Angels unawares

Last Friday my wife and I went to see Paddington, a new live-action movie based on Michael Bond’s stories. A young Peruvian bear comes to London to find the explorer who befriended his aunt and uncle in Peru, telling them wonderful things about the UK and its capital.

It’s a kids’ film, and as such is enormous fun, but it also raises some serious issues – about how, for example we respond as a society to illegal immigrants who regard the UK as a golden destination.

Paddington stows away on a cargo ship, keeps himself alive on the long voyage by scoffing innumerable jars of marmalade, evades custom checks at London docks, and makes his way to the station whose name he is later given. After a long, anxious wait to be befriended by someone (as the explorer was certain would happen, at least according to the stories he told Paddington’s relatives), he was at last taken home by the Brown family, initially on a very temporary basis.

At one point we see the bedraggled bear wandering through blustery London streets and concluding that the capital is definitely not as welcoming as it’s been cracked up to be. Will he in the end, despite the domestic dramas which his enthusiasm and inexperience of British ways give rise to, find the real home he longs for, the place where he belongs?

This theme is relevant at Christmas. Joseph and the heavily-pregnant Mary arrive in Bethlehem as migrants – no doors are opened wide to welcome them, and they take refuge in a stable. Later, after the birth of Jesus, hearing of evil King Herod’s plans to annihilate all male babies in the Bethlehem area they take flight to Egypt as refugees and strangers.

One lesson of the Christmas story – and it was reinforced by Jesus in his teaching – is that each of us as individuals is both challenged and privileged to welcome the stranger, the ‘other’, the outsider, the person who doesn’t ‘fit in.’

Who is this stranger whom I can make at home? It’s easier perhaps to help folk at this time of year – by giving to a foodbank for example, or inviting a lonely neighbour round to share in the Christmas meal. But is there someone in my life who needs longer-term welcome and support?

Is there someone in my family, someone I share a house with, even, who does not feel at home, and who yearns for a sense of unconditional acceptance? Have I shut some people out of my life because their views are different from mine? 

The Brown family come to realise that Paddington is needed just as much as he is in need. His coming frees Mr Brown from the middle-aged caution which has overlaid his natural zaniness, and helps Mrs Brown, an artist, find her way through a creative ‘block.’ The children grow more open and spontaneous.

This insight also reflects a Christian principle - that as we reach out and open our hearts to ‘the other’ not with a virtuous sense of ‘doing good’ but in simple, generous-spirited warmth, so we ourselves are changed and blessed.

There’s a dark strand in Paddington. The Peruvian explorer has long-since died, and his evil taxidermist daughter wants to – well, you get the picture. A glass display unit in the Natural History Museum awaits one, small, furry specimen.

There’s evil in the Christmas story too – the King’s infanticide, as he sought to wipe out the prince who threatened his reign. Walking in the light inevitably means confronting darkness and facing pain and unanswered questions, but the coming of Jesus at Bethlehem is a sign to us that in the end, light will prevail.

Once the dramas are over Paddington articulates well his sense of being at home in London. It seems to the young bear that there’s lots of diversity in the capital, lots of people who are ‘different’, so that difference becomes the norm, and he, conscious of his own difference, feels completely at home.

There’s a profound theme here. When I feel ‘different’ it’s easy to contrast ‘me’ with ‘them’ – all the others. But when I discover that each of ‘them’ has their own story, their own difference, then I realise that it’s OK to be me, and in welcoming them, I myself, through time, will find a welcome.

In the movie, Paddington waves from a taxi window to a genial elderly customer sipping coffee at a pavement cafe. It's Michale Bond himself. He nods knowingly in recognition. Christmas reminds us that God doesn't simply have a cameo role in the story God created, but came, and comes on set in Jrsus, the ultimate stranger. And it is in welcoming this Jesus into our lives that we find our true home.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 18th December 2014)