Each Christmas season for three years, my daughter and I have enjoyed a ritual – each installment of The Lord of the Rings. At the end of the last episode, I felt the grief set in – it's over.

Then I heard that The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the First Chronicle of Narnia, was coming to the silver screen. So the tradition continues with another beloved set of stories.

I don't imagine I'm the only pastor talking about Narnia tonight. A land frozen in winter but 100 years without Christmas. Most of you know that I tend to quote C.S. Lewis more than anyone outside the Bible. But I can't resist. And here is the best-known passage from the book:

The children: "Is He safe?"

"Safe. Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good."

Aslan, the Christ-figure in the story, is a lion portrayed as absolutely ferocious and absolutely good. In a sense, everyone fears Aslan, and in another sense, he is so completely trustworthy that the greatest peace and contentment is found in the shadow of his presence. That paradox is the story of Narnia.

If you know Jesus, you see the connection quickly and easily. That paradox is the story of the Bible.

Jesus calms the raging storm and the disciples are terribly afraid, "How can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?"

Then he says, "Let not your heart be troubled…"

Jesus says, "Peace I give you, not as the world gives it do I give it to you."

Then he says, "Don't think that I've come to bring peace, but a sword, dividing a man and his father and a daughter and her mother."

And he says, "Come to me all who are weary and …"  "Take my yoke upon you…"

Jesus says, "Die to yourself, take up your cross and follow me."

He says, "turn the other cheek and love your enemy;" then he turns over tables and calls his detractors "a brood of vipers."

We have this birth story, so tame and docile and cute and quaint. Then we have Revelations 19:11 "I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True.  With justice he judges and makes war."

What's the point? We don't have a tame savior. All of our careful and systematic theologies and all of our vain efforts to squeeze an inconsequential Jesus as an accessory into our lives amount to so much wasted effort. He won't be tamed. Get comfortable with your life, and he just might roar like a lion and wake you from a slumbering conscience; or he might let your quiet life turn to dessert until you know what it is to thirst. And if your life is filled with tumult, he might ride in on a white horse and silence your enemies, or he just might standby, letting you fight the battles that only you can fight.

Then, when it's time to vanquish the white witch, his fury is swift and terrible.

"People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now."

We don't have a tame savior. I, for one, am glad, because we don't live in a tame world. As much as any year on record, our world has been awed by such ferocious acts of nature and shocked by such grievous atrocities among humanity. Maybe you have had outbreaks in your own life that are anything but tame, and that require a terribly majestic champion. Every clean and clear, scholastic and cellophane notion of God our Savior will hardly cover the subject and barely give answer to the outcries and outrage of our vulnerable state.

I prefer Jesus, as he is. Jesus, roaring lion and gentle shepherd. Jesus, suffering servant and firebrand preacher. Jesus, sacrificial lamb and resurrected Lord. I don't want the milquetoast version and am learning to believe that someone so good can also fill our hearts with the best kind of fear.

One of the first and best principles taught in scripture is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is to know who it is we're talking about, and praying to in all of His power and potential, and to shudder at the thought. He holds our lives and our destinies in His hands. We ignore that reality at our own peril.

But fear of the Lord is only the beginning of wisdom. It isn't all of wisdom. The full picture of wisdom shows us God's grace and love, mercy and compassion. The full picture shows us the heart of God. This greater wisdom doesn't diminish God, or change God in any way. It just leads us to the point where we can talk about God the way Lucy talks about Aslan, - "Terrible paws if he didn't know how to velvet them." Or another character in a later book, speaking to Aslan, "You are so beautiful.  You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner by eaten by you than fed by anyone else."

Oh, I love Christmas, and I'm astounded by the tiny, helpless, vulnerable entrance that Jesus, Son of God, makes on the human scene. Infant holy, Infant lowly…

I'm into babies this year…

Oh, but we can't only picture Jesus in the manger – quaint and nice. The adult Jesus was a lot of things as He walked this earth, but he wasn't quaint and not always nice. He comforted the afflicted and He afflicted the comfortable; and He wouldn't let anyone receive Him passively. Everyone has a decision to make about Jesus. So unimposing at birth, he continues to be the most imposing figure in human history. Tonight he would ask you and me to come follow; to lay down our lives; to love one another and even our enemies; to quit judging and criticizing and to start forgiving. Tonight he would ask younger people to grow up and older people to grow down and be more like children. Tonight he would tell us to care for the least and help the lost and to reformat our lives so that self-interest just isn't such a high priority. He wouldn't let us leave without messing with us one way or another.

Tonight, he'd ask us to throw away our tame notions of being Christian and embrace something awful and wonderful, more robust and adventurous, more completely compelling and more courageously integrated into every frontier of our lives, and not some feeble little addendum to a life with no deep magic.

Or maybe I don't have a clue what He'd say.  After all He's not a tame savior, but He is good.

So please, don't let the baby or the manger be enough or the rituals and devotional language of the church; don't even let enough be enough. He's bigger, more majestic, more powerful, more true and more good than a lifetime of wondering can conjure.

Lion of Judah

Roam and roar and find your prey,

Every thoughtless and heartless and powerless

counterfeit that fools us into

believing in little and hoping for less,

Gummed to dreary death by our feeble niceness,

Now ravage us into a deeper death that

kills the old pale self and resurrects

us into majestic and conquering

nobility, with courage and humor and

honesty and a relentless love that cuts like the claws of

the one who both vanquishes and delivers us.

No more to be tamed by self-protecting hesitation

and frozen by fear, now unleash us

to roar in unison with our King.