A Narnian Catechism: Learning to Experience God’s Own Merriment

Said with a sense of melancholy and hope deferred —

“Matt, 

I get it here 

(pointing at head),

but 

not here 

(pointing at heart).”

As a pastor I yearn for myself and my flock to understand God ever more deeply in our  intellect, love Him ever more intensely in our emotions, and respond to Him ever more fully in our bodies via our five senses and active will. The problem is as stated above. So, then, how to further interweave, deepen, and broaden head, heart, body, and community? And, what in the world might this have to do with merriment? Glad you asked. A Narnian Catechism was designed for adults and older youth to integrate head and heart, if you will, by priming our imaginations to experience God’s character and thereby evoke an affective, or “felt,” love of Him, specifically as regards His merriment. The Chronicles of Narnia are the content that we use to prime our imaginations in this way.  

To place merriment in a broader context of joy and happiness, I describe [1] Joy as that deep, subterranean aspect of our souls, an aquifer, a river, that is created and fed by God (The Fruit of The Spirit), which feeds our thinking and emotions and actions with goodness, and contentedness, and uplift, and smiling, and laughing, largely irrespective of circumstances. 

I describe Happiness as a similar state but more grounded in the circumstances themselves. The circumstances are such as to evoke what Joy brings in and of itself, i.e., happy circumstances, a happy state.

Merriment, then, I describe as the living that is these states of joy and happiness. Biblically, I find it to be akin to celebration.

Merriment might involve smiling, laughing, happy and uplifting interactions and conversations, maybe some dancing and, almost necessarily, other people. It is somewhat sustained, not a mere moment in time or a flash in the pan, but something more continuous, even if it is only an evening or a party. I’d also like to suggest that part of its uniqueness is a feathered out, lingering, almost relaxed experience of the echoes, the afterglow, the resonances of the making merry. 

However, we first want to be grounded in scripture. A scriptural stake in the ground might be Zephaniah 3:17-18 (ESV). 

The Lord your God is in your midst, 

a mighty one who will save; 

He will rejoice over you with gladness; 

He will quiet you by His love; 

He will exult over you with loud singing. 

Read it very slowly, at least four times. Linger over the words and images. What gets your attention? Why? What might you, then, desire to say to God, desire to hear from Him, desire to receive from Him?

I pray that we would know something of God’s own merriment, to experience merriment with Him, and His people. I pray for our hearts to move in merriment at the name of Jesus. But it is not so easy. See the opening quotes. We might intellectually parse out real truths about joy and happiness. However, too often we: “… get it here … but not here …”

It may well be that our intellectual faculty is strong and good and noble, and also not quite up to the task, or not quite up to the fullness of it. Maybe we need to intentionally engage another of our faculties. 

Maybe we need to imagine. First, imagine merriment. Maybe story can give us a handhold for our imaginative faculty. Given that this is a reflection on A Narnian Catechism, there is no need to be coy. To Narnia we go.

There are several potential candidates in Narnia that we can delve into in our search for merriment. The experience that I will suggest is Aslan’s romp with Lucy and Susan after His Resurrection in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (chapter 15). Having witnessed Aslan being humiliated, tortured, and murdered in sick and twisted ways, the girls are in despair, eventually even devoid of tears. They are broken. They are spent. There simply is no inner reservoir of joy to draw from, no circumstances to apply as a balm of happiness, no activity to even approximate merriment. That oxygen and light are gone. There is only darkness and a cold vacuum.

Then almost imperceptibly, the reversal begins. Not from within themselves, but from without. It begins in the east. It is, and can only be, God’s work and His alone. As they hear Aslan’s voice it fills their souls with joy, and seeing His glorious and healed body soothes and heals their burnt and mangled memories. He engages. They respond. Merriment begins. 

