No room at the inn / church / party / lunch / concert / gig *

No room at the inn / church / party / lunch / concert / gig *

*delete as appropriate

If there is no room for you then where do you find space? 

I left the Church of England in early 2022, one of the most liberating and life-giving experiences I have ever had. Tragic but true. There was simply no room for me in it, not unless I was prepared to contort myself out of shape, lose integrity and continue to submit to emotional abuse. Since then, Christmas has had a very different feeling for me. I no longer celebrate it in the church setting which was so familiar to me over very many years. I live in a Hampshire market town with many churches but not one single affirming one. There is still no room for me, my husband, or my family.

I am certainly not comparing myself to the holy family but I suspect for many people, and perhaps particularly for LGBT+ people, that sense of having no room, of there being no space for you is a very familiar one – especially at this time of the year. For some, that may be about wanting a faith community but being unable to find one. It might be about being estranged from family or having to pretend to be someone and something else in order to find space. It might be loneliness or homelessness or a whole range of other complex scenarios. 

If you are identifying with this in any way then you are part of the nativity story. The story of a man and a pregnant woman travelling long distances on a donkey only to be told there was no space for them. The story of shepherds whose space was on the hills, daring to come into the local town based on an extraordinary angelic hope. The story of foreigners, travelling to strange lands compelled by a star and the hope of something beyond their normal experience. The story of a King who feared losing his space and doing anything he could to hold onto it, whoever paid the price. The story of an incredible baby who carried within himself everything – all time and all things – and yet the only space the world could find for him was an animal feeding trough in a backstreet stable.

What strikes me most about the nativity story is the ordinariness of it. These are a range of very ordinary people. There is nothing special about them other than their ability to respond to invitations to take part in something extra ordinary. To take the risk of stepping into new space, to being part of creating that new space. The stable may have been small, dirty, and insignificant but in the ordinariness of that space, in the ordinariness of those people, an incredibly vast, inclusive, affirming and endless space was created. 

That is the space we are invited to. That is the space where we can all fit without having to contort ourselves into anyone else’s expectations or compromise our integrity or pretend we are something other than our true selves. This is that new Christmas feeling for me that I was referring to. In that moment space was created for me. Space was created for everyone. It isn’t a space which is encased by medieval stone walls or crumbling churchyards. It isn’t contained by statements of faith or trendy music groups. There are no bouncers at the entrance checking whether your name is on the list. There are no committees assessing whether you have the correct qualifications / experience / appearance / sexuality / gender / other – again add and delete as appropriate. The space created by that tiny baby in that insignificant ordinary stable is expansive and infinite.

Christian churches have been asking for too long whether we will make space for the holy child at Christmas. We have it wrong. We don’t make the space, Jesus does and invites us into it. What that space looks like for each of us will be different according to our context and our needs. The consistent thing is that the space is there for us and at the heart of that space is unconditional love. Unconditional love is its heart and its walls and its floor and its ceiling. Unconditional love is the very essence, the very substance of that space. 

Once again this year I will be accepting that divine Christmas invitation to dwell in this space – to inhabit it along with every other ordinary person who is also part of that wonderful nativity story. That space won’t look like a church, it won’t look like a prayer meeting, it won’t look like a bible study or a jumble sale or a coffee morning or indeed any other of the spaces we create. And in that space I will find love and acceptance, I will find challenge and growth, I will find people like me and people unlike me, I will find joy and I will find pain. All held in the unconditional love of God shown in the birth, life and death of the Holy child Jesus.

Wherever you are, whoever you are with or not with, whether you are in a faith community or not I pray that you will find and feel that space to which God invites every single one us.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a blessed new year.

Peter Leonard, Patron