Harry Potter and the Seven Principles

A Sermon Delivered by

The Rev. Thomas Schmidt

at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Lowcountry

October  21, 2007

The other morning, I awoke to a voice on the radio discussing the most current events in the all too well documented life of Britney Spears.  Let me tell you,  I could not turn that alarm off fast enough.  It’s not that I don’t care for Britney Spears in any way, in fact, I show how much I care by not actively participating in the gossip fest.And in spite of all her wealth and fame, or perhaps because of it, I ver much pity her.  Like so many talented young people, she has been used and abused by the people that were charged with looking after her best interest.  Most specifically, it seems she, like so many others in similar situations, she never learned that choices create consequences.It seems that young Britney’s caregivers shielded her from the negative consequences of her choices, or she wasn’t given adequate opportunity to make choices, and she never learned lessons most of us learn in adolescenceAnyway,  I rushed to turn that alarm off, but not just to sheild myself from the latest Britney news.To be honest, I was not fully asleep when it went off, I had been in that place between sleep and wake, and in that state I was contemplating the topic of this morning’s sermon, and I was not ready to leave that almost mystical state of consciousness yet.  Unfortunately, it was too late, thoughts of Harry Potter and Hogwarts had been replaced by the pitiful details of Britney Spears latest public fiasco.

And as I lie in bed, again seeking that place between wake and sleep, it dawned on me that in many ways, the fictional character of Harry Potter, is a far more realized human being than many very real people that we hear about on the news everyday.  By that I mean  he is more fully developed phychologically, spiritually and emotionally.  As a human being, he lacks only a physical body.  As for the celebrities that  so dominate the attention of the mass of people, they are flesh and blood yet seem to be far less phychologically, spirituallly and emotionally developed than any number of fictional characters I can think of. While I don’t wish to dwell on popular culture’s obsession with celebrity, it somehow seems to fit with the Harry Potter theme.  After all, when Harry first entered the world of wizardry and witchcraft, he discovered that he was in fact a celebrity. He, of course did not choose his celebrity, it was thrust upon him and to be sure, Harry never fully embraced his celebrity and would have done just about anything to not be famous.  After all, he was famous because the evil Lord Valdemort killed his parents and in the attempt to kill the infant Harry, was himself apparently destroyed.  For Harry, fame is a constant reminder that his parent’s were cruelly taken from him and he was forced to live with an Aunt and Uncle that both despised and feared him.  

For me, the strength of the Harry Potter books and movies are the ideas and values the characters explore.  And though those ideas and values are explored in the context of magic and mythical beings, they are no less real or meaningful than when they are explored in church or synagogue.  After all, modern drama and fiction are the direct descendents of myths and legends our ancestors used to entertain and teach since time immemorial.  I believe the Harry Potter stories are so popular, not because they are  masterpieces of english literature, but because they tend to resonate at a very deep level  with readers and viewers.  It is the same reason people read the collected works of Shakespeare, the stories of Homer, and the scriptures of the world’s religions.  As a Unitarian Universalist, I recognize truth from any number of sources, including personal experience, scientific discovery, and the teachings of the worlds great religions.

It may surprise some to learn that J.K. Rowling, like her counterparts J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, did knowingly and intentionally  incorporatate into her stories religious themes and questions and more specifically, Christian themes.  In a recent article, Rowling said, “To me [the religious parallels have] always been obvioius.  But I never wanted to talk openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we are going.”  Without giving anything away, I can say that two New Testament quotes were highlighted in the final book.  These quotes were on the tombstones of two long dead characters.  The first quote is from Matthew, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”  The second is from 1 Corinthians, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”  These themes are central to much of Christianity and in fact are central to larger message of Harry Potter story. The irony that so many conservative and fundamentalist Christians have protested her books is not lost on the author.  Prior to his papal ascendancy, Cardinal Josheph Rantzinger wrote about the Harry Potter books that their “subtle seductions, which act unnoticed . . . deeply distort Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly.”  Her books and the movies based on them have been the subject of protests and countless atttempts to have them banned from public libraries. Rowling told one interviewer, “I go to church myself.  I don’t take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion.”  

