Over the years the characters in the Christmas narratives have become so tightly defined and stereotyped for us by church tradition and culture that we believe the stereotypes more than the narratives themselves. The issues all seem so clear cut when we watch a simple Christmas drama put on by our kids, each with their special part to play. You know how it is. Herod is always a villain, the three wise men are heroes – even though the gospel narratives never specify exactly how many magi came to visit Jesus. The shepherds were heroes, too. Fancy that! The riffraff of the day become heroes in the Christmas narratives; and then there is the fantastic great choir of angels, breathtakingly glorious in the inky black night sky, as we imagine them joyously celebrating. Joseph is always the amazingly gracious and patient man. Yep, he’s a hero, too. And Mary, what a courageous woman beyond belief. The whole Christmas story has been so romantically shaped and interpreted over generations. We know it off by heart – minus the smells of the stable where Jesus was born (you can’t have that in the Myers front windows!). We can predict the whole thing now in a way that has been shaped by us so that it fits into our schedule, our preferences and our mindset with all the appropriate niceties.
And the Innkeeper? Well, the poor innkeeper – who is always in every Christmas play - has gone down in history as an irritable anti-hero in the Christmas story. In our mind’s eye, we envision him as some crotchety old so-and-so from a Charles Dickens story with a night cap on his head sticking his head out a second story window and tersely shouting: “Bah humbug! Take the stable and leave me alone.” Well, there’s nothing remotely like that in the Gospel narratives – nothing at all. See, church tradition tends to fill in the gaps to recreate the nice, sanitised, or more appealing story we prefer. In the process the poor old innkeeper has been tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion for centuries. And preachers have just piled on. Was it his fault that the inn was built with twelve rooms instead of thirteen? Was it his fault that Caesar Augustus had issued a decree that the entire world should be censused and taxed? Was it his fault that Mary and Joseph were so late in arriving?
We actually don’t know anything about the innkeeper at all - because he is completely fictious. Not once is he ever mentioned in any of the gospel accounts – and yet, he has a part in every Christmas story re-enactment. Check it out. There’s not a single reference to him anywhere. There’s no record of any conversation between Joseph and an innkeeper anywhere in the New Testament. He is an imaginary figure in the annals of church tradition – but he sure gets the blame for Mary having to give birth to Jesus in a smelly old cowshed somewhere on the edges of Bethlehem. What??!!
Luke is the only gospel writer to come close to mentioning any innkeeper - and still, he doesn’t. All he ever says (almost as a casual afterthought when narrating Joseph and Mary’s arrival in Bethlehem), is … “because there was no room for them in the inn.” That’s it. No conversation with Joseph at all with anyone. All Luke says is that Mary gave birth, wrapped the baby in strips of rag, and laid him in a manger “because there was no room for them in the inn.” That’s it - and only in Luke. But for centuries an imaginary innkeeper has been portrayed as this mean, irritable and rude dude and blamed for his terrible lack of compassion.
Luke 2:1-7
“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register. 4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no place in the inn available for them.”
Do you see that last line? Want to know something? This simple little statement about there being no room in the inn becomes a key symbol in Luke’s whole gospel narrative. As he carefully writes it, this becomes a running theme the whole way through. Luke takes this one line, “There was no place for them in the inn,” and shows us how this phrase was a recurrent theme throughout Jesus’ ministry. The question that Luke leaves for us is simply this: “Will there ever be any room for him in your situation, your schedule, your plans, your business, your finances, your life – apart from the religious events we attend – for Jesus?”
There was no room for Jesus in the legal realm of his day. No room for Him in the synagogues and the temple. No room amongst Israel’s elite. The people who gave Jesus room are the likes of Matthew, the Levite turned tax collector for the Romans. Then there was Zacchaeus who made room in his home for Jesus. There was the woman at the well, and, of course, there was Mary who made room, too … The only room Jesus was ever given by the leaders of Israel, was on Calvary’s Hill, where their Messiah was crucified …
And so, my question as we approach Christmas and all the commemorations and worship …
Do we have any room for Him in all the Christmas rush? Do we have any room for Him in our own personal economic contexts? Our budgets which we are called to steward to the glory of God? Does Jesus even get a look in there? Do we have any room for Jesus when we are wronged and all we can think of is revenge, payback, sullenness and unforgiveness? Instead of mercy and grace and forgiveness? Do we have any room for Jesus in our religious expression? Our spirituality? Or is religion something we just do and perform, quickly getting it out of the way in that one and a half hours of a Sunday, and then getting on about our busy schedules?
Is there any room for Jesus, at all?
We’re happy to blame fictitious innkeepers for not giving any room to Jesus … but we need to stop in real time and in our real circumstances – which are not some play we’re putting on - and ask ourselves with all integrity, “Do I give any real room for my Saviour and Redeemer, my Lord, every day of the year, or is this limited to sanitised versions of the ancient Christmas narratives that I occasionally observe?” This is a far more critical issue for Christians today, than all their carping about the crass commercialisation of Christmas, don’t you think? This is the radical meaning of Christmas in Luke’s Gospel account.
Immanuel – God with us … but is there any room, any real room … for Him who is amongst us?
Think on these things.
Ps Milton