Preparing for Christmas.

Today is the third Sunday in Advent, which means we have one week left to prepare for Christmas. The preparation I have in mind however isn't of the material kind, important as it is. There's another act of preparation that we need to undertake, but which so often gets squeezed out of our hectic lives - the preparation of our hearts, our spirits, to meet with Christ on Christmas morning.

If we don't prepare for this event, the advent of Christ being born again in our hearts, then we shouldn't be surprised if we miss him, and are left with that hollow, slightly disappointed feeling that so many people experience once the dust of Christmas day has settled.

We might consider too, that what we're doing as we prepare is also a rehearsal for the time when Christ comes to us not only as Spirit, but in his flesh - for we know not the day or the hour, and need to guard against apathy. I think Lent and Advent have much in common, both precede cataclysmic events that changed the face of the earth forever, both look forward to a new creation, both focus on the person of Jesus Christ bringing that about, and both call us to a time of repentance as we consider our failure to love him and our neighbour as ourselves.

When John was out in the wilderness calling people to be baptised, he warned them that repentance was directly connected to change. It's not enough, he said, to rely on past glory, tradition, old loyalties and relationships - these mean nothing if you don't act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God. And he challenged the crowd to change their ways.

It's a trap that most, if not all of us get entangled in. We can so easily say words of repentance then rest assured, safe in the knowledge that what we know now is all we need to know, and how we do things now is the best way to do them.

But it's not so easy, for without allowing ourselves to be changed as we repent, we're in danger of clinging to old stereotypes, prejudices and fears. Most of us for example will have our views on, say, illegal immigrants, issues of sexual orientation, drug dealers and users, people with aids, teenage mothers and fathers, prostitutes. We'll have views on abortion, euthanasia, cloning, sex outside marriage, medical research on animals - and so on.

John's challenge to us to repent and be changed is a call for us to apply the gospel to those area's that we think we've made our minds up about and have no reason to change. It's a call to revisit them on a regular basis, to go into the rooms of our heart that lie locked and in darkness, and allow the light of Christ to illuminate them once again. I'd like us to spend one minute now, silently considering our reaction to the list I just read out. Which of the list sticks with you - and what first word or picture comes to mind as you hear them read out ? Is it a word or picture that Christ would affirm ?

After one minute I'll offer our thoughts to God in prayer, and we'll move on. [PAUSE]

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts' be open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly Jove thee and worthily magnify thy Holy Name, through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Of course the list isn't exhaustive, and each of us will have other prisoners lying in the darkness of our hearts - prisoners that Christ has come to bring light to, heal, and set free. Here is another prayer, one by an African schoolgirl, that we've been using during morning prayer this Advent;

O thou Great Chief, light a candle in my heart, that I may see what is therein, and sweep the rubbish from thy dwelling place.

Sweeping the rubbish from our hearts, makes room for a change of heart - there's space to rearrange the spiritual furniture, so to speak. And as we go from room to room in the light of Christ, we may find some chambers are in need of only a dusting and others need of a real spring clean. But the ones that cause us to stop outside the door and hesitate to turn the handle are the ones that are in most need of Christ's light. These are the rooms that have become dark dungeons for those whom we struggle to love, these are the rooms that contain an empty manger.

St Paul wrote to the Philippians - "the Lord is near... .be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus".

As we make preparation for the advent of Christ we need not be afraid of what we might find in the candlelit rooms of our heart. God blesses us as we journey through each room because as we do we imitate what was, and is, to come - the journey Christ made into the darkness of our world in order to release us from the power of sin, fear and death.

Perhaps we're afraid because we feel that in entering such rooms we'll be letting Christ down somehow - entering into the company of those counted amongst the lost, so becoming lost ourselves. Or perhaps we afraid of letting ourselves down, breaking our own internal covenants, or the covenants we've made with people from our past whose views and beliefs have become, over time, sacred to us.

The real betrayal though, is when we allow those fears to prevent us from opening the doors and re-examining the room in the light of Christ and making it ready for his return by sweeping from it everything that is unloving, unforgiving, and unmerciful. Taking the Christ light in our trembling hands, we can enter each room with confidence that the peace of God will guard us, while his light reveals both the treasures we need to cherish and the rubbish that needs sweeping.

It seems to me that this is an important part of making ready for the coming of Christ, because it means that our faith is in touch with the realities of mortal life as we're living it today, here in 21st Century Malvern. The people and issues on the list I read out are real, as are others that I didn't read but perhaps cause us difficulty when we think on them.

We encounter such issues every day through our newspapers, television and radio programmes. Occasionally we may encounter such things / people, face to face, and it's then most of all, that test the locked doors of our hearts may take a pounding, and perhaps be broken into and the furniture scattered before we're able to do much about it. And when non-Christians make enquiry of our faith they will judge us, and so Christ, on what we say about such things, on how we react to such people as on the list. And so it's important to be prepared, for as we make preparation for Christ in our own hearts, so we make preparation for Christ to be born in the hearts of others too.

Christmas is about mission, the mission of God to save humankind from the terrible darkness of it's own making, and as Christians we're utterly involved in that work in both the world and our own hearts. As Luke says in his gospel, "Christ's winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor", to gather the wheat into his barn, and to throw the chaff into the fire.

And so we might pray this Advent time, "Even so, come Christ Jesus, enter our hearts and help us to prepare for your coming. Gather up the wheat that lies within us and use it for the feeding of the world, and sweep the chaff from your dwelling place - that Love may come once again and make his dwelling within us". Amen.

Ian Spencer