Scripture can be found here…
Some things are so familiar, they just feel like home. Walking into our regular coffee place. The way a good friend says our name, maybe a name only they use for us. The first taste of something made from a family recipe that never changes, only gets better. Coffee in hand, we go out into our day, knowing that we have a cup full of home to take with us. The voice of the friend, telling us that, for the duration of this walk, or this lunch, or this phone call, we are safe. We will be heard, maybe even cared for. We are home. The looks around the table when everyone’s taken their first bite, and we all agree: this is home.
I feel that way about the gospel of Luke, chapter 2, this passage I’ve just read. This story is so familiar, whether we first heard it in the voice of a preacher, in a sanctuary like this; or in the voice of Linus Van Pelt, while sitting cross-legged in front of the massive wooden cabinet holding an RCA color TV… once you’ve heard these words, this story, this foundational tale for Christians of every ilk… you’re home. This story lives in here. (gestures to heart)
And that’s kind of funny, because it is definitely not a story about being home. Joseph and Mary have traveled something like 90 miles, and despite the art of two millennia suggesting otherwise, they probably both walked. And despite our sense that they’ve just arrived, and it’s nighttime, and all the commercial inns are full, it’s likely they’ve already been in Bethlehem for some time. “While they were there,” the story reads—so, they haven’t just arrived. And despite most translations of this passage telling us there was no room for them in the inn, that phrase is misleading for the reader who wants to know about the birth of Jesus.
What would you say if I told you, it’s very likely that Mary and Joseph were staying with family? If Joseph had taken his fiancée on this long journey to a town that was his ancestral home, his first stop would a visit to the relatives who still live there. And, in Middle Eastern culture, especially Middle Eastern Jewish culture, you absolutely would not turn family away. You would help them to find a place to say, or you would squeeze them in somehow.
And that’s probably exactly what happened.
How do we know that? One word. In Greek, kataluma. In verse 7 of chapter 2, that word is translated “inn.” I’m not sure why, because everywhere else it occurs in the New Testament? It’s translated “guest room.” On the night of his last supper with his friends, Jesus asks, where is the kataluma, that I might eat the Passover with my friends?
So if everyone in Joseph’s extended family has come to Bethlehem for the census, it might be that all his relations there had filled up their guest room. But in no possible universe would they turn away Joseph and his very pregnant bride. So, they would offer them a room on the first floor of the house in which, on cold nights, they would bring in their animals—a cow, a donkey, a hen. A room in which there would be a feedbox, a manger, for the animals to use.
It’s very likely—almost certain—that the birth of Jesus did not take place in a stable outside an inn where they knew nobody. It’s almost certain that the birth of Jesus took place in a humble room with some animals, to be sure, but a room in the house of kin. Loved ones. Where the women of the family would have helped with the birth. Where the men of the family would have slapped Joseph on the back and given him some wine if it looked like he needed it.
Why does this matter? It matters because Jesus spent his ministry on earth reaching out to and welcoming the outcast. It turns out, that’s not because he was an outcast, even in his arrival on earth. Jesus reaches out to those on the margins because it’s the right thing to do. It’s what God commissions him to do, which he summarizes in chapter 4 when he reads from the scroll of Isaiah:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” ~Luke 4:20-21
And, just in case we’re not sure about that, the next part of tonight’s story confirms it. To whom does God first announce the birth of Jesus? Not to the local authorities. Not to a king or governor or town elder. Not to the religious authorities, nor to the elite of any kind. God, through the angels, invites some outcasts—shepherds.
Now, every town and village needed shepherds. They were essential workers. But they were also people living on the margins. They mostly lived outside with their charges, and they handled the expected mess of everything from birth to death. They had to be strong and able to protect their flocks from predators. So, they usually couldn’t participate in the religious life of the community. Everyone needed a lamb for Passover, but the shepherds weren’t invited.
But God invited them. God sent a singing telegram consisting of an army of angels to the shepherds, to let them know this good news was for them—for everybody.
In the birth of Jesus, God had pitched God’s tent with humanity. God had signaled to us that, as Ruth says to Naomi, wherever you go, I will go. And God let it be known, from the very beginning of the story, that Jesus’ work was to reach the least and the lost, and to invite them in. To welcome them home.
The least we can do is to return the favor. Meister Eckhart, a Germans mystic, writing in the 14th century, put it this way.
We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I also do not give birth to him in my time and my culture?
God has made a home among humanity, and invites us in. And our only possible response is to return the favor, to invite God in. To give birth to the presence of Christ in our hearts. To be full of grace, as Mary was. To give birth in our time, and our culture, to what it means to be a part of the body of Christ in the world. Jesus spent his ministry among us reaching out to the last, the least, and the lost, and we are called to do the same. As Sarah Are wrote in our Advent devotional,
“What a gift it is
to have a God
who does not wait on my invitation.
What a gift it is
to have a God
who can’t imagine
being anywhere but here.”
Thanks be to God, and a truly Merry Christmas to you. Amen.