Lost without Your Love: What Sherlock Taught Me About Jesus, Pt. 2

The following post contains spoilers for BBC’s Sherlock, Season 4, Episode 3. Haven’t watched it yet? You’ve had a year and a half—seriously, just go watch it. It’s worth it. 😊

Image Credit: Baker Street Wikia

When I first finished the Sherlock season 4 finale, its events rolled around in my head for days. In the episode, Sherlock meets his younger sister Eurus, a sister he’d forgotten he had. For 20-plus years, Eurus has been kept in a fortress-like prison due to her psychotic violent tendencies. Once she and Sherlock meet, she soon has Watson, Sherlock, and Sherlock’s older brother Mycroft completing a variety of twisted games so that she can observe their reactions to each other.

It’s heavy material, but as a storyteller, I loved how it paid off on foreshadowing and character growth that had been developing for several seasons. And there was something about the ending where Sherlock got down on his knees before a broken, defeated Eurus that touched me….

So when I re-watched the episode with my family a few weeks later, at the end I asked my brother, “What did you think?”—hoping for a discussion of how awesome the episode was.

“Well,” he said. “I sure didn’t feel sorry for her at the end.”

“Well, no….” His answer dissatisfied me, but I couldn’t figure out how to respond.

It wasn’t until several hours later that I was able to find words for what I was feeling.

Image Credit: #gamerfangirl on Instagram

In that moment where Sherlock comes to Eurus—where he realizes how lost and broken she is, how all she has ever wanted was his love, his attention—he’s not coming to her as the world’s greatest detective. He’s her brother.

The point of that scene isn’t how you should feel sorry for the terrible Eurus because she’s been lonely all her life.

The point is that Sherlock has undergone a transformation from a “great man” to a “good man.”

The point is that in that last desperate moment, rather than offering a brilliant intellectual answer to the problem, he bends down and provides an emotional one, as he offers mercy, love, relationship.

Some might argue that the BBC writers’ choice here is untrue to the character Arthur Conan Doyle originally created in the 1800s. To an extent, I agree. But I love this new Sherlock as well, because he reminds me of someone. Another Elder Brother who offered relationship rather than judgment.

Image Credit: BBC America (text added)

But we…see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. Hebrews 2:9-11

For years I have struggled with feeling unworthy of grace. But in those moments where I was thinking about the final scene with Sherlock and Eurus, I realized something.

My worthiness or unworthiness is not the point.

Jesus is the point.

His death and resurrection is the point.

His decision to take sinful, unsympathetic humans and make them family is the point.

That’s the point of grace—we’re not worthy of it. If we were, it wouldn’t be grace.

I don’t know what that statement means to you. For me, grasping it was like releasing a long-held breath. A bit of a letting go. A relaxing of my shoulders.

A few weeks ago, I was having a discussion about heaven and hell with one of my afterschool kids. He was terrified he was going to be sent to hell because of the mistakes he had made.

“Do you know how you go to heaven?” I asked.

“By doing good things,” he replied.

He’s not alone in that assumption. A huge percentage of Christians today are living like they believe they have to do something to earn God’s love. Even if they know intellectually that’s not true, even if they believe salvation is a free gift from God, they may have a lingering suspicion that surely God would love them more if they did good things (that has absolutely been my story for many years).

I want you to hear something today: It’s not true.

Let me say that one more time. It’s—not—true.

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:6-8

This is what I learned from Sherlock and Eurus. I am unworthy. But that’s okay, because Jesus came to me when I was most miserable, most sinful, most lost, and offered Himself. He offered us relationship, an open-armed welcome back into His family. He offered grace. He offered love.

And in His love, I am found.

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