Luther King Theological College

December 2025

A Christmas Card from Luther King

Advent Reflection: ‘Step a little aside’

The following reflection is written by my friend Eleazar Fernandez, a liberation and postcolonial theologian from the Philippines who has taught both in his home country and in the US. It is a pertinent reflection for us in the UK, because it speaks to our current dis-ease with our imperial history, especially as divisions are stirred up and immigrants are scapegoated – and it also reminds us, in this Advent season, that light or wisdom does not come from where we expect or in ways we expect.

As you read it, you might consider our own moment and context, and all that is stirred up inside us and around us, as we long for a new beginning …

Standing in Θεσσαλονίκη (Thessaloniki) today, I found myself before the towering statue of Alexander the Great astride his famed horse, Bucephalus. The bronze figure faces the Aegean with confidence and certainty—the stance of one who believed the world could be mastered by sheer force and brilliance. Yet as I gazed upon Alexander’s raised arm and forward-leaning form, my thoughts traveled far from Greece to a story from his eastern campaign in the ancient university town of Taxila (in the present-day Pakistan).

When Alexander arrived in Taxila, he sought an audience with the local philosophers. Impatient with their indifference, he approached them himself, surrounded by guards and imperial fanfare. As he addressed them, the sun behind him cast a long shadow that fell over an old philosopher sitting quietly in its path. “I, Alexander, stand before you,” the conqueror declared. “Tell me what I can do for you. What shall I bestow?” The philosopher looked up and answered with calm but unyielding firmness: “Nothing. Only step a little aside—your shadow blocks the sun that warms my body.”

That firm refusal reveals a truth more profound than any battlefield triumph. It unmasks the illusion that empire can bestow what people truly need. It shows that the world does not hunger for domination, patronage, or protection, but for space—space to breathe, to live, to flourish in dignity. What the philosopher desired was sunlight, a freedom that belongs to all and requires no conqueror to grant it.

Standing before Alexander’s statue in Θεσσαλονίκη, the contrast was striking. There, a symbol of conquest; in Taxila, a voice that exposed its limits. The philosopher’s firm, unyielding plea—"step aside”—still speaks to our world today, reminding us how often power casts shadows over lives, lands, and possibilities. The greatest threat to empire is not a rival army but a different way of seeing, speaking, and acting—one that refuses its shadow and insists on the sunlight that no king or emperor can grant or deny.

Eleazar S Fernandez

Θεσσαλονίκη (Thessaloniki, Greece), November 16, 2025

In light of those thoughts, I wonder …

Perhaps we might pray, that wherever people stand in confidence that they are the ones with the right to speak, and the right to offer solutions, they might stand a little aside.

Perhaps we might pray, that wherever people claim, using Christian imagery and story, that they can enforce boundaries to keep others down and out, they might stand a little aside.

Perhaps we might pray, that wherever we presume we know best, or at least better than others, and are in a position to determine who should speak and who should receive, we too might stand a little aside.

Perhaps we might pray, that wherever those of us with a colonising history tend to assume good things are ours to give or to withhold, we might stand a little aside.

Perhaps we might pray, that wherever we take for granted that Christ is amongst us, and on our side, rather than amongst the strangers, we might stand a little aside.

Perhaps there ought to be a little more standing aside to let the sun shine, rather than blocking it and keeping people or situations in the shadows.

Perhaps there can be a little more standing aside, whether in our churches or in our communities, whether in our mindsets or our public policy, to fill the world with new possibilities.

Perhaps being receptive to the Christ-child is not so much about who owns him and who needs him; not so much about whether he is on one side of a line or another, but is about risking the vulnerability of stepping aside, so the light might shine more fully and all the world be filled with the radiance of God.

Graham Adams

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