Please resist the 21st century North American temptation to think that we already “know” this scene and therefore can skim over it for its data points only. Please read the passage slowly. Each word. Read it again, slowly. Go back over parts that get your attention for whatever reason. Don’t analyze (there’ll be time for that). Imagine what you are reading. Imagine it and experience it. Maybe listen to a recording or have someone read it to you. Close your eyes. Breathe deep. Give yourself over to the scene. The chasing. The almost catching. The exhilarating weightlessness of being effortlessly airborne, of being almost imperceptibly caught. The thunderous might and strength of joy. The face-burying happiness. The almost ridiculous activity of merriment in the moment and its lingering sense while lying together on the grass. The calm, deeply restful, echoing symptoms of joy and happiness. 

Ponder it slowly. Linger over the word and images. You are not accumulating a bag of notes to analyze, though that will come. You are giving yourself over to the story in order to live it. Let it fill you, encompass you, make you contented, enrich your emotions, affect your body to be relaxed and healed. 

Now, with this energy, this quality, this literarily-lived experience having had its way with you, now, go back to the prophet’s words in Zephaniah 3:17-18, infusing your scriptural knowledge with your Narnian imagination. 

This will, and should, vary, but maybe it will be a renewed experience something like this:

As you read “The Lord your God is in your midst …”

you feel the table CRACK and Aslan reveal Himself!  

 

As you read “… a mighty one who will save; …”

you feel the Lion’s roar above a shattered table, making death seem thin, tinny, and vaporous. 

 

As you read “… He will rejoice over you with gladness; …”

you feel the thrill of the tantalizing romp of the catch-me-if-you-can with your king and master.

 

As you read “ … He will quiet you by His love; …”

you feel the noble security and protection of the Lion as you lay near and on the huge Lion’s own body.

 

As you read “ … He will exult over you with loud singing,”

you feel deeply known and delighted in as you imagine the Lion’s voice speaking to you in all of its tenderness and also its thunder! 

Finally, in your mind’s eye, or your imagination, or your spirit, speak to and hear from the Father who, right in this very moment, loves you, and desires personal merriment with you, His son or daughter. Speak to and hear from the Son who brought the Father’s merriment to exist in flesh-and-blood humanity and humans. Speak to and hear from the Spirit who lives within you, acts within you, and amongst those with whom you celebrate. His sensed presence and specifically His merriment become a part of the warp and woof of your relationship with Him and the relationships you share. 

I can sense possible objections now. What about when Lucy and Susan were in despair and brokenness at the Table before the merriment, as you might be now? Fair question. Merriment is, of course, not the whole of the Christian life. But, well, that is a different piece to write. Come back to this moment. Do not blithely ignore the despair, but do ever-increasingly claim and bring the merriment front and center.   

Listen.

Imagine.

Live.

God and His Merriment.

This meditation on Merriment reflects, even if clumsily, the structure and intent of A Narnian Catechism. The catechism, Lord willing, helps adults and older youth renew their experienced head-plus-heart love of God. It has seven themes, 16 classes (minimum) and four phases iteratively experienced in each class, all bathed in prayer, and experienced in community. Thank you for reading this. If you’d like more information, contact Matt Burnett at mkburnett01@gmail.com.

Editor’s note: The ESV translation of the Bible does not capitalize pronouns referring to God; these have been added by Cultivating’s editors.

[1] I recognize that my descriptions/definitions can be more nuanced and even argued with. But please go ahead and work with these definitions for the moment in order to best understand this piece. Thank you.

The featured image is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.

Matt Burnett

Matt Burnett is Senior Pastor of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Colorado Springs, CO. He has served in the past for Compassion International and has lived in the Dominican Republic and Australia, working with amazing colleagues in another 16 countries. He is also the founder of Knowledge Builders Inc., a small technical training/consulting company. His doctoral work and thesis titled, How A Narnian Catechism Can Enliven Faith, explores how imagination can reinvigorate our engagement with prayer, scripture, history,
theology and community leading to an increasingly enlivened and personal love of God.

Since 1983, Matt has been blessed to married to Lauren, and is a delighted father to three adult sons.