Why its okay to hang a TARDIS on your Christmas[advent] Tree

an advent reflection on Matthew 24.23-35 & Isaiah 54.1-10 @EmmanuelBakerSt

Over the past couple of months the outreach team at Emmanuel has been discussing signage. We have been in discussion and conversation over how to best let people know that we are here. How do we let people know that this place is the place where the people of Emmanuel Baker Street meet and come together to worship, to pray, and to live?

Right now we have a very nice and what I would describe as tasteful sign. It’s humble enough, it’s not huge. It lights up at night, but doesn’t illuminate all of Baker Street. It allows us to put a short message up describing upcoming events, but it doesn’t have a scrolling display with pictures or videos. But sometimes, it doesn’t seem like it is enough. Occasionally the trees grow too big in front of it and it can’t be seen. Sometimes people say they have a hard time finding our church. And there is so much we want to say to the community, to the world, how can it all fit on our unassuming sign?

Perhaps what we need is a giant sign with pulsating LED lights that would rival any sign on the Vegas strip. Perhaps we need a sign that shines brightly, lighting all of Baker Street and the entire east side of the city. Yeah, I think that might do it. Maybe we can throw in some big sparkling arrows pointing to the church and a scrolling video board so that we can put pictures and long rambling newsletter articles on it, that kind of sign would surely be successful in bringing people to our church.

But against my hopes for a bright new shiny church sign, Jesus has a few words. “If anyone says to you, ‘Look! Here is the Messiah!’ or ‘There he is!’ – do not believe it…If they say to you, ‘Look! He is in the wilderness’, do not go out. If they say, ‘Look! He is in the inner rooms, do not believe it.’

It seems that my hopes and ideas for a bright sign pointing the way to our church and to Christ may be misguided and not what Jesus intends for us. What then are the signs that point to the coming of Christ and how should our sign look?

As we have begun moving towards Christmas, the nights have grown longer and the days shorter. To this growing darkness, Jesus speaks of the time when Christ will come again. “The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken.”

It turns out the signs of Christ coming, the signs of the advent of Christ in the world, are the non-signs. Rather than a giant illuminated sign pointing the way to Christ, its opposite, the still dark night, in which we gather this night, is the sign pointing to the arrival of God in the world.

During these four weeks of Advent, God is on the move again, stirring in the darkness of the ordinary and the everyday. And as we prepare for Christ to come, God is also stirring in our midst; preparing enlightenment for darkness, surrender for evil, and fulfillment for our deep midnight yearning.

The promise of Advent is the mystery of a God who moves and comes to us in the midst of the darkness, when all signs point to the contrary. It is the promise of God’s transformative love in the places with pedestrian and poorly lit signs, in the places with those portable, flashing arrow signs on the side of the road. You know the ones I’m talking about. Typically, they are yellow and several key words or phrases are misspelled. Typically, the signs and the places they point to are kind of sketchy. The signs, themselves, probably do more to convince you to avoid stopping rather than actually following the flashing arrow to its destination.

The promise of Advent is the promise of the mysterious presence of God in the places in our lives and world where we find these kinds of cheap, flashing, yellow signs. In the places where it seems like God is not, there God promises to be. In the ordinary places and limited places which we give no second thought, there God brings to us the unlimited possibilities and hope of the new life of Christ.

What I am going to do now, is in part a confession. You see, I am an enthusiastic fan of the British television show, Doctor Who. Yes, I confess, I am a nerd. What you need to know about this show is that its main character, Doctor Who, has the ability to travel through time. And he has a time machine called, ‘The Tardis.’ And I think that the Tardis is the perfect illustration of God’s presence among us during this time of Advent, during this time of waiting for Christ to come into the world.

You see, the Tardis, this time machine, looks just like a British police box or kind of like a slightly oversized American phone booth. And that’s how it often functions, much to the advantage of the Doctor. The Doctor is able to take his time machine almost anywhere, and it instantly blends in. It becomes terribly ordinary. A British police box or an American phone booth are both perfectly mundane, plus with cell phones, no one is going to attempt to use it. Everyone walks by without suspicion. The Doctor’s time machine blends in by being unnoticeably normal.

But there the Tardis sits among us, looking extraordinarily ordinary. Yet within the show it is a portal to access the unlimited possibilities of all of time and space. The Tardis itself is quite small, just four feet by four feet or so. And yet, when the door to this time machine in the shape of a phone booth is opened it reveals a cavernous interior, drastically larger than it appears from the outside. As the characters on the show always say in amazement when they first enter into this time machine, “It’s bigger on the inside.”

So too, as we continue in our journey towards Christmas and the nativity, God dwells here among us in the darkness of the ordinary. We sit in amazement in these shadowed places as God enlarges the size of God’s tents around us. The curtains of the habitations of the Lord are stretched out. On our ordinary street corners God does not hold back and reveals to us the astounding depth and breadth of our God’s compassion and love. 

As we continue on our Advent journey let us pray for God’s presence in absence. Let us pray that the Spirit of God might stir up in the dark and in the pedestrian and come fulfill our deepest midnight yearnings. AMEN.