“The breastplate of judgment"

I am working my way slowly through a collection of sermons and essays by Ellen F. Davis, Preaching the Luminous Word.  Slowly, savoring every phrase of a couple of sermons every day. Partly to feed my love of the Hebrew Bible and partly to inspire me in my own writing. Just now I read a sermon she delivered at the baptism of a child, which moved me (surprisingly, not to tears) to race upstairs to my bookshelves, into my two grown sons’ rooms to search theirs, into the basement where some of my seminary books sit in dust. I wanted to hold in my hands my battered copies of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia stories. I couldn’t find them. Had to content myself with an internet search to find the passage I had in mind. Luckily, it’s vivid in my aging head:  Eustace, the bad boy, on a boat, covered with dragon scales. 

Davis is preaching on a description from Exodus 28 that describes Aaron all decked out in his priestly robes, including “that drop-dead piece of sacred jewelry called, enigmatically enough, ‘the breastplate of judgment’ -- all goldwork, and studded with twelve great jewels, each engraved with the name of one of the tribes of Israel.” She explains that God’s judgment, which usually makes us squirm or feel smug, was a positive image to the biblical writers, a divine attempt to “set the horizon of hope for our lives.” And that when Aaron wore the breastplate into the sanctuary, he is “literally wearing the people of Israel into God’s presence.”

Jewels are the perfect accessory to a breastplate of judgment, Davis says. Jewels reflect and diffuse light, which is God’s outstanding characteristic, the first one invoked in the creation of the world. But the process of preparing a jewel -- “cutting and burnishing,” she says -- “is God’s work.” And it doesn’t begin at our deaths, but now, as we live in the world. That’s where I stopped and in my mind's eye saw Eustace, abandoned on an island. He's miserable to realize his past attitudes and behavior  have turned him into an actual dragon. He tries to strip away the scales that cover his body. Under each one of them, he finds  another. The first few layers of scales come off easily, the underlying ones hurt like heck as he tries to peel them away. It turns out Eustace is not alone. Aslan, the lion, is with him, and Eustace recounts what happens next:

“Then the lion said — but I don’t know if it spoke — 'You will have to let me undress you.' I was afraid of his claws, but I can tell you, I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it…. That very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’d ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.'” 

I am 62 years old now, and I first read this book when I was in middle school. Again when I studied C.S. Lewis in college, then aloud to both of my boys and I’ve retold it in my own ragged language through the years. Probably without realizing it, Davis reminds me that God’s judgment may be like Aslan using his claws to pull the dragon’s scales off of us. Painful, just as cutting and burnishing probably are, but essential to expose the delicate new skin that we’ll all need to reflect and diffuse the light of God. 

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