The real issue of course, is that people who dislike the books on religious grounds tend to be bible literalists and tend to take the Potter books literally as well, or at least tend to believe in the literal existence of witches, ghosts, and goblins as they tend to believe in the literal existence of other supernatural beings.  The real issue at stake, however, is not whether supernatural creatures truly exist, but rather the fundamental difference between fact and truth.  Too many people have been convinced that the the truth of a religious story is determined by its correspondence with fact.  Thus, the Exodus story is meaningful only if Moses was real and the plagues were real and the parting of the Red Sea was real.  Or, the story of the life and teachings of Jesus is meaninful only if it is factual that he was born of virgin, performed several miraclesand rose from the dead.  The truth of the Exodus story, however,  is not in the facts of the story, the truth is in the how the story resonates with real life situations throught time regardless of race or beliefs; the way it resonated with the African American slaves in our own country, the way to resonates today with oppressed people all around the world.  The truth of the story of Jesus is not in the facts of the story, the truth is in how that story resonates with people, how it resonated with Ghandi, with Martin Luther King, Jr., with countless other men and women that willingly and knowingly confronted  death itself to follow their consciences. 

If you want to know the true difference between fact and truth, then we need only to look to the typical ways in which we react to each. Speaking personally, when I am confronted with a fact that I had previously not been aware, I might say or think, “Isn’t that interesting.”  or “Wow!  I had no idea.”  or something equally benign.  The learning of a new fact  does not generally change a person’s life. Truth, on the other hand, produces an entirely different reaction.  When one is confronted with truth, one is generally engulfed by it, enthralled with it, and ultimately changed by it.  It often leaves one speachless.  It often puts into quesiton everything we have ever been taught to believe but leaves us without the adequate words to describe the experience.  Why did Jesus and the Buddha teach in parable and story, because metaphor is the language of religious truth. Truth, it turns out cannot be transmitted directly, but must be discovered. And where and how does one discover such  truths? Well, it  can burst forth form within at any time. Sometimes it happens in nature, walking on the beach, in the woods, in the mountains. For some, music is means to discovery.  Sometimes playing music,, for others listening to music.in music. Reading is a common means, science fiction/fantasy, classic literature, sacred texts, philosophy. Meditation and therapy are also helpful tools of discovery. Spending time with the persons we care for is another means; playing with our children, sharing with a friend, and making love with our partner.  Truth is all around us and in us, but all too often we cannot see it because the facts get in the way.  

The truth made evidence in the Harry Potter stories is not the literal existence of magical places and beings, the truth made evident  is the many ways the choices we make really matter.  

Choices faced by the character forced them  to explore, to question, to doubt, everything they had ever been taught or experienced.  And, ultimately, the choices they made gave evidence for their true character and their deepest beliefs. And those choices were given context in the larger story that is at he heart  of the major Western religions, the story of the eternal struggle of good and evil.  Most specifcally, the reader is shown how the choices Harry and his friends make contrast with the choices of the evil Lord Voldemort and his followers.    The reader sees how Harry’s choices directly support such universal principles as the inherent worth and dignity of all people,of all beings; justice equity and compassion in human relations; acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth; the right of conscience; the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; and most importantly, a deep and abiding respect for the interdependent web of all existence.  Of couse, the are the same principles we as Unitarian Universalist affirm and promote and we shouldn’t be surprised to find these principles expressed in the Harry Potter books.  They wouldn’t be universal principles if we did not tend to find them expressed over and over in countless ways by countless people. Sometimes the words used to express the ideas are different, but the sentiment is essentially the same. While we say, for example, that all people have inherent worth and dignity, others might say that we are all children of the same god.  

And coincidently, just yesterday, author J.K. Rowling announced that one of main characters of the book, Professor Dumbledore, beloved headmaster of Hogwarts school, is in fact gay.  The fact had never been directly expressed in the books and the references sighted are veiled at best,m but who am I to argue with the creator. In the AP article announcing this fact, Rowling is quoted as saying that she regards her books as a “prolonged argument for tolerance” and urged her fanst to”question authority.” One might argue that this is another way of saying, that we should accept one another and we support the right of conscience. And I wonder, if perhaps that is really at the heart of what some people have against the books.