HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

(Preached on Christmas Eve, 2008)

The annual children=s Christmas pageant went well.  Mary and Joseph came into Bethlehem, on cue.  There they were met by the nine-year-old innkeeper who dutifully informed them that, though he would love to help them out if he could, there was, again this year, Ano room in the inn.@  Sorry.  No vacancy, like the sign says out front.  But then he looked again at Mary and Joseph, who really did look tired from their journey, and the innkeeper blurted out, ABut there=s a great motel with cable just around the corner from the church!@  And the pageant was a shambles.  That=s not the way the story of Mary, Joseph, and the innkeeper is supposed to go.

 

Or is it?  You know by heart how the story goes.  Mary and Joseph come to Bethlehem for the government=s census and there, because with everyone from out-of-town, there is no room at the inn so Mary is forced to give birth to Jesus in a cow stall because Athere was no place for them in the inn.@

But scholar, Kenneth Bailey, points out that what our Bibles translate as Ainn@ is, in the Greek kataluma, which means literally, Aguest room@ not hotel or inn.  Later, in Luke=s telling of Jesus= story of the good Samaritan, the wounded man is taken to a pandokheion which very clearly does translate as Ainn.@  But here in this story about Jesus= birth, Luke says that there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the kataluma, no more room in the family Aguest room@ so they had to be placed elsewhere in the home.  The actual wording does not really say Athere was no room in the inn@ but rather Athere was no appropriate place in the guest room.@

 

Now, before your eyes glaze over and you begin fidgeting along with the children, wondering Awhat is he doing with this Greek language lesson?@ please, hang with me just a little longer and this reflection will become clear.  In the typical Mid-Eastern home, says Bailey, there is a designated room for overnight visitors.  It would be unthinkable, according to the Emily Post guide for Eastern hospitality, for out-of-town relatives to be sent to an inn by their own family.  Mary and Joseph were among relatives.  (Remember, they were returning to Joseph=s childhood hometown for the census.  Joseph was Aof the house and lineage of David@ as the story reminds us.)  The problem was, there were undoubtedly many relatives back for the same reason.

 

By the time Mary and Joseph arrived, the guest room, the kataluma, was filled and so they had to be placed in the next best place in the family home, which Bailey says would have been the outer room where the family=s animals were brought in for safe keeping during the night.  Especially in cold weather, the family livestock was brought in to this outer room where they stayed the night, then they were led away at morning, the room was swept, and used for other family activity.  That=s where the manger was, the feed trough for the animals, in this outer room.

 

Some of you who are home for Christmas, visiting with family, will sleep tonight on the sofa in the living room, or curled in a sleeping bag elsewhere, because there is Ano appropriate place@ for you in the guest room.  Uncle Henry and Aunt Lucille from Chicago commandeered that room before you got here.  Well, that=s probably the case for Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.  Rather than send you to the Dadeland Marriott, because the family loves you so much and is so delighted to have everyone home for Christmas, they are giving you the honor of sleeping on the floor in the play room.

 

All of this places the story of that first Christmas in a slightly different light.  Jesus was not born in the stable of some cold, impersonal hotel.  Rather, he was born in the front room of a home where doting aunts, uncles, and other random relatives where hovering around and delighting in the birth of this new baby.

 

For Mary and Joseph, these days among family must have been a peculiar treasure.  Soon enough they would be forced to flee for their lives as refugees from the wrath of King Herod.  There would be dark, difficult days ahead.  But for now, they were home, among family.  When God Incarnate, Jesus, was most frail and vulnerable, a baby he was cared for in the context of a home, safe amid the mundane blessings of family. 

 

This time of year, family becomes vitally important in our lives.  People we may hardly speak with the rest of the year, people with whom we have lots of history and baggage, not all of it good, some of it pretty rotten, people with whom we might even have long-standing disagreements, nevertheless become those we most want to be with and share this day.  Some of you have made incredible effort to be home for Christmas.  You have waited in long lines at airport security and suffered through endless weather delays.  You have endured the indignities of I-95.  Yet tonight, even that fold-out sofa bed, the one with the bar running right through the middle of the two-inch foam Amattress@ will feel good because you are home.  Home for Christmas.