Meg Raspberry’s Revelation and the Math of God
In our insecurities, God provides proof of his love
In addition to our usual Friday newsletter-devotionals, we’ll be dropping featured posts on Above Anime as they post, too. Today’s article, written by Claire, zooms in on episode 11 of Once Upon a Witch’s Death and joins with articles she wrote on episodes six and three.
It’s episode 11 and Meg Raspberry is facing her most daunting challenge yet: A magic anomaly has triggered a gargantuan tsunami that threatens to destroy the island nation of Aquamarine. It’s enough to quell the spirits of the Seven Sages, the most elite of mages, let alone a powerless apprentice like Meg Raspberry, who has enough on her plate just trying to stay alive beyond her eighteenth birthday, thanks to a curse that clings to her. As the wall of water speeds toward shore, Meg and her Sage friends concede that the best they can hope for is to protect a few folks on high ground; most of the population is doomed. But as the Sages perform the morbid triage, Meg has a revelation that changes everything: “I know what to do…Because I am Meg Raspberry, the witch loved by the whole world!”
Wait, what? How is that the solution to this impossible situation?! We need actions here, Meg, not a confidence hustler’s line or the power of love to deus ex machina the plot into pleasing resolution! But what may seem at first glance to be a bit of a trite trope, is actually a profound revelation that represents the culmination of the series and the great work of healing, restoration, and purpose that has been unfolding all season long in the life of the young woman caught under death’s curse. And the best thing is, it’s the same work that the disciples of Jesus experienced, and the one that is available for each one of us too. Let’s dive in!
Ok, so I may have skimped on the context a little. Here’s the full story: While the Sages are deciding who will get a shot at survival and who will surely die, Meg hears a voice calling her name. Perhaps it is meant to be a bell-like voice, because it brings to Meg’s remembrance the local lore of the ancient witch Tethys, who once protected the island nation from natural disaster by ringing a magical bell. But the bell has hung silent for centuries, proving impossible to sound despite all best efforts, natural and magical alike. Even so, Meg rushes to the bell tower, and it is while standing before the bell that she has her revelation.
Memories flicker across her mind’s eye (and the screen), as Meg is flooded with understanding: she understands that the weird symbols etched around the city are part of Tethys’s ancient spell; she understands that this spell is related to emotion magic, an ancient form of magecraft that she recently stumbled into and has been honing steadily; she may even understand why her mentor, Faust, exhorted her to smile, telling her that she, Meg, already had the magic she needed to save the island.
There is no dialogue during Meg’s moment of revelation, so when she does finally speak, one would expect her to narrate the connections she’s just made between all the plot points that have been unfolding for the past few episodes. And indeed, Meg does begin by saying to her companion, “I know what to do, Jack…I’m going to use the magic of emotion.” But then her dialogue takes an odd turn, and instead of outlining triumphantly what this entails and how it will solve the problem (for instance, whose emotions will she draw upon, and which ones? The Sages? The people? Tethys? Love for the city? Love for life? For one another?), Meg’s speech culminates in a joyous declaration of who she is, “Because I am Meg Raspberry, the witch loved by the whole world!” In other words, she celebrates her identity as the solution. To paraphrase, Meg essentially exclaims, “I know who I am! That’s how I will save everyone!”
Now, Meg has had revelations before in this series. I’ve written about two of them already, in fact, and there are more! But in each case, Meg’s growth and maturation was more linear or arithmetic: Two plus two equals four. The sum of the parts added up each time, so that, for example, when she was faced with an awe-inspiring display of the wonder and power and mystery of magic in the midst of her discouragement, she regained her hope; or when confronted with the broken relational consequences of her instrumentalization of her magic, she changed her ways and re-engaged her heart. But here, Meg is doing calculus. She is taking two plus two and getting infinity. She’s operating in a whole other dimension!
