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O Emmanuel — “O God-with-us”
The Fourth Sunday Of Advent
We beseech thee, Almighty God, to purify our consciences by thy daily visitation, that when thy Son Jesus Christ cometh he may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The Fourth Sunday Of Advent
O Emmanuel -- “O God-with-us”
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A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
✛
Make Room
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, but it is still Advent. We still have the Altar vested in purple, the color of preparation but not yet arrival. The message of Advent is, prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make room in your mind and heart for Christ.
I heard a story the other day and have permission to share it. It happened long ago far away.
There was a widowed father of three teenagers who met a single professional woman a few years after his first wife’s death. His former wife had herself lost her own mother to a similar early death by cancer and had been raised by her aunt, her mother’s sister.
The familiar words of the Prayer Book Burial Service say that in the midst of life we are in death. It is also true that in the midst of death we are in life. The widower and the single professional woman fell in love and in due course married.
The newly married middle-aged woman was suddenly the stepmother to three teenagers and was thrust into a family of strong relationships. How would she fit in? Would there be room for her?
One day her husband’s family had a big gathering. The aunt who had mothered and reared the departed first wife came up to the second wife and stepmother. “Carol would be so happy that Bill found you,” she said.[1] “You’re such a blessing to him and to the children.”
All this was more than thirty years ago. The person telling me this story was the second wife. Her eyes filled with water. “I have lived by that word ever since,” she said. “It doesn’t get any better than that,” I responded. “It doesn’t get any better than that,” she repeated back. The aunt spoke a word from God.
How would Christ fit into his own family? “How shall this be, since I know not a man?” Mary asked the angel. Joseph decided, until the angel spoke to him in a dream, to put his pregnant fiancé away quietly. “Fear not,” said the angel, saying to both of them that the Child was directly from God, God’s Son.
So the family, living by the word of God, adjusted. Christ came. But there was more dislocation – a birth away from home because of an imperial decree, in a stable because the inn had no room. Then there was political terror, a flight into Egypt, and a terrible crime by King Herod the Great against the children of Bethlehem.
The king died, and Christ went home to Nazareth and grew up, and waxed strong in spirit and wisdom until the time of his manifestation to the people.
It is clear from the Gospels that other members of Jesus’ earthly family were not so sure about the fit between Christ and themselves. To them Jesus would say that the true members of his family are those who hear the word of God and keep it.
Is there room in my heart for Jesus? Two things are needful. One is clearing away pride and self-will to make room. The second is trust in the Lord and love in order to receive Christ: like the new wives, both Mary and the woman in our first story.
The angel said fear not. Mary took him at his word, “Let it be.” The first wife’s aunt in my story also said fear not. The new wife held onto that word. And Jesus’ family members came around like Joseph. They made room; they discovered love. It doesn’t get any better.
I wish you a blessed Christmas, with room in your heart for our God and Savior. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. There is room in my heart for thee.
Our King and Savior draweth nigh: O come, let us adore him.
_______________
[1] Both “Carol” and “Bill” are pseudonyms.
