Frodo

Once a year, far too seldom for my sons' tastes, we cart out the Lord of the Rings trilogy for family movie night. Considering we purchased the extended versions, we watch the three over a period of weeks, and each film takes a couple days (dad's early bedtime).

Last night we concluded "The Return of the King."

As I once again sat mesmerized by the climax of the film. The armies of the west led by Aragorn set out to sacrifice themselves against the filth at the Black Gate to distract the evil forces in hope of giving Frodo a chance to destroy the Ring. Sam and Frodo spend every last ounce of what they had to scale Mount Doom. Watching this unfold, I shuddered at the cancerous depth of sin's grasp on the human heart.

While Sam tangled with Gollum, Frodo summoned what strength remained to haul himself into the mountain's darkness. Sam, casting Gollum to the side, witnessed Frodo's entrance and followed his charge, hoping to witness the final victory.

But the victory does not come. Sam stands dismayed as Frodo stands at the precipice of the furnace eying and caressing the Ring, his "Precious."

Tolkien describes it thus:

Then Frodo stirred and spoke with a clear voice, indeed with a voice clearer and more powerful than Sam had ever heard him use, and it rose above the throb and turmoil of Mount Doom, ringing in the roof and walls.

"I have come," he said. "But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. the Ring is mine.!" And suddenly, as he set it on his finger, he vanished from Sam's sight. Sam gasped...

The Return of the King

Frodo knew the ring was evil. He hauled that tonnage over hill and dale to see it destroyed. Upon entry into the mountain's fiery heart, he intended that very purpose.

But the Ring's enticement proved too great. Reason and clarity evaporated like a drop of water on a Phoenix sidewalk. Frodo could not, in his own strength, separate himself from the sin that bound him. He intended to end it, to destroy it, but he could not.

As I look back at my life before Christ, I loved my sin. Having been raised in the church, having been raised with a great knowledge of God's word, I knew that my "Precious" stood contrary to God's design, His will and His plan. Oh, but I loved my sin. Paul describes our inability to separate ourselves from our sin like this:

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—" (Ephesians 2:1-5)

Dead men do nothing. They have no strength and no power do anything. That's why God is the mover in this passage. Plainly, God's work of grace in our lives breathes into us new life. Resuscitation. Regeneration.

What events does He use? Different for each soul. A book. A person. A circumstance. For some, it requires the gnawing off of a finger to remove the festering blot from his soul. "...And this not of your own doing (the faith that brings salvation); it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." (Ephesians 2:8b-9)

As the rest of the movie played out (Peter Jackson should have ended it after the coronation), I thanked God for the lengths He went to (a bloody cross) to redeem an unlovable Hobbit like me from the abyss.

And for those of you who had a hand (or a tooth) in chomping off my finger, thank you, too, for serving as God's agents in my life.

Now the choices begin.

All photos copyright New Line Cinema