Jesus’s disciple Peter did the same thing, one bright day in the region of Caesarea Philippi. Like Meg, he’d had some pretty impressive character growth by this point, since setting down his fishing net and following Jesus. He was the one who, upon seeing a figure walking toward their boat on the tossing sea and hearing the man’s voice claiming to be Jesus, called out and courageously, cleverly exclaimed, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water,” and then proceeded to walk a ways before losing his nerve. It’s an incredible moment, but also a pretty reasonable one, in that Peter was doing straightforward math here: Jesus using his authority to perform a miracle + Jesus using his authority to tell me to do the same miracle = me doing the miracle. Bold, pioneering, paradigm-shifting—but also pretty rational, in a supernatural kind of way!
But that day in Caesarea Philippi was different. As they walked, Jesus asked his disciples what kinds of rumors were going around about him, “Who do people say I am?” There were a lot of theories, and the disciples didn’t hold back. Then Jesus asks, maybe with a chuckle, or maybe in the quiet after they’ve all had a good laugh; or on the contrary, perhaps with a kind of electric clarity that stilled their whirling minds and hearts as they tried to make sense of all the conflicting views, none of which quite seemed to fit: “But who do you say that I am?” This is the moment where Peter does calculus. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Yes, Peter has seen Jesus perform miracles; he’s heard the astonishing wisdom, experienced the unwarranted compassion, the counterintuitively life-giving admonishment. But these things, these parts, don’t add up to the sum of Peter’s revelation, not in any linear, arithmetic way. His declaration aligns with these parts, with all that he’s seen and experienced of Jesus, but then it transcends them, leaping to a conclusion that could not be born solely of human understanding. And Jesus confirms as much, telling Peter and the disciples that “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven…” Jesus then gives him his new name, Peter/Petrus (he was born Simon), and declares that this is the petra or rock upon which he, Jesus, will build his church. Jesus gives Peter a name and a purpose.
The way that Meg’s revelation plays out is a lot like Peter’s, but the content of her realization is more reminiscent of a revelation experienced by another of Jesus’s nearest and dearest, John, who referred to himself in the gospel that bears his name as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Like Meg and Peter, John experienced many a revelation in his time! But I like to think that this one, this deep understanding of who he was in God’s eyes and the wonder of such tenderness from the Almighty toward him, was possibly the sweetest for John. Regardless, the same power of healing, restoration, and commission is at work in John’s description of himself as in Meg’s climactic exclamation. Let’s unpack it!
We’ll start with the healing nature of the revelations. Now, Meg has always been secure in her relationships. Despite being an orphan, there is none of the “orphan spirit” about her. She is confident in her ability to charm and befriend anyone, regardless of status, and generally proves herself adept at growing in community and relationship. But she is decidedly not secure in her magic or her identity as a witch. So much so that she frequently dwells on her inadequacies, lamenting her powerlessness and bemoaning her differences (which she sees as shortcomings) in comparison to the elite mages who surround her. So naming herself a witch in this key moment is significant. Yes, Faust basically implied that she views Meg as a proper witch, telling her to smile (because that’s what witches do) and assuring her that she had the magic she needed. But it goes beyond just what someone else has (implicitly) called her. For Meg to own this new name, this new identity, she has not only shifted in her perception of herself, but also of what magic and being a witch even are! She has come to value a whole new perspective on magic, one that makes room for a fresh understanding of what it can be, and therefore what being a witch can be and who can qualify.
This is similar to what I like to think was going on for John when he calls himself a disciple. At the time of Jesus, there were some pretty demanding requirements for a young man to be able to pursue his education to the point of becoming the disciple of a rabbi or teacher. Not only did he (or rather, his family) need to have the means to remain in education rather than going straight into the workforce, but he also needed to demonstrate an aptitude for such rigorous study, enough so to impress a rabbi into taking him under his wing and committing to supervising him personally, a bit like doing a PhD today. One failed test could be enough to scupper your chances. When Jesus called John, Peter, and the rest, they were working regular jobs, meaning they were not your usual disciple material—which is probably why we see the occasional snooty reaction to them from onlookers. At some point, John and the others had each failed to qualify for discipleship. In John’s case, this failure may have been quite recent, too, given that he was the youngest of those called. Maybe it stung for him the way her inadequacy as a witch did for Meg. So for John to refer to himself as a disciple is not only meaningful, but also pretty revolutionary! It was also fundamentally healing, making whole the wound of failure—just as naming herself a witch did for Meg.
