Last week at Synod the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a Presidential address which made various references to the metaphor of lions.  He mentioned, in particular, a story he had heard on a recent visit to Africa.   This story was about a shepherd boy dealing with the threat of lions.  It made the point that lions are far more dangerous when they are silently stalking.  It is then, not when they are roaring, that they are preparing to pounce on their prey.  His reflection on lion behaviour was linked to the image from I Peter where the lion is the devil/enemy which ‘walks about seeking whom he may devour’.  Archbishop Welby identified many things as the enemy.  He mentioned ‘culture, cruelty and lack of love’.  There was also a mention of the lion ‘biting …. through social media in a way we have never known before’.     It was striking how much of the address came back to this lion image from I Peter. The lion seemed to represent, for Welby, a whole host of things that posed a threat.  Some of these were going to be faced by the gathered bishops at Lambeth.  In Welby’s words, the bishops were going ‘as shepherds to be gathered together from around the world (to) recognise and name the face of the lion in each place.’  The speech went on to speak about shadowy threats in society, ‘scientific change, biotechnology, information technology’ and other forms of new knowledge.  From the choice of the I Peter passage, I began to ask myself whether the Archbishop’s words were tinged with the same fundamental emotion as the shepherd boy referred to in the story, the emotion of fear.

The unspoken subtext of the Archbishop’s speech may be the fact that both Synod and he himself were having to face, at present, a number of threats and events leading to a sense of dread and even powerlessness.  There are in front of him the many unresolved issues of division to be faced at Lambeth 2020, not least over same sex behaviour.  This is quite apart from all the issues around safeguarding which came to a head last week.  To navigate through any of these major topics requires superhuman skill.  To have two or more of them bubbling up at the same time must represent for the Archbishop a burden of enormous personal stress. The subtext of Welby’s speech may have been suggesting to us that he felt himself being stalked by a silent deadly evil force.   The demonic lion of I Peter could well represent the impossible burdens that he feels he is being called to carry now.

I went back to my bible to look up the I Peter passage about the ‘enemy’ oppressing us being like a lion.  I then used a wonderful internet search engine to find out what else the Bible had to say about lions.  In most of the references, lions are thought of terrifying creatures which can only be defeated by people of great strength or cunning (Samson and the young David).  Thus, most of the time, the Bible sees them as creatures which are a real threat to animals or human beings.  Two passages stand out, possibly being written by eye witnesses, showing the sheer destructiveness of lions.  One is the passage from Amos which is ascribed to Yahweh.  Here is described what remains of a sheep after a lion has finished with it.   ‘As a shepherd rescues out of the jaws of a lion two shin bones or the top of an ear’,  Amos 3.12.  More terrifying than this is the behaviour of a lion attacking a human being in Psalm 7.  There here is a disturbing reference to a lion tearing at the throat of its human prey.

Generally speaking, the lion in the Bible is a powerful foe living in remote places, but it represents a constant threat to human beings and their domestic animals.  The ability of Daniel to avoid being destroyed by the lions’ savagery was evidently a sign of extraordinary power, comparable to the avoidance of the heat of the burning fiery furnace.  The power of lions to destroy and terrify was evident and widespread. 

There is however, another biblical take on the topic of lions that I must confess never to have noticed before.  In a little-known passage right at the end of the book of Genesis the aged Jacob blesses his sons.  When he comes to his son Judah, Jacob likens him to a ‘lion’s whelp’.  He goes on ‘you have returned from the kill, my son’.  Some kind of dominance, represented by a lion’s strength is then ascribed to Judah in the words of the following verse.  ‘The sceptre shall not pass from Judah…’  A clear connection to this Genesis passage seems to be implied in a passage of Revelation 5.5.  Here one of the elders speaking to John declares that ‘the Lion from the Tribe of Judah, the Scion of David has won the right to open the scroll and break its seven seals.’  Without getting into detailed comment about this passage, I note that the Lion from the Tribe of Judah seems to become quickly merged with the image of the Lamb who appears in subsequent verses.  The symbol of power is at the same time the symbol of weakness and sacrifice.  Both the strands of symbolism are summed up in the figure of the risen Christ.  He is the figure of power and at the same time he is the sacrificial lamb.

Following the way the Bible understands lions, the most famous Christian exploration of the lion image is to be found in the Narnia books of C.S. Lewis and the Christ-like figure of Aslan.  I am not familiar with any discussion of how Lewis created his all-important figure of Aslan the Lion, but it seems reasonable to suppose that he may have been inspired this somewhat enigmatic symbolism in the Book of Revelation.  Whatever has been noted by the critics, the figure of Aslan clearly fits the profile of Revelation more than that of 1 Peter.  Aslan is a creature of great moral stature and strength.  Lewis also sees him as the one who makes no resistance when required to surrender himself to his enemies.  In the Synod proceedings last week, it was interesting how Martin Sewell, in his speech about safeguarding, picked up the lion theme through the Aslan story in his remarks about future change.  The fact that Martin likened the whole safeguarding topic to the Narnia story suggests that for him, at any rate, the Synod engagement with this topic has in the past seemed to have something of the nature of conflict about it.  According to this way of understanding, one which I have supported, a powerful ‘establishment’ has been battling for a long time to silence survivors.  The survivors, carrying all the wounds of their abuse, have had to struggle to be heard.  In one case, as Rosie Harper reminded us in the same debate, a survivor has been battling for seven years to receive a hearing.   For that survivor and those like him, the Synod debate represented a battle within a long drawn-out war.  The weapons given to survivors to fight in this war have been few and weak.  But finally, their constant efforts have started to have results, such as we saw last week.  The central government of the Church of England, the ‘establishment’ over which Welby presides, has had to acknowledge this cause as a just one.  Is it not too fanciful to suggest that this is one more strand creating the sense of fear and beleaguerment being felt by the Archbishop and those around him?

The Archbishop painted for us a picture of a scenario where the Church was in conflict with a powerful enemy in the form of many different aspects of modern life.  We surmise that much of the conflict he detected was being personally felt, the cares of Lambeth, safeguarding and a general sense of the way the Church’s reputation is in decline as it enters a new decade.  

This blog reflection ends with a question.  Which image of lions fits in with our understanding of the contemporary state of the Church.  Do we have a sense of siege with enemies like Satanic lions all around?  Do we by contrast believe in a Church that is finally waking up to a new start of honesty and justice?  The lion for this version of the story is Aslan/Christ leading us and the whole Church to a place of wholeness and new beginnings.