What Lies Beyond the Narrow Door?

When I was growing up, I hated to read almost as much as I hated going out to the barn to do chores. While chores were part of the expected daily schedule, reading was something that my parents offered rewards for. For example if I read a book and was able to tell my mom about it, she’d offer up baseball cards, my pride and joy, as my reward.
My motto was “Why read when you can watch TV?” I’m sure many of the educators in the room cringe at the idea of a second grade boy saying that, but that was how I operated until I got to college.

Needless to say, if I was going to read, I wanted to read something entertaining, and I found that Roald Dahl was able to create worlds to me that were fantastically humorous and quite enjoyable. Numerous of his stories were adapted for the big screen including James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, Witches, and the first and now again the most recent is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Renamed Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for cinema, this story recounts the journey of Charlie Bucket who receives, against all odds, one of five Golden tickets in the entire world that grants him free admission to the great yet mysterious Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory.

What you are about to see is how these five kids along with a guardian of their choosing are able to enter into this chocolate paradise. As you might imagine, it doesn’t appear so simple.

Watch clip… (a link to the clip or simply where it is in the movie is coming soon)

Now what did you see? A narrow door, a tiny door, and what was said about the tiny narrow door? Mrs. Klug remarked, “you’re not squeezing me through that tiny door” and it is also remarked that nobody can get through there. Sound familiar?

Reference: Luke 13:22-30

In our lives we strive to go through that narrow door, that tiny door that the Law of God demands us to go through. We are asked to keep God’s commands and live life without sin and that is the only way to make it through that tiny door, that narrow passageway of the law, but we know as many of the characters in this scene, that there’s no way we’re making it through, even to the point of saying, I’m not even going to try and get through there, I’ll just get stuck. We feel perhaps sometimes that God is like Willie Wonka, with a surprise around every corner and impossible tasks to undertake. But God, still much like Willie Wonka uses his calming voice to say what? Better press on. He urges us to press on even when we see no possible way of getting through, because he knows how to get us through to the other side. He knows how to turn the narrow door into a gigantic door and lead us into paradise. And how does that door turn from a tiny narrow passageway into a door large enough to fit an elephant through? Christ was able to go through the narrow door himself, not sin and by going through it and then dying and rising again, he opened it for the rest of the world to get through. And we can’t get through without his help.

I am convinced that Roald Dahl had this passage from Luke’s gospel in mind when creating this classic work. The narrow door scene is just one example. The entire story is about how a boy poverty stricken in every way goes from last to first and his peers go from spoiled in first to last.

The reality is that we are never first. God is always first, in our lives and in the world, and in heaven God is first, but we, being with him in paradise, share in his being first, share in the forgiveness he won for us on the cross, and share in entering through that narrow door with his help. As Christ says in John 14, "I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Delivered on August 31, 2007