All Hallows (Christian and Wizard)

Happy All Saints Day! I taught a lesson in my high school youth group on resurrection and All Saints Day this weekend. Some interesting facts that many people don't know:

1) In Judeo-Christian belief, the soul and body are not separable. When we die, our souls chill with our bodies (its like the best nap you could imagine) until Jesus comes back and Resurrects us all together.

2) Even though this is what we technically believe, we still have beliefs about dead Saints being present with us (the idea of immortal souls being separate from the body comes from Greek philosophy).

My Church History teacher told us that Halloween traditions come from pagan festivals recognizing the start of the dark half of the year, when they believed that the world of the dead overlapped with the living. Night was a scary time during the ancient world, when they didn't have much artificial light. In the midst of this, the Church starts celebrating All Hallows Day or All Saints Day, as if to say "Bring it! We don't need to protect ourselves from evil spirits! We have the witness and the protection of the Christians who have passed on."

So this is a little problematic. We believe that the souls can't be separate from the bodies, but that the souls are present with us when we celebrate communion, etc. (Remember my World Communion Sunday note?) I mused over this with my youth group, and here is my theory. When the Resurrection happens, we are raised and enter God's presence. So even though my Grama is dead, in the future resurrection reality, she theoretically knows everything I've done to this point, and will do from here on. Even if she isn't hovering over my right now, in the future reality she knows.

I think about it like this: The Bible tells us that we are connected with believers all over the world, through the Holy Spirit. So if God is in all time and space, then from God's perspective our future resurrected selves are in God, and if God is with us, then they are with us through God. As I told my youth group, this is just me making crap up. Seeing as the great theologians of the church haven't figured this out, I doubt I have it down.

The bottom line is that we can take comfort in the fact that we will be resurrected body and soul someday and united with God, and our loved ones (living and dead) are still connected to us and present in our lives. All Saints Day is about remembering, honoring, and being inspired by those who have been witnesses in our lives

****This is where the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows references start****

So of course I'm going to relate this to HP. When Harry is walking to his death, the Resurrection Stone brings back his loved ones who have died in the fight against Voldemort. These are the Saints of the Harry Potter world. This is what All Saints Day is about, the early church was still full of real danger and trial, and the witness of the Saints gave people the courage to face even death for the their faith. Oh J.K. Rowling, you amaze me. If anyone wants to get me the best birthday present ever, arrange for me to have tea with J.K. Rowling. :-)

The Trinity and the Deathly Hallows

WARNING: This blog contains DETAILS ABOUT HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS.

In my seminary classes, I am constantly thinking about how to translate theology into metaphors that youth and young adults will connect with. This analogy is too esoteric for youth group, but I had to share it.

In Philosophy today we were talking about the Trinity and how part of the problem is that we have trouble understanding how one God can be Triune (three in one). We often get a diagram that looks like this:

The Father is God, but the Father is not the Son, etc. This gets rather confusing, especially because now we get the idea into our heads that there are four parts because that's what it looks like.

Part of the problem is that when we think about God, we usually have this anthropomorphic (humanish) idea of God. Sort of like Zeus or Thor of or the Old-Guy-with-White-Beard image of God. Then we try to split that guy into three. Which is weird.


So Dr. Soulen gave a metaphor that I was trying to translate into pop culture references, and here's what I came up with:

The Deathly Hallows is made up of the Elder Wand, the Invisibility Cloak, and the Resurrection Stone. Together they are the Deathly Hallows. The Elder Wand by itself isn't the Deathly Hallows, but is still part of the Deathly Hallows. These are three objects that are collectively something else. When Harry had the cloak all those years he experienced part of the Deathly Hallows, but he didn't know the whole picture.

I was walking along Nebraska Ave. today, pondering this, and I joked to myself "Hallows or Horcruxes?" Then it hit me -- Hallows and Horcruxes are opposite ideas. Horcruxes are subtractive - splitting a soul into bits that can't easily be reconciled. Since the 1st Century, we have struggled to with the Trinity because we tend to start with a vague idea of God and split it into three. It feels unnatural.

Hallows are cumulative. The objects together ARE the definition of the Deathly Hallows. Rather than figuring out how to imagine dividing one God into three parts (God/3=Father, Son, Holy Spirit), our definition of God needs to be

Father + Son + Holy Spirit = God

In other words, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit make up our picture of what God is, together. The attributes of each create our definition of God. The Hallows separately are magical objects, but together the have the power to overcome death. Together the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are a God who is everywhere, knows everything, hears everyone, intercedes for us, and knows what it is to be human.

Does this make sense?