The Doorway Into Wonder [Advent 1]
Question for
reflection: What is the most memorable doorway from your childhood?
My grandma’s house was magical, full of treasures and interesting
things to see. There was the sturdy,
beautiful sycamore tree in her back yard, with limbs spaced perfectly for
climbing. There was a loom – a big,
antique weaving loom in her back bedroom.
We pushed the levers a few times, but it seemed too complicated to us
back then. I don’t know what happened to
that loom, but if I had it to do all over again, I would keep that loom and
force my children to wear the sweaters I would weave for them.
There was an accordion, which is way more difficult to play
than one would think. And there was a
silver trombone that belonged to my grandfather. She kept it under the bed in the front
bedroom. And I’m sure it was special to
her because my grandfather was very musical.
But we got it out every time we were there and played it as loudly as we
could. And she just smiled.
But the most fun place to play at Grandma’s was down in the
basement. And I remember the door into
my Grandma’s basement. So if you went
through the small front room, through the even smaller kitchen, and wedged your
way past the dishwasher sitting in the middle of the kitchen (attached to the
sink with a hose), then just to your left would be the door that led down into
the basement. Through the door, you
pulled the chain for the light, then went down the simple wooden stairs.
It was your typical basement – a little dark, cement floors,
shelves full of who knows what. But there
was a full sized basketball goal nailed to a beam about five feet off the
ground. Why it was there I had no
idea. But we had fun playing basketball
– because even as very young children, we could dunk.
And then in the far corner of the basement there was a
screen door that led into a little shop area, where there were tools and
paint. That’s where we could make
things. I have vague memories of Grandma
teaching us how to make Lye soap (though I have no idea why we’d be making
soap). The best thing about the basement
was that we were usually unsupervised.
It was a place to play, away from the eyes of the adults.
OK, so when you think
about memorable doors from your childhood, what doors do you remember?
CS Lewis was a Professor of Classics and Medieval Literature
at Oxford University. But in addition to
his scholarly work, he wrote a series of books called The Chronicles of Narnia.
Four children – Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy – begin a great adventure
when they discover a doorway into a magical land called Narnia.
The children spend the weekend in a huge country house. And out of boredom they decide to play hide
and seek. Looking for a place to hide,
the youngest of the siblings, Lucy, discovers a beautiful wardrobe full of fur
coats. She steps in and begins to back
her way through the fur coats to hide from her brother. The wardrobe proves much deeper than she
expected. So she keeps moving back,
further and further, until her hand touches what feels like the branch of a
tree. She feels the crunch of snow under
her feet and turns to discover a whole new world. There she will meet a faun (a creature with
goat legs and a human torso and head – remember, Lewis was a professor of
Classics), a Witch, and lots of other creatures, including a majestic, talking
Lion named Aslan.
Eventually, she makes her way back through the wardrobe into
the country house to tell her siblings about what she found. “Come and see,” she invites them. “Come and see. It’s –
it’s a magic wardrobe. There’s a wood
[forest] inside it, and it’s snowing, and there’s a Faun and a Witch and it’s
called Narnia; come and see.” (The Lion Ch. 3, p. 120).
Here is our invitation to move through a doorway into the
holy season of Advent. Here is our
invitation to leave behind what we know so that we can experience something
surprising. Here is our invitation to
suspend our very adult assumption that the world is predictable and boring, and
to exchange it for a child-like sense of wonder and discovery.
During Advent, we prepare for Christmas. We do our best to prepare for the
life-shaping reality that the birth of Jesus to Joseph and Mary was, in fact,
the fulfillment of God’s promises to be good to the world. The arrival of the Son of God in the
vulnerable life of a child born to a poor, refugee family was God’s way of
keeping faith with promises to right what’s wrong with the world.
And the real question is not
whether we believe all the right things about this story. The real question is whether we are capable
of being overwhelmed with awe; whether we are capable of opening ourselves to a
new imaginative world. CS Lewis writes a
story about a magical land called Narnia because he wants to remind children
and adults alike that meeting the God who meets us in Jesus the Christ is very
much like wandering into a new and different world.
Joseph and Mary were observant Jews. Jesus was a Jewish baby. He was born among Jewish people who treasured
a hope in God that was fed by memories that were shared from generation to
generation. And some of those memories
involved Israel’s journeys from slavery to freedom – a journey that involved
many crossings into a new world. When
God delivered them from Egypt, they crossed through the Red Sea on dry
ground. When God brought them at long
last to their new land, they crossed through the River Jordan on dry ground.
Perhaps Jesus had these stories in mind when he invites us
to imagine him as the gate or door through which we his sheep move back and
forth for pasture and water and safety.
Perhaps Jesus had these stories in mind when he teaches us
about “narrow doors.” “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I
tell you, will try to enter and will not be able” (Luke 13:24). This is a funny picture. Lots of people are trying to get through a
door but can’t. Are we to imagine large
crowds of people trying to fit through a small doorway (like the crowds
pressing for entry into a store on Black Friday)? Or are we to imagine people, one at a time,
trying but failing to get through a narrow door? Is it that they don’t fit? Is it that they can’t figure out how to open
it?
Jesus used the image of the narrow door to remind us that
getting through the doorway into a new world requires only one thing – that
you’re small enough. Children will get
through just fine. They tend to have no
problem imagining something strange and different. For adults, getting through the door is a
little harder. It’s harder because many
of us are out of practice when it comes to laughter, to joy, to surprise, to
curiosity. To get through the narrow
door, you have to be capable of wild-eyed wonder in what you find on the other
side.
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Scripture Texts . . .
Exodus 14:21-22
Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.
Joshua 3:17
The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord stopped in the middle of the Jordan and stood on dry ground, while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground.
Luke 13:24
“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.”
John 10:9
“I am the gate [or door]; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.”
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