The Myth that Became Fact

Sermon 387 St. Martin’s 142 (Riverway) 4/20/25

Bedtime Stories

The bedtime routine in the Arning household is pretty straightforward by this point—enough so that our 3-year-old daughter knows once it has begun, there is no getting off this slow-moving train that leads to her head gently resting on a pillow.

And like most 3-year-olds, she is now telling us what we need to do during this routine!

My favorite part of our nightly routine by far is story time. Hannah will sit in my lap, and off we go on fantastical adventures in faraway lands. Dragons flying high while guarding their treasures, a blue coyote trying to outsmart an old, wise raven, or a magical ship that sails on the open seas.

Hannah is entranced by these tales, but so am I. Many of the stories I read to her have some lesson that becomes apparent by the end—a moral to everything that preceded it in the story. I haven’t introduced her to Aesop’s Fables or the Brothers Grimm just yet, but that’s coming.

Instead of me just telling her, “Patience is a good thing for you to have,” or “Bravery is a noble virtue,” the stories we tell one another paint a picture of a world that is strangely foreign and yet somewhat familiar.

We can see a bit of ourselves in each of these characters, and we learn a valuable lesson from their experiences. I think that’s why humans have told stories ever since we’ve been able to communicate with one another.

Myths

The stories our ancestors told long ago held the imagination of young and old as well. Myths, these great stories that told of gods and their dealings in heaven and on earth, were passed down through the generations.

Every culture has its own myths that tell of how we got here, what to make of the present moment, and where we are headed after this life.

Read through some of the myths told by the Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and later the Vikings, and you’ll find plenty of differences but also a lot of similarities.

They tell of heroes who go off to faraway lands, damsels in distress, and gods who battle one another and wreak havoc on the humans below.

And oddly enough, resurrection appears in many myths from around the world. Christians don’t have a singular claim to a god rising from the dead. That was news to me when I read these other accounts of the Egyptian god Osiris and the Norsemen’s tale of Baldr, the son of Odin, just to name a few.

What are we to make of these ancient resurrection stories in light of the Easter story? Jesus’ resurrection is kind of why we’re here today. Is it just another myth? Another fable that we tell our kids at night to help them go to sleep?

A Myth Became Fact

A man who knew a thing or two about myths was C. S. Lewis. (I started Lent with a story about Lewis, so I thought it fitting to end our journey with one more story about him.) 

Around 1944, Lewis had a memorable conversation with a friend of his named Cornelius. As friendships sometimes go, there are times when a good friend might say to you, “It’s time to grow up. You’ve been playing around with childish things for far too long. It’s time to drop the act and be an adult now.”

This was essentially Cornelius' message to Lewis on that fateful day. But Lewis wasn’t living a reckless life—he wasn’t sky diving on weekends, or speeding through Oxford on his Harley Davidson. No, Lewis’ concerned friend was encouraging him to grow up and move on from religion.

These silly stories are fine for children, but modern people know better than to really believe them. You gotta move with the times and put the Bible on the same shelf as the fables and fairy tales you read to your children, or the myths of those bygone civilizations. Sophisticated, modern people shouldn’t believe in all that, Cornelius was telling his friend.

Lewis mulled over that conversation for a while, and in true fashion, he wrote a short essay addressing his friend’s concerns—and honestly, I think it is one of the best things Lewis ever wrote. He titled it, “Myth Became Fact.”

Lewis, as a lover of ancient literature, reminds us that myths are not untrue but rather they point us to a deeper truth. Typically, when you and I think about myths, we automatically think that they’re fiction (fake or made up), but Lewis was saying there is something real about them, even if they aren’t literally true.

Myths connect us to a reality that is just beyond our grasp. They tap into something real, something that is ancient and transcendent. Again, that’s why we read stories to our children; they teach us something that is good and true.  

Even the story of God dwelling with his creation, dying, and rising again has many mythical elements, just like the stories of Osiris and Baldr.  

In response to his friend, Lewis conceded that at its bare bones, the Christian story is a myth, but in his words, “The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.”

What makes Christianity unique is that Jesus is the one God who actually comes out of the pages of mythology. He comes out of the legends of bygone tales, and is born in a time and place we know, while Caesar Augustus reigned, and while Quirinius was governor of Syria, and Herod ruled Judea.

Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected within history. The other gods can’t do that, they are bound in the books in which they reside. They are prisoners of ink and paper.

Jesus takes the abstract idea of resurrection—this thing that no one seriously thought could be done—and he does it in space and time, in human history “under Pontius Pilate,” as our Creed says; and in a way that could be seen, recorded, and testified by eyewitnesses.

The gods of the old world don’t do that because they can’t do it—they are mere idols conjured up in the mind of humans when compared to the One True God, the maker of heaven and earth. Jesus is the myth that became fact, and the world has never been the same.

Honestly, how could it be the same after something like that?

The Christian message makes some outrageous claims if you think about it. We claim that the author of creation—who is outside of the created order—somehow entered into our story. While also saying that the hero, foretold in ancient mythology, jumped out of the pages and became a living, breathing person.

That would be like claiming J.K. Rowling somehow entered her story and was admitted to Hogwarts, or that Harry Potter was currently walking around Memorial Park. Authors cannot go into their stories, nor can characters come out.

