Making Room

December 24, 2024

Rev. Mary Erickson

Hope Lutheran Church

Luke 2:1-20

Making Room

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Is there any room?

I’ve been pondering a daily reflection I received on my daily online Henri Nouwen devotional. Nouwen stated that our greatest fear is not being welcome. He wrote: “It connects with your birth fear, your fear of not being welcome in this life, and your death fear, your fear of not being welcome in the life after this.”

Is there any room? The art of hospitality is basically about creating a space for someone. We literally make a space where they can come in! We put down what we’re doing and we open the space of our attention to them. We carve out a time to encounter them. All of these things create a space for someone to reside. A welcoming space

Hospitality opens a place where you are welcomed to enter, where you are accepted for who you most truly are. You don’t have to hide the parts of yourself that you fear will be rejected. Or you don’t have to present only those aspects of yourself that are most generally accepted. No, you are WHOLLY embraced and accepted. You have entered a place where you are fully welcomed, all of you.

The movie West Side Story is noted for the soaring music of Leonard Bernstein. The most sublime song in the score is surely “Somewhere.” Despite the schisms and racial tensions surrounding the world of Tony and Maria, they dream of a time where there will be a place for them:

“There’s a place for us, somewhere a place for us.

Peace and quiet and open air wait for us, somewhere.”

Our greatest fear is what we are not welcome. Is there a place for us? Christmas asks, is there any room?

Our Christmas story is filled with many characters, near and far.

• It begins with young Mary. The angel Gabriel comes and invites her to be the vessel to hold the savior of the world. Mary makes room, even if it means a compromising and difficult future for herself.

• Next comes Joseph. Despite the raised eyebrows of his neighbors and social pressures, he, too, makes room for this unexpected entry.

• But then there’s Caesar. Caesar makes room for no one. He inserts his demands into the lives of people and expects them to make room for his plans.

• Which brings us to Bethlehem. Everyone has jumped to Caesar’s demands, and so Bethlehem is packed like a can of sardines. It’s jostling, absolutely bursting with visitors. So when Joseph and Mary arrive, they hear the same reply, “Sorry, no room.”

• But at last, they find one kind soul. Mary and Joseph can find shelter in his stable.

• Which leads us to the stable. This stable is their welcoming place. And while Mary and Joseph are there, the time comes, the time for Jesus’ entry into our world. Mary and Joseph receive and embrace him. They swaddle him up in a blanket and in their loving embrace.

“There’s a time for us, someday a time for us. Time together with time to spare, time to learn, time to care. Someday”

Is there any room? Christmas now asks you and me this very same question. Is there room for Jesus inside of us?

Many centuries ago, the German mystic, Meister Eckhart, reflected on Christmas. He said that Christmas asks us to make a place within ourselves for the Christ. He said, “Today, we celebrate the Eternal Birth, which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity. But if it doesn’t take place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.”

Will we make room in our hearts for Christ? Will we make our hearts the stable, the manger? Will we be the clothes to swaddle and embrace his divine mystery?

The most important aspect of Christmas is that our hearts, hardened by skepticism and disappointment, by cruelty and despair, that these hearts be softened. Christmas asks that the message of Christ’s coming into our world settles inside us.

The Hebrew scriptures repeatedly call Israel to remember the stranger in their midst. "Remember," they echo, "You were once a stranger in a foreign land.” God calls on Israel to make a place for the stranger.

When Jesus is but an infant, his parents will flee with him to Egypt. They’ll dwell there as refugees, asylum seekers.

Is there room? Is there a place for Jesus? As an adult, Jesus will remark, “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”