that God’s story is in the Bible, which culminates in the Gospels, the ancient biographies of Jesus. And if you haven’t read these, come on now, what are you waiting for? It’s only the greatest printed work ever, seven times more so than Mao’s and a hundred times more so than Tolkien’s.
The Gospel tells a story of a larger kind, which embraces the eucatastrophic essence of fantasy, because the author of the world’s story did something more striking than Tolkien did with his, He became a character in the story. Imagine that? Imagine Tolkien, a short, little white-haired British man in Mordor with the orcs? It’s ridiculous, but that’s what our author did. He didn’t stay safely hidden in His study at home. Instead, in love, He wrote himself into the story for us. He became a character with us to suffer our catastrophe. At the cross, Jesus let our evil do its worst to him. He took responsibility for it all, all our botched attempts at control and died with them under His Father’s righteous anger. But death has lost its sting because Jesus Christ is risen. Death doesn’t get the last word because the worst evil can do will become the muck from which good will sprout, the dark night that gives rise to Easter dawn when the author rose to life. This, Tolkien said, is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe ever. To reject it leads to eternal sadness and wrath.
Recently I was sitting with a woman who was grieving the sudden death of her father. This woman had been a Christian all her life but she was angry with God. She said she was angry because her father didn’t get a miracle. God’s Son, Jesus, got a miracle. He got raised from the dead, but her father who was a follower of Christ got nothing. She said, “He’s dead and gone for good.” In that dark hour, this woman had lost the hope of the Gospel, and I don’t blame her. When my next catastrophe comes, when I’m teetering over the brink of doom, I pray that God will send a messenger to save me from the fire because that’s what I need. That’s what you need, because eventually all your efforts to gain control, all your digging to move mountains, all your plans and hopes for this world will fail. Catastrophe is coming for us all.
And it’s not because God in some sick appreciation for a surprising ending wanted it this way. No! Evil, misery, death—these weren’t God’s choice, they were ours. And He will let us have our choices and live with them and die because of them, because He wants us to have a real place in the story He’s writing for us. The catastrophe is on us. The good, that’s on God. God bodily raised Jesus from the dead for life in the new creation. This wasn’t a one-time miracle God did for His Son alone. Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of a new storyline for everyone, for you. So come on, what are you waiting for? Go and you will see Him just as he told you. Jesus will return one day with a gentle yet piercing light. He will raise you and all who belong to Him, body and soul, from the dead. Despite our digging and our working and our acquiring to control, this life will end in eucatastrophe, either in death or in the Day of Doom, whichever comes first.
This is how God is saving us in a cross-and-resurrection-shaped storyline with Jesus. He’s writing us into the fellowship of His beloved Son. He’s making you a small but important part of His kingdom, not for your control, but for your inclusion, exploration, and enchantment. Tolkien once said, “In God’s kingdom, the presence of the greatest does not depress the small.” We are small. We’re not the creator, we’re sub-creators. We make things. Not just bedtime stories, we build homes, compose sonnets, sometimes even move mountains. It’s just what sub-creators do. We can’t help it.
And now in the presence of the greatest, in the fellowship of the crucified risen and returning king, we do it, not to acquire control, not to wield the ring, not even to touch the heart of God, because God’s heart loves freely, we do it to serve our neighbor and enrich God’s creation. We make things. We make plans, we make a living. We even make believe with toy trains and space dogs and hobbits on a quest because death has lost its sting. Christ has risen, and we are made for a great adventure. He is going ahead of us and this is only the beginning. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Reflections for March 31, 2024
Title: EucatastropheNo reflection segment this week.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“Jesus Christ Is Risen Today” The Hymnal Project of the Michigan District, The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Used by permission.
“He’s Risen, He’s Risen” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.