Let’s keep going. Meg specifically calls herself a “witch loved by the whole world.” This is quite distinct from her actual witch name, the Witch of Lapis, which the people of her hometown gifted her with halfway through the series. Is this just Meg’s penchant for showmanship leading her into the realm of hyperbole? I don’t think so.
From the very beginning of the series, Meg has wanted to venture out and see the world. It was a dream so precious that, when given her death sentence, she buried it deep, deep down so that she couldn’t even admit to herself (or Inori) how much she wanted it. It hurt her even to imagine the possibility. Since those early episodes, though, Meg has gradually been broadening her world, spending time in her village, then venturing further afield out of necessity (thanks to Faust, sending her off to various places like that…such a wise mentor), until she finds herself here now, far from Lapis on the island of Aquamarine, helping the folks there as if they were her own. So Meg’s claim to the whole world here speaks of a dream restored! It has taken an entire season, but Meg has at last lifted up her head again and is gazing out at the horizon. And indeed, in the final episode, Meg finds the courage to set off alone into the world as she’s always longed to do. I think she’s able to do so because of this revelation at the bell tower.
So too with John’s phrase, “the disciple loved by Jesus,” that is, a disciple accepted by a rabbi, belonging to him, sharing in his name and reputation. Here’s where it’s key to remember that early on in Jesus’s ministry, John and his brother James were known by a very different name and reputation! They were the Sons of Thunder, brute forcing their way into trouble as they sought to gain the recognition of others, establish their superiority, and by doing so, prove (whether to themselves or others) that they belonged. How beautiful then, that John found the acceptance he so longed for in Jesus! The fulfillment of this heart’s desire was life-changing enough for John to still be resonating with it more than half a century later, as he wrote his gospel in his dotage. Talk about restoration!
The parallels in their declarations go further still, as Meg and John alike claim the receiving of love as core to who they now are. For both, the heart of their revelation is about the loving nature of the One at work in creation. For John, this is God in Christ; for Meg, it is “the power that flows through the cosmos,” as she calls it. You see, what makes Meg’s emotion magic so fascinating is that it takes the form of prayers, and prayers that assume that the power to which they are addressed is fundamentally loving. When saving a child’s life earlier in the episode, she concludes her prayer spell by petitioning the power of the cosmos to “Show us your true form,” in full expectation that this true form is one of loving enough to save life. So it’s not so much that love saves the day here, but rather that the act of loving brings renewed life—for John too! Both Meg and John identify that the act of loving is the defining characteristic of the power of the cosmos/Jesus, and consequently, that being loved is our fundamental identity.
In other words, the revelation of Meg and John isn’t about a way of doing things, it isn’t “Now I know what to do! I will love these people in this way or use their love in that way,” but rather, it’s about a way of being, “Because I am…loved by the whole world!” Because I am loved by Jesus. And that recognition of being loved makes the impossible possible; it brings renewed life where only death seemed to reside—for Meg, for John, and for us. Being loved gives us purpose.
I think we’re all a little like Meg and John and Peter. We have areas in our lives, in our selves, where we feel insecure, inadequate; where we’ve been disappointed in some way or have understood that we’re not good enough—maybe in our education, profession, or calling, like for Meg and possibly the disciples, or maybe some other sphere of life. Areas where we feel strongly that we haven’t measured up and never can; where even the love of God hasn’t yet permeated to make all things new. But here’s the message of hope in the revelation of Meg Raspberry and the disciples: First, revelation is ongoing; some of it is arithmetic, and some of it is calculus! There is always hope for further, deeper revelation as long as we’re drawing breath.
Second, there is something we can do to partner with God and his loving power that flows through the cosmos: We can name God’s love specifically for those aspects of our lives where hurt has replaced our dreams, like Meg and John do, and we can even find promises in God’s Word that speak to who we are and name us anew as his, like Jesus did for Peter. We name God’s love for us like this in expectation of his release of healing, restoration, and purpose in our lives, and particularly in those broken parts. It may not look like what we expect—the Son of Thunder transformed into the Apostle of Love, after all! But being loved by God is transformative, every single time. We can count on that! It’s the math of God.
