The Wild Kisses of a Lion

In the last chapter of The Silver Chair. . . .

Jill and Eustace stood beside a beautiful fresh-flowing stream in bright sunshine. The only sound was heart-breaking funeral music from a faraway world. Aslan and the two children looked into the water.

"There on the golden gravel of the bed of the stream, lay the king, dead, with the water flowing over him like liquid glass. His long white beard swayed in it like water-weed. And all three stood and wept."  Like Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, "even Aslan wept - great Lion-tears."

If you’ve ever lost a loved one, you know the sadness that is deeper than words. The river of death is the inevitable end of every person’s life, but Lewis shows us that Death does not have the last word.

Aslan told Eustace to bring a rapier-sharp thorn and pierce his lion’s paw. A great drop of blood, “redder than all redness you have ever seen” splashed into the stream over the dead body of the king. And a transformation began.

The funeral music stopped. The king’s white beard turned fresh and then vanished. His sunken cheeks became round and red. His wrinkled face brightened - until the king leapt out of the water with boyish laughter and flung his arms around the Lion. “He gave Aslan the strong kisses of a King, and Aslan gave him the wild kisses of a Lion.”

There, on the Mountain of Aslan, “high above and beyond the end of the world” Eustace and Jill watched as Aslan welcomed the king home into resurrected Life on the far side of Death.

He wasn’t a ghost; he was real, transformed by the sacrifice of the Lion, by the deep magic of Narnia. In The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan explained that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, Death itself would crack and “start working backwards."

The thorn that pierced Aslan echoes the curse in the Garden of Eden. Aslan’s pierced paw echoes the ancient Genesis prophecy about the crushed foe wounding the rescuer’s heel. The crimson blood of Aslan’s self-giving is the greening of death, transforming its sting into laughter and Joy.

And wonder of wonders, . . . it’s not just a fiction of Narnia. In our own world, the same thing has actually occurred. And one day the wild kisses of the Lion will welcome us home!

Photo Credit: Mountain Stream by Pauline Watson, Lethbridge Alberta.
The Silver Chair is the fourth of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.