Making Room for Christ

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on November 30, 2025 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

Advent Carols

Some while ago I was in St Martin’s one morning. There was just me here, until a woman walked in and sat for a moment of quiet just beside the aisle, not far from the back on the south side on one of the rows foreshortened by a pillar. There were then just the two of us in the whole church. Two minutes later a man entered with his head down. He didn’t look to left or right, but went to the row on which the woman was sitting, clambered past her and sat maybe ten feet from her, leaning against the pillar. The woman was completely flummoxed: the man had the whole of the rest of the church in which to sit but was set on just that one spot and the fact that she was already sitting on that short row didn’t deter him.

Some while later I was invited to lunch at one of the grand private members’ clubs, half a mile west of here. My host and I arrived at five to twelve, and beheld an enormous dining room festooned with mahogany tables, silver cutlery and crystal chandeliers. It was totally empty. My host said to the greeter, ‘I’m sorry I forgot to book. Might you be able to squeeze us in?’ and surveyed the dozens of vacant tables. The greeter pondered nervously and said, ‘I’ll just go and ask the manager.’

These two stories are both about space. In the first story there seems to be unlimited space, but the man who walk in is only interested in the space that’s already occupied. In the second story there really is unlimited space, but it still seems there are hidden, baffling constraints. The two stories show that space is a relative thing. People adjust their sense of need for space depending on who and what else is around them. A compelling account is found in Julia Donaldson’s 1993 children’s story A Squash and a Squeeze. A lady of senior years complains her house is tiny. A wise man, rather paradoxically, advises, ‘Take in your hen.’ Which she does. Then successively, to her growing dismay, he says, ‘Take in your goat,’ ‘Take in your goat,’ ‘Take in your pig,’ ‘Take in your cow.’ By this time the lady complains, ‘I’m tearing my hair out, I’m down on my knees, my house is a squash and a squeeze.’ Whereupon the wise man says, ‘Take them all out.’ Which she does. Finally she says, ‘There’s no need to grumble and no need to grouse. There’s plenty of room in my house.’ Nothing’s changed about the amount of space in her house; but her perception of that space is transformed.

When Jesus appears in the gospel story, each of the gospel writers in different ways points out that he’s entering occupied territory. John says, ‘He was in the world… yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.’ Luke says, ‘In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas’ – thereby noting all those who believed this was their space, with no room for anyone else. Matthew tells us bloodthirsty Herod had zero tolerance for any rival in Jerusalem. Mark tells us how Herod Antipas took out John the Baptist, having no room for him.

And as the story unfolds, we realise each of the rulers and authorities named makes it clear they have no room for Jesus. So when we read the Christmas story today, and recognise how, one after another,  the people of his time shut the door on him, most vividly in Luke’s account, when Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem to find no room at the inn, it confronts us with a single, challenging question: are we any different? When Jesus comes back, especially if he weren’t to come back in a blaze of glory but under the radar, as a tiny child, or a person experiencing hunger, thirst, isolation, nakedness, sickness or incarceration, would we still close the door on him, would there still be no room at the inn, would we still have no space for Jesus? Is Christmas a sentimental story about long ago, or does it change the way we think and act and live today?

What’s often forgotten about the Christmas story is that Bethlehem wasn’t a tourist destination with hotels, Airbnbs, and a handy campsite. The word for ‘inn’ is better translated as ‘upper room,’ with the room underneath being for the animals. This was a culture with a high regard for hospitality. Remember the words of Hebrews: ‘Don’t neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some have entertained angels unawares.’ You made room for strangers if you possibly could, knowing others would reciprocate when you were in the same situation in the future. And the Holy Family weren’t really strangers – after all they were in Bethlehem because it was Joseph’s ancestral home. So the fact Mary and Joseph found no place to stay wasn’t an unfortunate result of them having not got on the internet a couple of weeks ahead of time – it was a travesty of social expectations and a first-order insult.

