The Sermon About Gollum

While I was writing about My Pregnancy Journey Trimester Three Electric Boogalee, I stumbled across this picture of Gollum, falling into the fires of Mount Doom.

A SIMPLE CHRISTIAN, BUT A COMPLICATED ANALOGISER.

It was indeed a sermon about Gollum. I could not let it go unremarked, although in hindsight that would have been the sensible thing to do. Here are some of the highlights and why I enjoyed them.

Please be advised that I am not a Religious Sort* and if you are, you may wish to turn back now, lest you be offended by my pending blasphemy.

Although to be fair, most of the blasphemy is in the sermon.

*not against it, provided people are allowed to live their lives the way they want, it just isn’t my holy jam. I would eat a holy jam though. I shouldn’t have written this when I was hungry.

The sermon gets off to a cracking start: no God, just Tolkien. I would be interested to know if this is what the congregation expected when they trundled gently into church on this given Sunday morning.

“In the books and movies based on J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, there is an odd character named Gollum.”

OK so first off I feel it is important to point out that the books aren’t “based on J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings,” they just are J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings.

Perhaps there was a pause in the actual sermon that hasn’t been transcribed. Let’s stop being pedantic and carry on.

In the intro, the speaker (pastor? vicar? bishop?) gives us a quick run-down on Gollum. A crash course in Gollumism, if you will. At this point, God hasn’t come into it; you could be having a chat with a garrulous nine-year-old who has just read the Hobbit.

But then we get to:

“Now Gollum’s obsession with the ring was not healthy, it was about gaining power. God the Father’s obsession is healthy; it is the passion which He chases His people with is just as strong…”

This is the first time God is mentioned and hoo boy it gives you whiplash. We were just pondering Gollum and all of a sudden God comes crashing in, chasing His people?

I imagine this is like when I have to chase Roland around the couch because he has stolen half a loaf of bread off the kitchen counter.

my passion is strong, and my obsession is healthy, but the bread is gone forever. 

The sermon then elaborates on how strong God’s bread-thief-chasing passion for us is:

“…even to the point of His Son’s embracing death, if it means His precious will be His, again.”

Hmm. While I genuinely admire the audacity of the pastor (vicar? bishop?) and I’m sure the sermon landed well in person, I’m not sure that directly referring to humanity as the Precious was the best call.

Do we like the idea that God thinks about us in the same way Gollum thinks about the Ring?

Obsessively? Covetously? “I’m not sure where I last saw it”-ly?

Also, do we corrupt God in the same way that the Ring corrupted Gollum? Does God live longer as long as he has us?

Did God have to murder his friend in cold blood in order to get us?

WEIGHTY STUFF, RELIGION.

Then there’s some chat about Moses climbing Mount Sinai (Mount Doom is mercifully left unmentioned) and a comparison of the Egyptians drowning to Gollum falling into the fires of Mount Doom:

“They chased after the Israelis, unable to learn to listen to God. And like Gollum, they perished, drowned not in a volcano, but in the Red Sea.”

Now this was confusing because previously the analogy has been weird, but at least clear: God is Gollum* and we are the Ring. But now, the Egyptians are Gollum and Sin is the Ring.

*even as a non-religious person this felt slightly sacrilegious to write but it is right there in the sermon so hopefully God, should He be out there, will forgive it.

Post-Egyptians there is a bit more chat about how we should all try to do a bit better at resisting sin, which I understand is generally the point of this whole religion deal. No problems there. Let’s all try to be a little better.

But then finally, magnificently, we get to the weirdest analogy of them all:

“But that is the relationship we have with God, this idea that out of all creation, God treasures us more than anything. And He proved it by heading to the cross in the same way Gollum dove off the precipice after the ring.”

I WAS GOING TO PHOTOSHOP SOME JESUS INTO THIS BUT I FIGURED I'M SKATING PRETTY CLOSE TO HELL ALREADY WITH THIS ENTIRE BLOG.

THIS PICTURE DOESN'T EXACTLY SCREAM "WWJD" THOUGH, DOES IT

WHAT?

God headed to the cross driven insane by a magical object? A magical object crafted by a Dark Lord? Who crafted it? Was it Satan? Did Satan make us?

Wait no, he didn’t, God did, with ribs and stuff.

Going back to the Cross - did He have to bite someone’s finger off to get there?

Can God bite off a finger? Whose finger was it? Was it Satan’s? Were we firmly lodged on the Satanic Finger before being freed (?) into the mouth of God?

(Because I don’t know how you would bite a finger off without it going in your mouth.)

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Did He swallow any of us by accident?

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Side note: I am listening to the LOTR audiobooks at the moment and there’s a bit where Pippin is all “Wheee! It’s Frodo, the Lord of the Ring!” and Aragorn and Gandalf are immediately like “SHHH PIPPIN DON’T SAY THAT” and it really hammered home that while I like to think that in the Fellowship of Life I am Aragorn, I am definitely Pippin.