Bible Speaks by Rev. L. Althouse Dec. 21, 2014 Background Scripture: Luke 2:7-20 Devotional Reading: Psalm 19 I confess, I added verse 7 to the background scripture for this week. The reason is, I thought it absolutely vital to include Luke’s setting for all that follows in the Nativity story: “And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” (Lk. 2:7). It is tempting for us to visualize the “inn” that had “no place” for Joseph, Mary and the soon-to-arrive Jesus as a kind of 1st century A.D. Motel 6. The khans (translated as “inns”) were more like the caravansaries that can still be seen occasionally in the Middle East. If you have been to The Holy Land, you have doubtless seen what is reputed to have been to the Khan el-Ahmer (or el-Hathrur) halfway on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. This is the traditional site of the Inn of the Good Samaritan, a modest khan with an arched door, a large court and a well. In 1997 I took a tour group to Turkey and in the village of Sultanhani we visited one of the best-preserved caravanserais, the traditional “inn” or khan only slightly changed since New Testament times: a roofed-courtyard for beasts of burden, a ground-floor for storing goods and second-story cubicles for travelers. Even the best accommodations the inn had to offer were not the appropriate place for the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. There were shepherds
We are so used to seeing the nativity depicted ideally on Christmas cards and art that we fail to realize the vital importance of this nativity’s meaning, not only for the story itself, but also for the deeper meaning of the setting and circumstances. Jesus, later to be hailed as the Christ, was born in a deplorable setting and under the worst conditions. His mother and father were presumably uneducated peasants. Mary’s reputation and claim that she had conceived her child by the Holy Spirit was probably received with incredulity and mirth. The only shelter available to them when her time had come was a crude and almost certainly odiferous stable. Their newborn son was laid not on fine linen or even crude muslin. With the exception of Mary and Joseph, the only witnesses at the birth of the King of Kings were humble farmyard beasts. “Ah yes,” you may say, “there were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” – and, impressively informed by angels, they came to the birthplace of Jesus. Although today the shepherds are usually depicted in spotless, seamless robes, because of their vocation they were regarded as unwashed and unfit to welcome and worship the newborn child. While Psalm 23 declares: “The Lord is my shepherd,” shepherds were at the bottom of the social and vocational pole. William Barclay says they were “despised by the orthodox good people of the day.” Unable by their vocation to “keep all the meticulous handwashings and rules and regulations,” they were not welcome in the company of more normative Jews. Yet, he writes, “It was to simple men of the fields that God’s message first came.” So this is the setting for the birth of Jesus: peasant parents, unable to secure even a rustic room in the khan and staying in a crude, rude stable in a deplorable barnyard, unnoticed by anyone except foul-smelling social outcasts at the bottom of the pecking-order. This was God entering human history! His choice of place, time and people was totally violating the social and economic values of that day – and ours. Is this why we wish others a “Merry Christmas?” No room left
Thomas Merton (1915-68) laments that today, “There is so much news that there is no room left for the true good tidings, the ‘Good News,’ the Great Joy.” Why? “We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everything is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power and acceleration.” So, as in the time of Jesus’ contemporaries, today there is no room for nature, for quiet, for solitude, for thought, for attention or “awareness of our state.” Does that mean there is no time for us? The answer, I believe, is in what we do with the time we have. This can be the usual time of Christmas holidays – a period of not enough time, not enough money, energy, awareness of the time in which we live. It can be the time of too many things instead of enough spirit. Actually, the time is in our hands and minds. We will have the experience that we choose for ourselves and our families. No one will force us to spend too much, eat too much, drink too much, fret too much and try to be too much. We can “blame it on the holidays,” but essentially the “holiday” we call Christmas is pretty much what we will make it – pretty much whether we will allow there to be “no room left.” John Oxenham’s 1929 poem “The Inn of Life” is one of my favorites. Because I am uncertain about the copyright restrictions, I will quote only briefly from it. Verse 1 is marked “A.D. 1” (“In the first year of our Lord”) and the response of the innkeeper to Joseph and Mary is: “No room! No room! The inn is full, Yea – overfull.” “Overfull” at least, for “Poor folk of Galilee.” He directs them to “Stay then! – Out there among the beasts.” Verse 2 is entitled “A.D. 1929” and once again the Innkeeper exclaims. “No room for Thee, Thou man of Galilee.” And the last stanza embraces both 1 A.D. and 1929 A.D.: Christ passes On his ceaseless quest, Nor will He rest With any– Save as Chiefest Guest.
(The text for this poem can be found in Christ and The Fine Arts by Cynthia Pearl Maus (Harper, 1938).)
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