I recently
participated in a spiritual formation event where the leader invited
participants to close their eyes and through guided imagery imagine meeting
Jesus on a beach. I guess I should not have been surprised that the Jesus I
encountered resembled the fictional character Aragorn as portrayed by Viggo
Mortensen in Peter Jackson’s
The Lord of
the Rings film trilogy. After all, I had watched all three films over a
four of five night period just a week or two before and images from the films were probably still freshly imprinted on my subconscious. While the character
Gandalf is often interpreted as the Christ figure in Tolkien’s epic tale, it is
Aragorn who is the king, the king who at first appears as a recluse ranger,
often serves others rather than seeking to be served, defies death and even appears to be eresurrected, and ultimately receives
the crown that acknowledges his kingship.
I first read Tolkien’s The
Hobbit and Lord of the Rings
trilogy when I was in high school. Once I started reading them I could not put
them down. Eventually, one evening as I was reading, I realized that parts of
the Lord of the Rings reminded me of
parts of Scripture, especially the Jewish Scriptures or Christian Old
Testament. It was then that I gained a new appreciation of Scripture, viewing
it not as some dry, boring, religious text from the ancient past but as a
spiritual story filled with epic adventure, ancient archetypal myth, conflict,
love, betrayal, and struggle. It is no wonder then that decades later, when I
imagined meeting Jesus on the beach, Jesus looked an awful lot like the character
Aragorn portrayed by Viggo Mortensen.
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