Luke 14: 12-24
Genesis 9: 20-27
Early in Harry Potter and the chamber of Secrets, Harry is hiding in his room, “keeping quiet as if he does not exist” because of a dinner party the Dudley’s are hosting for someone. Out of the blue, a mysterious creature named appears in Harry’s room, smashing lamps and making excessive noise which is set up to keep Harry from returning to Hogwarts. With just a few sounds of racket and some poetic lines about classism that will later dominate much of Hermoine’s extra curricular work, we are introduced to Dobby the House Elf. This race of creatures in J.K. Rowlings world perhaps demonstrate the most authentic sense of classism throughout the book. Dobby is required to do his master’s bidding, submitting for life to a slavery. Only if a master provides an item of clothing to the House Elf is he or she set free. And this rarely happens in the Wizarding world.
Welcome back to Harry Potter. A story like the bible that is an act of faithful imagination. We take the pieces of a fictional story, of metaphor and allegory, and we weave it into a tapestry of real lessons and spells that change and influence the world around us. Welcome back to a world not so different from ours, and yet one that is magically different from what we hope it might be.
Dobby is just the beginning of classism throughout the Harry Potter series. And classism is at the heart of Jesus’ teaching and even at the heart of the Hebrew Canon. If you are unfamiliar with the books, then the words Mudblood and Pureblood mean little to you. Half-blood is also important and I bet if you think about it you can figure out what Muggle means. For those of us who don’t know, a Pureblood is someone who is of pure wizardry decent. These are the people like Voldemort and the Malfoy’s. And most of them are in Slytherin house, the most outcast of houses as Salazar Slytherin’s original intentions to only teach pureblood wizards continues in the form of the house’s students. For the half-blood’s like Harry, the wizarding world is in their blood but also they have relatives who are completely absent of any magical powers. But the mudbloods are those with no wizardry heritage and are seen by some like these pureblood previously mentioned as less desireable. It is without a doubt a pre-planned even that Ron would be pureblood, Hermoine a mudblood, and Harry a half-blood.
Thus the enter book series might be summed up in a class war, one where-in the pureblood wizards of the world seek to “purify” those of lesser stature, at least in their eyes. This sounds remarkably like what Hitler tried to do in the 1930s and the 1940s to pretty much everyone who wasn’t of Aryan decent. It’s also a Biblical theme that has brought a fair amount of concern and questions over the last several mellenial. In the passage from Genesis tonight, Noah rebukes and curses the people of Ham, which for decades and even centuries became the Biblical explanation for the subjugation of Black Africans, especially during the slave trade. Noah apparently casts out this lesser character and deems him unworthy.
This is a big deal to a lot of people throughout the Biblical expression of the past several centuries. And the classism of Harry Potter is a big deal to the characters as well. Dobby’s is freed by Harry, but as the series continues Hermoine finds many house elves to be working the Hogwarts kitchen and sets about to provide them equal rights and freedom through an self-created organization called the S.P.E.W (the Society for the Promotion of Elf Welfare). When in book five the Death Eaters disrupt the Quidditch world cup, Arthur Weasley works to creation the muggle protection act, making sure that all the muggles are protected from the oncoming war that will happen between Voldemort and the rest of the wizarding world.
We have a lot to learn from Harry Potter, from the things in the Bible which don’t always reflect God’s intentions. yes that’s right, most Biblical Scholars believe (because the Bible is a book written by humans and filled with human biases and angles) that there are things in the Bible we are supposed to see and yet NOT immulate. In fact, there are things we are called to walk in the opposite direction of. And on of these is Classism and the idea that we are better than anyone else.
Christianity over the past few centuries has come to be at the forefront of this Holier than though belief structure. And Yet, Jesus was a little bit beyond classism, breaking down barriers and exposing people for what they were: fraudulent worshippers of God who instead were more concerned about their own status than that of the creation of the kingdom of God on earth, wherein all were made equal and one in God.
Classism is and a belief that one way is better than another is what makes some of our Christian friends on this campus kicks out your friends and fellow students when they disagree. If you aren’t on the party line, if you don’t drink the koolaid, if you don’t have the same beliefs or the right lineage of the right prayers, you don’t belong. If you don’t have the right color of your skin, the right accent, the right whatever, you will be segregated out and put into another class. There is no seat at the table, there is no water fountain, there is no wand for you. But Jesus says to us all, there is space at the table. Are are welcome.
Jesus does not deferentiate between the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed. If you say he does, it is only because he spends more time with them because no one else has ever done so. Harry and Hermoine and Ron are of three different worlds, but together is the only way they can overcome the classism that Voldemort seeks. German Americans who fault Nazi Germany, Japenese Americans who killed their own countrymen, those are the purebloods. Wizard against wizard, and for no other reason that hatred and the thought that their class was substantially better. The truth is, it’s not worth it, it’s not the kingdom of God, and it’s not the way of the world as God intended it to be.
When the sacrifices of many lives have been had, Harry, the ultimate symbol that class does not matter, wins over, killing Voldemort. The elder wand, the wand that would make one wizard the most powerful in the world, is destroyed. It is not worth the power struggle. All of the stories of the world are surrounded by this call to power. Sauren, Emperor Palpatine, The Romans, but Jesus is different. Harry is Different. The world is not what is seems to be after. And I don’t believe that we designed to be haves and have nots, to be those with more wealth and those with less, to be those with more privelage and those with less, but rather to be a people who come to live in harmony and in peace with one another.
Harry Potter is a series about many things, but at its core it’s about who is in and who is out. And for Voldemort, those who are less than pure-blood are not worthy. For those who are, and who submit to his reign and power and authority, he is kind. But Jesus does not ask us to submit to him, but rather to submit to anyone around us for whom care is needed. For the dobbies of the world and the muggles and all the classes of the world. We have to care about each all together, and we have to realize that in the end, equality will provide over pride and selfish aims to be better than the rest. And that’s how the Gospel relates to Houses and House Elves.
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