The Eucatastrophe of Emmanuel
The Story Matters
My favorite Disney movie is The Lion King (and there is no close second). I love the story. So imagine my disappointment when I got my kids a book version of The Lion King that turned out to be a hack-job of literature. That’s putting it charitably. The book is egregiously abbreviated. It’s only four pages long and you could read it and walk away thinking Simba had a normal childhood, picked up the phrase “Hakuna Matata” on vacation, and eventually got to stand at the edge of a big rock where he became king. There’s no hyenas, no Scar, no Rafiki, and no meerkats doing the hula. It’s a travesty of storytelling. Essential elements are missing, so it just isn’t the same. Sometimes I worry that that’s how we treat the Christmas story too.
If you were born and raised in the Western hemisphere, there’s a good chance you got acquainted with the story of Christmas early on. There’s an equally good chance that you were introduced to a fairly abbreviated version. We start with a baby in a manger, throw in a star, some wise men and shepherds, mix it all together and you’ve got Christmas. Those are all important parts of the story, but by themselves they fail to capture the beauty and joy at the heart of Advent. To fill in that gap, we need to recover the eucatastrophe of Emmanuel.
A New Word
My favorite author is J.R.R. Tolkien (and there is no close second). Tolkien is known for his intricate world-building fantasy, epitomized in The Lord of the Rings. He’s somewhat lesser known for his career as a philologist (someone who studies languages). It was actually this linguistic skill that led to his literary career. The Middle-Earth legendarium began when he invented several languages and then imagined what sort of people might have spoken them. From there, he thought up his elves, dwarves, and hobbits. He left such a significant mark on English language and literature that one of the words in the previous sentence didn’t exist until he decided it should: the plural for “dwarf” was “dwarfs” until Tolkien came along and changed it to “dwarves.”
Tolkien had a passion for words, and he was not above tinkering with them if he was dissatisfied with his communicative options. That’s where the term eucatastrophe (pronounced you-catastrophe) comes in. Tolkien was convinced that the best stories involved a sudden twist, a last-minute and unexpected turn for the good. In modern terms we might call it snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Since Tolkien felt that no English word sufficiently captured this concept, he invented one: eucatastrophe. We are familiar with a “catastrophe”–an unexpected disaster, a sudden turn for the worse that leaves one reeling in grief (Tolkien calls this a dyscatastrophe). A eucatastrophe is just the opposite. The prefix eu- comes from the Greek word for gospel: euangelion (eu= “good;” angelion=“announcement, news”). A eu-catastrophe is a good catastrophe, a shocking and unforeseen gospel-twist.
Professor Tolkien described eucatastrophe as “A sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies universal defeat in the face of much evidence to the contrary, and …gives a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” A true eucatastrophe cannot be abbreviated–it relies on the “evidence to the contrary,” the expectations built across a story. Its power comes from the dyscatastrophe it resolves–the sense of despair and defeat that preceded the sudden turn. Eucatastrophe is when an unconquerable grief gives way to an unimaginable joy. A joy “beyond the walls of the world;” a glimpse of glory. The Christmas story is the ultimate eucatastrophe.
The Eucatastrophe of Emmanuel
What makes the baby in the manger and the shepherds and wise men and the star and everything about Christmas so wonderful is the dyscatastrophe–the grief and ruin–that preceded it. The incarnation did not happen in a vacuum–it came as the stunning twist to a long story, full of heartbreak and frustration.
We are well aware of the problems in our world, but we are typically less acquainted with the root cause. Genesis 3 describes the harsh realities of a fallen world: toilsome and frustrating work (Gen 3:17-19), natural disasters (Gen 3:17), relational strife (Gen 3:16b), brutal pain (Gen 3:16a), fear (Gen 3:10), shame (Gen 3:7), and death (Gen 3:19b). All these came and ruined a world that had been perfect. But, terrible though they are, they are merely symptoms of the true disease. The fall of humanity hinged on one foundational problem: our defiance of our Creator. Sin. Sin isn’t just generic rule-breaking. It is a chasm between us and perfect Love. It is a ruination of our relationship with God. In fact, sin is so directionally Godward that David, after committing a heinously selfish act which destroyed the lives of multiple people, still prayed “Against You, You only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4).
Defiance. Alienation. An impassable palisade between us and God. That’s sin. After the fall, generations came and went with no progress in resolving this problem. Finally, God initiated a solution–a rescue plan for his people. From Abraham to Malachi, Sinai to Zion, kings, prophets, shepherds, and priests testified again and again to God’s promised deliverance. Hope sparked and shone. But as more and more generations passed without a breakthrough, hope flickered. Things got worse. Eventually, with the close of the Old Testament, God was silent for four hundred years. Long lay the world in sin and error pining. The flame of hope was quenched.
And then, the eucatastrophe.
Suddenly, in the stillness of a Bethlehem night, a baby lay in the hay. Hope ignited beyond hope. Emmanuel had come. God with us. Joy broke through–poignant as grief. A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices. For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. As Professor Tolkien himself put it, “The birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of human history.” Why? Because all was lost…and then he came.
So this Christmas, as you drive by nativity scenes, gaze at beautiful light displays, and deck the halls of your home, do not lose sight of the sudden joy that sprang upon us two thousand years ago. Christ appeared when we had begun to think he never would. None of the pain and darkness we face today can stand against that sudden twist at the heart of human history. May that eucatastrophic joy–the joy of Emmanuel–fill you this Christmas season.
J.R.R. Tolkien, Tales from the Perilous Realm: On Fairy Stories, 384.