Today things are different. A lot of people don’t even answer the phone if they don’t recognise the number – let alone open the door, and if a person let a stranger stay in their home many, perhaps most, people might think they were being unwise, even irresponsible. It’s become quite normal to say this country’s full and there’s no room for the stranger, so much so that even the innkeeper who offered the stable in Bethlehem would today be regarded as offering radical hospitality and questions would be asked about the risk assessment.

It’s often said, ‘Good fences make good neighbours.’ But if the world is all fences, no one ever sees the sun. As the stories I shared at the beginning demonstrate, space is relative. Making room isn’t a burdensome demand, but a rewarding invitation. As the squash and squeeze story illustrates, when you share your space, you begin to understand it in a different way. Sharing space isn’t about reduction, as if the whole conversation is, ‘If I give some to you, there’ll be less for me.’ It’s about discovery, because while every sharing of space requires negotiation and careful communication, it’s also about a change of mindset, in starting to think, ‘You being here isn’t diminishing me, it’s enhancing me.’

The activist Bryan Stevenson, who spoke in our autumn lecture series three years ago, bases his understanding of justice on what he calls proximity. His version of being with is get close to those experiencing pain, oppression or incarceration. He says, ‘When you try to make policy from a distance, you get it wrong.’ Getting close physically and emotionally rehumanises those who’ve been dehumanised. On of his principles is being willing to do things that are uncomfortable and inconvenient. Because change only comes when we’re willing to do hard things. And we only become open to do hard things when we’re in proximity – when we’re sharing space.

But the crucial step is to let go of the first-person pronoun and begin to be a bit less possessed by the idea of ownership. From a theological point of view, ownership is a human construction. In the end, everything belongs to God. We can’t ultimately say, ‘This is my space,’ ‘You can’t enter my room,’ or even ‘This is mine.’ Nothing finally belongs to us, and we can’t take anything with us when we die. This realisation should change our whole perspective on space and making room. As is sometimes said, ‘When you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher fence.’

Advent is fundamentally about looking ahead to the last day, when Jesus will return and bring history to an end, a moment when we hope to be better prepared than we were the first time he came. And this perspective of heaven and the life beyond, eternity after time, may provide the clue for how we learn to make room, as people, as a community, or as a country. Here’s a thought to ponder. Think about the word ‘belong.’ It has two meanings. One is about ownership – as in, ‘This space belongs to me.’ The other is about being owned – as in, ‘I belong here.’ The difference is subtle, but profound – and I believe it’s the key to what it means to make room. If you insist on having many belongings, and all your energy is put into putting fences around your belongings, you’ll never find a sense of belonging anywhere else. Belonging will be a matter of ownership, protection, preservation, and in the end, fear. By contrast if you let go of focusing on what belongs to you, then you make space in your life for something far more important – what it actually means to belong. You can’t learn to belong unless and until you begin to let go of acquiring belongings and expending your energy protecting them.

See how this is what we discover in the Christmas story. God doesn’t make a big song and dance of saying, ‘This world belongs to me.’ God doesn’t make a big fuss of saying, ‘This is my space.’ In fact, in the act of creation, God has precisely made room for us. The whole creative process is one in which God makes room for us and all the other creatures. God doesn’t say, ‘Making room for you has left less room for me.’ The whole point of creation is that God enjoy the experience of having a companion. In creation God entirely lets go of the fence-and-protection business. And at Christmas God begins another business. That’s the belonging business. God comes into the world having let go of the insistence on ownership and becomes vulnerable to being offered or refused hospitality. On Christmas night it doesn’t go particularly well, and on Good Friday it doesn’t go well at all. But making room is henceforth the name of the game, and the way we discover belonging is more important than having belongings. For when our Advent hope is finally realised, and we are taken by God into the eternal home, we shall find God has made room for us. We will have no belongings at all. But for the first time, we shall find that we utterly belong.