Isaiah 7:10-16 Matthew 1:18-end
There is something powerful about gathering together around an Advent Wreath – as friends, strangers, and pilgrims. There is an intentionality in being together, journeying expectantly together as we light the candles over the weeks one by one, hearing the story of our salvation together.
It reminds us that the narrative of Advent, the events leading up to that very first Christmas, leave us caught up in something far bigger than ourselves, a story that the flickering lights on the wreath call us to make room for.
Ten years ago almost to this day I found myself gathered with others not around a candle flame on an Advent wreath, but around a fire out in the open at night. It was a small fire, surrounded by people squeezed as close to it as they could, huddled together in an attempt to keep warm.
The people were strangers and friends from many different communities, cultures, faiths and backgrounds. Conversation was stilted for people were tired and worn down, yet sparks of humour and a delight in each other’s company still rose to the surface.
That warming fire was in the former camp in Calais known as ‘the jungle’, and the people around it were refugees.
I was only there for 24 hours as I dropped off medical supplies along with an inspiring group of doctors and nurses from our local hospital who were gifting a week of their annual leave to see what they could offer into the challenging situation before them – but those 24 hours were eye opening, and most of them were spent in the huddle around that fire, because that is where people gathered, conversations took place, and stories were told.
One young girl particularly stuck in my mind. She was 18 and had lost contact with her family as they rushed to leave Syria after an attack on their village. She did not know if they were alive and, if they were, where they might be. The horrors of the civil war had scattered people far and wide.
She arrived in the camp with just the clothes she stood up in, a small bag with some documents and family mementos – and her five year old brother. Around her neck was a piece of string with a crucifix on it – a present from her grandmother at her baptism. The chain had broken during her long journey, the cross had not.
She told me her story in broken English as we sat around the fire, her brother asleep in the tent nearby. And when she had finished she said something extraordinary which has stayed with me to this day:
‘When I fled from the war all I could think about was arriving in a place of safety and the journey to get there. But now, stuck in this camp, I am not journeying or arriving. I am having to pause. And in the pause I sit by the fire with strangers and we learn to make room for one another – and for God.’
What an insight. In such challenging and fearful circumstances gathering around a fire and making room for God.
Just as we do in our own small way as we gather around the flickering candles of an Advent Wreath in the approach to Christmas.
Just as Mary and Joseph did in the gospel reading we heard a few moments ago.
Mary – making room for God in her ‘yes’ to the incarnation and in her trustfulness in the uncertain journey which was to follow.
Joseph – encountering an angel in a dream and finding the courage to make room for God, setting aside his image of what life with Mary would be like, and allowing God to shape it into something different.
Mary and Joseph made room for God, and so did many others in the narrative of that first Christmas which we will hear told time and time again over the coming days.
And here, on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we are called to do likewise.
To make room for God in the ordinary, in the silence before everyone wakes, in the tired sigh at the end of the day, in the prayers whispered when no one is listening.
To make room for God in the extraordinary, in the wonder of a child born to dwell on the margins, a refugee born far from his parents’ home, forced to flee the terrors of Herod and abide in a new land, in the story of a child who offered his life so that the dividing walls between humanity and the love of God could be broken down in a new togetherness.
Advent, Christmas, is all about making room.
Making room for God – for Emmanuel, God with us.
Let’s make sure we’re ready.
Amen.