To claim something like that happened is laughable, but Christians say that Jesus does both. He enters our story from outside of time and space, and he comes out of the pages of mythology. He is not limited or bound in the ways we are. He is truly free, in a way that God is truly free.

Come and See

Now, none of this was on the minds of the two Marys as they headed to the tomb on that Easter morning—they had no preconceived notion of Jesus’ corpse being anywhere other than the place they laid him a few days prior.

They weren’t walking to the tomb whispering, “I wonder if he’s there or not.” You and I don’t go to cemeteries guessing if our loved one’s body is there—they ain’t going anywhere by themselves!

For those women, yeah, Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, but there was no one to raise Jesus. The unique flame that he brought into the world had been thoroughly snuffed out by the Romans on Good Friday. They had seen it with their own eyes. And here they were simply walking to the tomb to honor another great leader who had died much too young. Nothing more.

But they are greeted with a shocking angelic invitation: come and see. Come and see something you did not expect.

What the angel invited them to look at in the tomb was not a nice story, a simple lesson of love conquering evil. No, it was, “Come and see the empty tomb. He is not here for he has risen!” It was a factual statement more than anything else.

To a pagan, like the Roman guards who ran away in fear, this news would’ve been perplexing because resurrection happened to the gods, and usually occurred during the changing of seasons.

A god might die in winter and be reborn in spring. But that there was an actual man, that people personally knew who had risen, well, that made no sense. That they happened to be guarding the tomb of a God would have been unfathomable to them.

And for the Jews, many of whom certainly believed in the resurrection of the body, they would’ve been baffled because the resurrection of the dead wasn’t supposed to happen until the end of the age, and it was supposed to happen to everyone, all at once.

Bodily resurrection signaled that God was making the world right again and that his eternal purposes were being fulfilled. For a resurrection to happen in the middle of history, not as the final act of history—well, that didn’t make any sense either.

Had the end of the world begun? Was evil somehow already defeated? And if so, why would it happen to only one person, especially to someone who was cursed with such a horrific death as crucifixion?

Now that was dumbfounding to both Jew and Gentile. This was the stuff of mythology that had become their very present reality.

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But the angel at the tomb did not lecture the women about the metaphysical implications of what they were about to behold, God trusted the details would be figured out as time went on.  Instead, the angel had a very simple invitation: Come and see.

From there, the implications were evident—God had raised Jesus from the dead, and something new and wonderful had begun. This meant that the grave could not hold the goodness of Jesus; everything that he said and did in his life (and mysteriously in his death) had been vindicated, and he now reigned over it all. 

That simple invitation to come and see changed those women’s lives forever, and it changed the world along with it. This was not merely a myth or a hope for God to save his people at the end of the age…no, he had done it in their lifetime, right then and there.

The One they had followed all those years, somehow, someway, he was the true King of Israel, the Messiah who would bless the world, and yes, he and the Father were one. He really was who he said he was.

Invitation & Mandate

Like the women on that glorious day, you and I are given two things at the empty tomb, and I believe each of us in this room needs to hear at least one of them.

The first is the invitation of the angel. That invitation is not just for the two women, but for all of us to come and see the great thing the Lord has done through the resurrection.

I believe this simple invitation changes lives. If you think about your own life, and the people who have impacted your faith the most, there was likely an element of this invitation. 

“Come and see what the Risen Lord has done for me. Come and see how he has formed me as a person; as a family member, a friend, co-worker, teammate, or student.”

But this invitation begins with “Come and see the empty tomb,” before anything else.

Jesus changes lives and whole communities through the power of his resurrection. I know it to be true for myself and my family; I know that to be true for St. Martin’s and Riverway because many of you sitting here have told me how you have met the Risen Lord in this place.

If you’ve never received an invitation like that, I want to personally invite you to come and see the power of Jesus’ resurrection pulsating through this place and through these people. Many of us in this room would love to tell you what God has done for us.

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And so, the first is an invitation. The second is a mandate.

The angel directs the women to go and tell the others what they’ve heard and make their way to Galilee; they’ll meet Jesus there. But as they head back, Jesus can’t help himself, like a kid jumping out from the bushes, he appears to them. He’s as excited as they are about this great news.

Jesus reiterates the angel's command: “Go and tell my brothers that I’ll meet them in Galilee.”

The women are not only witnesses but also messengers of the gospel, sent by the Risen One himself. He has bestowed upon them the greatest honor and highest calling: “Go and tell.”

Once you’ve seen the Risen Jesus and felt his presence, the call to tell others naturally follows. And what an amazing story we have to tell.

Where there is brokenness and death in our world—and in ourselves—God brings new life through the power of his resurrection. Where there is pain and sorrow, Jesus offers a hope that only he can give because he has seen it all and conquered it all.

The new thing God is doing in this world includes you and me. It includes the people and places of our daily lives, our communities and families, with the expressed purpose to come and see and then go and tell of the mighty things that God has done through his well-beloved Son. 

What was thought to be a mere myth, God made a reality and brought us along with him into the grand story of salvation. The pages of our story have been redeemed by the author himself, and so, this is not the kind of thing we passively read about but a reality in which we live.

Come and see…and then go and live.  Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Easter Sunday. Year B. Matthew 28:1-10. A Myth Became Fact, C.S. Lewis (1944).