Advent week #1

Prepare Him Room

            This year, is the three hundredth anniversary of the much-loved Christmas Carol:  Joy to the World.  Each Sunday of Advent, we will explore a verse of the song.  Isaac Watts wrote Joy to the World, not as a hymn but as a poem based on Psalm 98.  The first verse is this:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!  Let earth receive her King;  Let every heart prepare him room,  And heaven and nature sing.

The song begins with the good news:  the Lord is come!  Jesus has been born.  The hope of God’s people has become a reality.  Emmanuel is with us.  This is our joy, this is what we celebrate, God has given us his promise.   

But the next phrase is not so complete, difinitive, or absolute, it moves us from the good news, the joy of what has happened in the past into the present, into this very moment with our own decision to respond.  God has acted, joy has been sent, now it is time to respond, now let earth receive her king and now let every heart prepare him room.  This is a repetitive act for each generation, the earth received the Christ child 2,000 years ago, will it receive him again?  Hearts of million of people over the past two thousand years have prepared him room, will we also be open to the coming of Christ into our lives? 

As we light the first candle of Advent, it is the cande of Hope.  The hope presented in this carol is that each heart will prepare him room which will lead to yet another hope, a hope for the future for when the world receives her King, when our hearts prepare him room, something amazing will happen, heaven and nature will sing.  The sacred will connect with the mundane, the inbreaking of heaven will be felt, heard, announced in this world and in our lives.  Truly, that is joy.  Joy, the understanding that God’s promise was not for one moment of history but is on-going for each generation, for each of us to believe.  Hope manifests itself as past, present and future.  And the future is a day and age when heaven and nature will sing, sing together in harmony, in joy, in praise of what God has done and is doing in the world.  This hope of the future extends itself all the way back to the prophet Isaiah. 

As the prophet Isaiah wrote:  The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus ² it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.  Nature will sing when the day comes when:  Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

So hopefully if we are here today, we are working on ways in our own faith journey to prepare space in our hearts for God.  Advent reminds us, that even if we have been a part of the church our entire lives, this is the season to slow down, the season to reflect and ponder and find ways to grow spiritually as we seek to create space for Emmanuel to dwell within us.  Sometimes this is just something that seems so natural, other times it can be a real challenge. 

Just look at the passage from the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph struggled with what it meant to prepare room in his heart for this child that was to be born.  In fact, we are told when he heard Mary was with child, he wanted to dismiss her quietly.  In doing so, he would not just be dismissing Mary, but dismissing the child within her.  Without even knowing what he was doing, he could have just sent her away, sent the child away, and missed out on being a part of God’s story.  Thankfully for Joseph, an Angel appeared to him in a dream and explained to him that God was at work, that this child is Emmanuel, God with us.  Thankfully Joseph had enough faith, enough understanding, enough openness to the work of God in the world around him that he believed the message in his dream. 

Prepare him room, prepare space in your own life even if it comes with consequences.  Joseph did not want to expose Mary to public disgrace, or was he saving himself from public disgrace?  If Mary was dismissed quietly she would still have to find a place to go, a family member, someone that would take her in and there would still be public disgrace.  Definitely a double standard going on here. 

Are there consequences in our lives today for preparing space in our hearts for Jesus?  Do people question what we believe or why we attend church?  Do we want to quietly dismiss Mary and send this whole thing away?  Or do we hunger for the meaning behind it all?  The sacred joy that God sends into this world that is there for us to embrace. 

As we seek to prepare room in our hearts we return to this concept of hope.  What does hope mean to you?  I spent a lot time this past week pondering the word hope and I decided that it has a different meaning for each and everyone of us.  We all have different things that we are longing for, that we are waiting for, that we would like to see actualized but are not sure if it will come into being.  We may hope for something specific to ourselves such as a job, or family, or health, or we may hope for something for the greater world such as the end of hunger, homelessness, or war.  We may hope for the day when the desert will bloom like in Isaiah.  In our culture, hope manifests itself as the desire for good to overcome evil.  Hope can be seen as transforming places of despair into places of healing and wholeness.  Prosperity, thriving, fullness, completeness.  Hope is the desire that things can be better.  Hope is what brings meaning and purpose into life. 

Throughout the Thanksgiving and Christmas Season people seek to be generous and for people of faith, this is one way in which we prepare our hearts for the Christ Child.  Today, we hope to bring a little bit of joy to a child through the Toy March.  Roxbury social services seeks to bring a little bit of hope to families through the Thanksgiving food drive.  Habitat for humanity brings hope and joy to families when they receive not just a place to live but a home. 

The good news is:  Joy and hope break into our world on a daily basis when people open their hearts to the needs of others, when people seek to live a life of generosity and compassion, when people open their hearts to the calling of God.  These are all places that we can participate within creating not just good deeds or kind acts but sacred moments.  When the people of God act in the world with Christ in their hearts it is truly sacred work that is being done, and in those moments, heaven and nature sing.  Amen.