Worship > Sermon Archive

The Reverend Beth Fain
Christmas Eve 2007

(Luke 2. 1-20) Room for Everyone
Maybe because I'm rector of a church called St. Mary's, I have a small collection of crèche's that I have scattered about my house that I leave out all year long. The first Sunday of Advent, however, I take all of the baby Jesuses out of the mangers and put them away.
He's not born yet, after all.
Jesus gets put back into the manger after the 5:30 Christmas Eve service.
Just like he gets placed in our crèche at the beginning of our own Christmas Eve worship.
Jesus being placed in the manger is a very big deal.
In the familiar story of Jesus' birth, it is the one detail which is mentioned three times.
That there is a baby, lying in a manger.
From Mary's perspective: Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and placed him in a manger because there was no room in the inn.
From the angel's perspective: Telling the shepherds, that the sign that God has done marvelous things is a baby, lying in a manger.
From the shepherd' perspective: They find that baby, lying in a manger.
Maybe because the story has been told for nearly 2000 years, and all stories get their own unique twists as we tell and retell them-our imagination has run wild about what that baby lying in a manger looks like.
Of one thing I am as sure as I can be is that that first encounter with the baby Jesus lying in a manger looked nothing like what our own St. Mary's crèche looks like.

What we see is a Renaissance perspective of the nativity:
A European barn or shed made of wood with a thatched roof.
Fair-faced and fair-haired Mary and baby Jesus.
Plus plump, alert Jesus looks about 6 months old.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with all the ways we have used our imaginations to recreate the nativity.
Making places where animals are kept look like the place where we might keep our animals.
Imagining Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to look pretty much like us.
The point of Jesus' birth was that Jesus, the Son of God, came into our world to be part of our lives.
So to imagine Jesus in a way that we can accept can be a good thing.
Tonight I want to expand that imagination a little.

To contemplate that first mention of Jesus in the manger:
Where Jesus is laid in a manger because there is no room in the inn.
Haven't we all had fun in some Christmas pageant or song, with some strident inn keeper saying No room! No room! and banishing Mary to the stable out back to have Jesus. All alone. Rejected, unwelcome from the first.
But I don't think that's what happened.
In Greek, the language in which our first version of the Gospel was written, there are two words that we translate "inn."
One of the words means literally, "a place that everyone is welcome."
That type of inn was the inn where the Good Samaritan will take the injured traveler.
Frankly, inns were a place where people on the margins stayed-people who were less respected or respectable.
There weren't a lot of these inns; it was more likely was that travelers would camp under the stars or stay in a guest room in someone's home.
This is the second Greek word for inn-a guest room either within a home or attached to a home.
This is the inn where there was no room for Mary and Joseph.
The city of Bethlehem was a village-only about 100 people lived there.
Since it was only a couple of hours walk to Jerusalem, a major city with everything a traveler could need, it is highly unlikely that Bethlehem had a commercial inn.
But since we are told that Joseph was returning to his home town, he would have very likely had relatives there.
Even the most distant relative would have found a place for Jesus and Mary to stay.

When we read "because there was no room in the inn," what the gospel is more likely to mean is this:
The guest rooms in all the little houses were already filled with guests.
To have not provided hospitality to a pregnant woman or a relative was inconceivable.
What nearly all peasant homes would have had in Bethlehem, whether they had guest quarters or not, was a place inside the house where the animals were kept at night.
Animals were valued possessions, and if they weren't being watched in the fields by shepherds or in some kind of pen, the livestock were brought into the house at night.
With all that straw and animal heat, in the center of the home, this room would have been the warmest, most comfortable place to be.
That's where Mary birthed Jesus.
If the guest room was full, that mean there was a house full of people surrounding Mary and Joseph the night that Jesus was born.
When a baby is born, almost always it is a time of great joy and celebration.
Even if the child is unwelcome for whatever reason, almost always there will be a moment when someone looks at that baby and can't help but feel love.
Haven't we seen it even with babies in carrier baskets in the grocery store, and the most curmudgeonly of people have their scowl turn to a smile and say things to that child they wouldn't be caught dead saying to someone else.
This was the atmosphere that I believe Jesus was born into.
In a safe, warm place.
In the midst of people who were delighted to see him.
With more people, coming later, shepherds, who will ooh and ahh over him.
Even if he weren't the savior of the world.
But even more so because he is.
I know that the truth is that there are some children who are born that aren't welcome in this world.
But there is a moment in time when every child or adult is welcomed at their birth.
It is at baptism.
In a sense, baptism is God's back up plan for a world that can be less than welcoming.
A world more like a commercial inn.
Because at baptism we are born again-no matter what age.
We baptized two people tonight at 5:30.
Not babies-but a toddler and an adult.
After they were born into Jesus' family by baptism, and sealed with the cross of oil on the forehead and stamped as Christ's own forever, Lily and Mitch were introduced into their new family.
What do we do?
We all smiled. We all clapped.. Some wept with joy.
Like Mary and Joseph did for Jesus at his birth.
Like the relatives and distant relatives and new acquaintances did at Jesus' birth.
Jesus came into the world so that we would always have a place of welcome.
So that we would always have a place of love.
A place we would be applauded and cheered.
The no room! no room! mean twist on the birth of Jesus may have come because that's our experience much of the time in the world. No place for me!
Or maybe because that's the way that we choose to not welcome Jesus into our own ordinary everyday lives. No room for Jesus right now in my life.
But the gift of Christmas is that at least once each year we have the opportunity to welcome Jesus with great joy.
In the midst of those we love and who love us.
In a place that is safe and warm.
This is what Jesus came into the world to give us all the other days of the year.
May God's joy and safety and peace and love be in your hearts tonight, and grow and remain with the you not only this night but always.
Jesus is in the manger.
Jesus is in our hearts.
AMEN

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