Click here if you would like to read a previous sermon by Janice. Each sermon will open in a separate window.

Making Space

Sister Helen Prejean, in the movie version of the true story “Dead Man Walking” is visiting Matthew Poncelet who is on death row. She has made herself available to him in the most mindful, loving way. “You are a son of God, Matthew Poncelet.”
He cries. “Nobody ever called me a son of God before. Called me a son-of-a-you-know-what lots of times, but never no son of God. Thank you for loving me.”

Later, as they prepare to take Matthew to the place of execution, Helen tells him to keep his eyes on her. “I will be the face of Christ for you,” she says.

This is a story about the Virgin Mary. This is a Christmas story.

In our faith story about the Child God born of a virgin, Mary made space. That’s what it means to be a virgin in sacred stories: one who is available, empty, not possessed by something else.

Really, the whole Christmas story is about making space. Mary makes space for the Holy One to enter her. Joseph makes space for a change of plans. The shepherds and kings make space for something new. The innkeeper makes space as best he can.

Like Mary, we need to make space for God to grow in us if we want to birth God into the world.

Sometimes we don’t make space because our hearts are crowded. They are crowded with fear or judgment or self-pity or bitterness. And then suddenly we find an angel visiting us asking us to make space for God to live within us.

Other times we are called to make space in our days, in our busyness. Sometimes bearing God into the world is as simple as listening with your full attention. Have you ever talked to someone on the phone about something important to you and knew they were still typing on the computer as they listened?

A man was a student pastor. He got word that his beloved grandmother was near death. He went to look for the church moderator to say he needed to be gone for a few days. The moderator, Ed, a carpenter, was working on someone’s house. The young pastor found him there, and called, “Ed.”

Ed turned, looked at the pastor, took off his tool belt and walked to meet him. He had heard some distress in the pastor’s voice, and he took off his tool belt so he would be totally available. The pastor remembered that gesture decades later. Sometimes we are called to make space.

Sometimes we’re called to make space in our hearts. Sometimes we’re called to make space in our busyness. And sometimes we’re called to interior space, space set aside that is not full of wants and worries and words, but is just silent, empty space. This is a wonderful form of prayer, because it gives God space to move in.

Orthodox Christians talk about Mary as theotokos, the bearer of God. That is the power of this story: not just that one woman named Mary bore God, but that you and I are called to do that too. We are called to carry God within, and to birth God into the world in the course of our days and lives.

We cannot carry God unless there is space. A life of faith is a life of spaciousness, so we have time to notice the angel, so we have room to carry God. A life of spaciousness has to do with how full we make our calendar, how crowded our hearts are (with fear, judgment, hate), and how much of our prayer is empty space.

When I was in France some years ago, I spent several days in the town of Chartres, and some time each day in the magnificent cathedral there. Like many cathedrals, this one housed a relic: fabric that was thought to be Mary’s veil. They didn’t make much of it. You could walk all over the cathedral and miss it; I would have except for a friend’s advance warning to look for it at the back of the cathedral. 

It has been tested, we’re told, and found to be from the right time and place to have been Mary’s veil. Whether it is or not, I don’t know. That didn’t seem important to me. I sat before that veil for a long time, awed. I prayed. I watch others come and kneel there in prayer. I lit candles for loved ones. I felt the energy of that veil emanating, touching me. The veil pushed aside my contemporary ideas about what is possible or reasonable. It pushed aside my modern limitations and doubts. In that pushing aside, it made space in me, and in that space, God could enter and move. That veil invited me to be like Mary, empty enough to allow God to stir and kick within me, empty enough that I could give birth to God in my ordinary days.

This is our busiest season, and the message of the season is: make space.

Make space. In our calendars, perhaps. In our hearts, which are full of regret or anger or cynicism. In our prayers which are so crowded with wants and worries and words that God has no room to move.

Maybe you can’t even manage it until this season is over. Maybe you can only manage it a little. That’s ok; start where you are. But as best you can, wherever you can, make space. If the angel does not come to you, if God is not being carried in you, of what use is Christmas?

©2009 Janice Jean Springer