Prepare Him Room ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
Christmas Eve 2025
One of the most beloved of Christmas church traditions is the staging of Christmas pageants, when a community dresses up in costumes and retells the ancient story, complete with shepherds, wise men, angels, King Herod, animals, and of course, Mary and Joseph and a newborn Baby Jesus. Over the years many stories have been told of the unplanned and unscripted events that are likely to happen when large numbers of children and volunteer leaders attempt to stage such a production. Perhaps some of you might have your own stories! As a mom, I can remember a couple of moments.
Years ago, in one small town, the pageant was such a big deal that people constructed a full set that looked like the little town of Bethlehem, complete with an inn with a door. And auditions for all the parts were held, to try to create as perfect a performance as possible. One year, the story goes, a little boy wanted badly to take part. The organizers were reluctant because the child had learning disabilities. But finally, they decided to let this little boy, whose name was Harold, be the innkeeper, because he would only have one line to say. At the right moment, Harold was to open the door and tell poor exhausted Mary and Joseph that there was no room at the inn.
The moment came. Harold heard his cue and managed to get the door open, and told Joseph and Mary that there was no room. He slammed the door shut. They turned sadly away, heads bowed, when suddenly, Harold wrenched the door open again, and called out, “But wait! You can have my room!” (Ron Hutchinson Ministries, https://www.sermonillustrator.org/illustrator/sermon1a/youcan.htm)
And in that moment, little Harold managed to make sure that everyone present heard the true message of Christmas: Prepare him room.
We’ve sung the words in a beloved Christmas carol for generations, and we’ll sing it again this evening: Let every heart prepare him room.
We could hear the words to mean simply that a room needed to be found for a young woman to give birth. But really, they mean something very different. “You can have MY room!”
The old story isn’t about the innkeeper, or an actual stable. The story is about us, every one of us, which is why we keep telling it through the years, absorbing the words once again, trying to decide what our place is in the story and how we each are called to respond.
What those simple words are asking us is to ‘open your heart.’ What those words are asking of us is to prepare room in our hearts for what Christmas tries to teach us, year after year. As one of our poets wrote, “The stable is your heart.”
To live with an open heart means to be willing to say ‘yes’ to the many invitations that life offers us, day in and day out.
What are some of the invitations we hear in the Christmas story?
The first invitation for us all is to learn to be genuinely welcoming, to be generous. Remember Harold offering the exhausted travelers his own room; Harold, the child with a learning disability who was almost rejected from the Christmas pageant, who turned out to understand the Christmas message best of all. Harold reminds us to be open to understanding that every one of us belongs; every one of us has something to offer.
How do you invite other people into your life? We are asked, every year, to try to help the more vulnerable among us, the less privileged. We are asked to not turn away, to not see other people as less human because they speak with an accent or sleep rough in the woods. You are invited to welcome, to connect, and to let people surprise you.
Another invitation that can be very hard to say ‘yes’ to is to be open to mystery; to hear unexpected messages from unusual messengers. Not all angels are wearing wings. Can we hear their summons? And if we can hear them, can we respond, as the shepherds did?
Like the Magi, the wise men, are we willing to follow a star? Are we open to hearing an invitation to go where love might lead us? We are invited to hear the call of Love in our heart, so that we can grow in wisdom and compassion.
And finally, the story of the birth of a newborn baby invites us to have hope for the future. We celebrate the arrival of all babies, because they represent hope, and new beginnings, and the spreading of more love in the world. Do you allow yourself to hope: to sense that something inside of you is waiting to be born, that new life and grace and joy might be yours?
Tonight, let us be the stable. My wish for you is that we all can all prepare room by opening our hearts, by allowing all the messages of new hope, new beginnings, and most of all, new love, to fill our hearts: tonight, tomorrow, and every day.
