The Lego movie

I have four boys, and strewn around the bedroom floor is Lego galore from 101 Lego worlds. So you can guess that The Lego Movie was a big winner in our household. But not just for the boys. There was a playfulness present for the adults, with 21st C life parodies abounding: paying for overpriced coffee is apparently "awesome!"

One of the reasons I think the film works so well for kids is that it asks a question at the heart of every child.

Am I special?

Am I important?

Do I make a difference to the world?

And so we meet Emmet, an ordinary, construction-worker, Lego man who is not so special, as the hero. Even his friends in the construction industry struggle to remember anything about him that marks him out. And yet, he is the "chosen one". He must be. He discovered the artifact to defeat the Kraggle.

I loved the scene where Emmet met all the master builders in the Lego world. The contrast wonderfully highlights his ordinariness. He, the Lego construction worker, tries to persuade the Lego Superman, Gandalf, Dumbledore, Wonder Woman, Yoda etc that he's the chosen one. Can he really be the hero? Can he really be special? He's so ordinary.

And yet that's the point. It's the whole Lego universe that's under threat. It's going to be ‘Kraggled’. Who better to be the saviour of the world world than an ordinary Lego man? And who better than a construction worker to represent the Lego world that's all about construction? Emmet is the perfect hero because he represents the ordinary, everyday Lego world.

This throws light on another construction worker, Jesus. One of the reasons that Jesus was rejected in his own time was his sheer ordinariness. He came from Galilee (via Bethlehem). It was an ordinary place. He had an ordinary mother and ordinary brothers. And he was an ordinary construction worker. Plenty sneered at this and saw it as a reason to reject him. And they still do now - Jesus just isn’t special enough.

But it was this very ordinariness, this very humanness that mattered. For Jesus came to represent not just the great and mighty before God but the lowly, weak and ordinary as well. Just as God promised,

'He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.' Isaiah 53:2

All of humanity are under the threat of death. We will all die no matter how great or small, strong or weak we are.That's why in Jesus, God the Son came in the flesh as an ordinary baby with ordinary needs. He was born and grew up to represent ordinary humanity with our extraordinary need. (Warning: plot spoiler) And like Emmet, Jesus sacrificed himself. He chose death to save the ordinary. He came to ransom people from the grave.

If we have the ears to hear it, this tells us something we ache to hear. It tells us we are special. So special that God came in the flesh to die for us. Not us, as the world, but us as ordinary, everyday, expensive-coffee-drinking individuals. Whether construction workers or master builders, Jesus came for you and me. And he died for you and me.

Now, that is awesome.