Advent 2011

Advent 2011 Week 1

Advent week 1

“Mad man in a box”

Let me start by explaining the presence of a TARDIS on the Advent page!.  When the 11th Doctor Who was introduced to our TV screens last year, I was struck by a quote from one of the opening conversations he had with a young girl, Amelia Pond who grows uo to be Amy, his companion.  He says to her.
“Amy Pond, there's something you'd better understand about me cause it's important, and one day your life may depend on it: I am definitely a mad man with a box!”

It’s a recurring theme throughout the series and somehow it came to me whilst preparing talks for the Advent retreat!   The Doctor is an alien who looks human but is very different and throughout the 50 years of its history there have been 11 incarnations of the same character.  Each one a little different, and when you think you’ve understood it, there’s a little twist and you see a totally different doctor and have a totally different understanding of who the Doctor is.  But in reality it’s the same Doctor and it’s our understanding that will change.  It’s like our image of God, the God of the Jews is the God of the Christians, the Old and the New Testament, God doesn’t change from being a vengeful, angry God to the God of love in the New Testament, it’s our understanding that changes.  We change, not God!   We see different incarnations, God only sees us with his all powerful, all loving eyes. 

The idea came to me that in our own personal relationship with God, in the history of the relationship of the Jewish and Christian people with God, we put God into boxes, to cribs even, to our narrow minded view of who God should be or even worse what God should do.  It led me to the idea that where are the “boxes”, the “enclosed spaces” that we see in the Old Testament.  It also came to me that it’s not only our image of God that we limit, that we put in boxes, it is also our way of viewing or judging other people and ourselves at times.  We say don’t judge a book by its cover but often we do and we certainly judge people by the way they look, what they wear and first impressions are very important.  We can look at the TARDIS as an ordinary box, and in the 1960s it was designed to fit into the environment so that you would pass it by and not notice it.  Something that can seem to be so ordinary can have many different layers.  The TARDIS is bigger on the inside that the outside, like us, like others, like God!  A person can appear to be so ordinary and yet do extraordinary things, in fact, we are extraordinary, we are the glory of God made manifest in our world!
 
In the book of Genesis God saw what he had created and said that it was good, and we understand the pinnacle of creation to be the creation of humanity, “in the image of himself he created them, male and female, he created them”.  To be human is to be a reflection of God’s glory.  St Irenaeus wrote in one of his books against the heretics in the 2nd century that “the glory of God is man and woman fully alive and the life of man and woman is the vision of God” To be human is to be a wonderful thing and not to be taken for granted.  Earlier this year I watched on iPlayer, the BBC series “Being Human” and I’ve found it fascinating at times.  You have three apparent twenty-something characters sharing a house in Bristol, trying to live a normal social life, despite being a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost.  To me they represent 3 common human problems, the vampire, lust for the things we cannot have, the werewolf with a serious anger management problem and the ghost, unseen, unnoticed and with a terrible problem of low self esteem.  They just want to be human, to be normal, to live like everyone else, and to have a life that everyone else around them takes for granted.  It’s a trap we all too easily fall into ourselves.   To be human is to be amazing, to live, to breathe, to do so many things, go so many places, create new lives, to be bigger on the inside than on the outside, to build new worlds and yet we don’t always recognise the good and give praise for all that we have received.  God thought we were so wonderful, he became one of us!

Maryanne Williamson, wrote,
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

We were born to manifest the glory of God within us, to recognise we are great.  Sometimes in our life we all experience a moment of that sense of goodness. Greatness, ability to do something that sets us apart.  I call it “a broomstick moment”!  I am a big Harry Potter fan and I always feel really sorry for Harry whenever I read the books.  In the first Harry Potter book, near the beginning is a scene where Harry discovers for the first time in quite a sad life so far that he can do something he never dreamt of.  He is dismayed to find out, in his second week of school, that flying lessons are also going to be shared with Slytherin house, and because he has no idea about how to fly, he will be subject to ridicule from Draco Malfoy, a boy he hates all the way through the series.  He’s been made to feel worthless by his family, he’s afraid that he is not going to live up to people’s expectations of him.  This most of us can sympathise with as we’ve felt like this at times, he feels worthless and of less importance than other people.

At the flying lesson, Neville one of the characters, falls off his broom and injures himself.  The instructor, Madam Hooch, takes him off to the hospital wing, ordering the rest of the class to stay on the ground.  Draco spots something of Neville's on the ground, and takes off to place it in a tree, knowing Neville will struggle to fetch it.  Harry flies off after him, and finds that flying on a broomstick is something he is naturally good at.  He feels really alive and good for the first time in his life. (“Blood was pounding in his ears.  He mounted the broom and kicked hard against the ground and up, up he soared, air rushed through his hair and robes whipped out behind him – and in a rush of fierce joy he realised he’d found something he could do without being taught – this was easy, this was wonderful.” )  In our lives we will have all experienced this “broomstick moment”, when life was good, when we everything we did went well, when we succeeded when we thought we’d fail, when we’d realise that somebody loves us just as we are, or when we’ve baked the perfect meal even!  During this Advent season it would be good to take time to reflect on the following: How are we extraordinary even if we think we are ordinary.  What is special, unique about us that we need to focus on more in our lives to appreciate the gift God has given us this Advent? 

To be human is to be an incredible piece of art, God’s piece of art and because of that we are called to serve, praise and worship the one who created us.  Because we are alive, because we can do so much, because we can fail and fail again but still keep even trying in this mad, sometimes dark, but wonderful world of ours, we can in the words of Psalm 139, praise God for the wonder of our being.  When we get rid of all our misconceptions about God, our limited human tendency to categorise and label things, to put ourselves, others, and God into boxes, then we can truly praise God this Advent for the glory of our being, for the glory of God becoming one of us, for the beautiful season of waiting and longing.
I’ll end with a quote from that psalm using the version adapted by Bernadette Farrell in the Laudate hymnbook.

O God, you search me and you know me.
All my ways lie open to your gaze.
When I walk or lie down, you go before me:
Ever the maker and keeper of my days.

You know my resting and my rising.
You discern my purpose from afar,
and with love everlasting you besiege me:
In ev’ry moment of life or death, you are.

Before a word is on my tongue, Lord,
you have known its meaning through and through.
You are with me beyond my understanding:
God of my present, my past and future too.

Although your Spirit is upon me,
still I search for shelter from your light.
There is nowhere on earth I can escape you:
Even the darkness is radiant in your sight.

For you created me and shaped me,
gave me life within my mother’s womb.
For the wonder of who I am, I praise you:
Safe in your hands, all creation is made new.