Making Room For Christ
Sermon
Christmas Is For The Young... Whatever Their Age
16 Christmas Sermon Stories
Object:
The story of Mary and Joseph's journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem is one of the most familiar parts of the Christmas tradition. In ancient times that trip of about eighty miles was a difficult one and usually took four or five days to travel. Some critics have questioned whether such a call for a census or enrollment like the one in our text really took place. But records from Egypt and other countries have been found where various pharaohs and other government officials set forth edicts to compel their citizens to return to their hometowns for a census. From Roman records such a census was done primarily for two reasons: As a poll tax and also to discover men who might be put into compulsory military service. The Jews were exempt from military service, so the census was for tax purposes in Palestine.
After a journey of about eighty miles, Mary and Joseph arrived at an inn in Bethlehem where they had hoped to spend the night, only to discover that there was no room. In that day there was no possibility of making advance reservations at a Holiday Inn or some other motel. Ancient inns were really nothing but rough structures with a series of small stalls. One of these stalls was a "room" which provided a place to sleep. All the stalls opened onto a common courtyard.
Each traveler provided his own food. Only a fire and fodder for the animals were furnished. These rough structures provided almost no privacy for its guests.
Was The Innkeeper A Villain?
Down through the years, the innkeeper, who is never mentioned in this story, has become a villain. He is like a character mentioned in Nathaniel Hawthorne's notebook about whom he wanted to write a novel one day. The novel was going to be about a main character that would never appear in the novel. In Luke's account of this story, the innkeeper, who is made a villain, never appears in the story.
Nevertheless, this unknown innkeeper has been the whipping post for all kinds of stories, poems, and unfounded, imaginative sermons. For example, one anonymous poet writing about the innkeeper said:
He missed it all
That keeper of the Syrian Inn.
He did not mean to,
But the crowds were great, rooms few
And many guests had gold to give.
Had he not heard, a man must live
There was no room for Nazareth folk.
He missed it all
The angels sang their lullaby
And listening shepherds praised,
The wise men came by starlit ways.
He was too busy for the angel's song
He saw no star; he planned no wrong
Against these Nazareth folk.1
Some Defend The Innkeeper
For many people, the innkeeper has become the "bad guy." Many preachers have made this unknown innkeeper the symbol of all those who have rejected Christ. "We ought not to be like the old wicked innkeeper," some declare. This has provoked some articles and sermons in defense of the innkeeper. Several years ago, a prominent New Testament scholar, William Hull, preached a sermon titled, "In Defense of An Innkeeper." In his presentation, Hull argued along the following lines to counter the abuse which the innkeeper has received. Since the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was a long and hard one, it was unlikely that they would undertake it at the last moment. He believes that they had already been in Bethlehem several weeks before Jesus was born. Hull also argues that Mary and Joseph were likely not staying in an "inn" but at the home of a friend or relative. The word "inn," he states, can also be translated "guest room." This "guest room" was probably in the home of some friend of theirs.
Hull believes that the innkeeper provided them a place apart from the house so they would have some degree of privacy and keep from making his house "unclean" when the baby was born and blood would be passed. If the house was ceremonially unclean, it could not be used by other people then. Mary then was provided a place outside the home where she could give birth to her child and not defile the "guest house." The "cattle stall" was an appropriate place for such an event.
In this approach to the story, the innkeeper is not a villain but is really a quiet hero who provides the "holy" family a place to stay and have the baby. He provided not only a humble service, "but his act of kindness assisted the entry of the Lord Jesus into his world."2
The Symbolism Of "No Room"
There may be some truth in this defense. But, to be honest with you, I have difficulty with it, because it seems to me to do violence to the text in Luke's gospel. Luke wrote, "There was no room for them in the inn." I believe that these words are more than just a truth about the birth of Jesus. These words are symbolic of the struggle which Jesus had throughout his life and ministry. "No room" was symbolic of the world's refusal to give him room in their lives. When it was time for Jesus to be born, he did not find room in the palaces of King Herod nor Caesar Augustus. Neither of these people reached out to him and gave him welcome. Charles Spurgeon, the noted Baptist preacher, wrote the following lines years ago.
Alas! My brethren, seldom is there room for Christ in palaces! How could the kings of earth receive the Lord? He is the Prince of Peace, and they delight in war! He breaks their bows and cuts their spears in sunder; he burneth their war-chariots in the fire. How could kings accept the humble Savior? They love grandeur and pomp, and he is all simplicity and meekness. He is a carpenter's son, and the fisherman's companion. How can princes find room for the new-born monarch? Why, he teaches us to do to others as we would that they should do to us, and this is a thing which kings would find very hard to reconcile with the knavish tricks of politics and the grasping designs of ambition. O great ones of earth, I am but little astonished that amid your glories, and pleasures, and wars, and councils, ye forget the Anointed, and cast out the Lord of All.3
Jesus was not welcomed by kings. Wealthy individuals did not wait eagerly to celebrate his birth. When he began to teach, he often was met with rejection. When he performed a miracle and cast out the demons in a man in Capernaum, instead of rejoicing the men of the town exclaimed, "Get out of here." The religious leaders had no room for his teachings. He often said, "The foxes have holes ... but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" (Matthew 8:20). After his first sermon in his hometown of Nazareth, the town's people didn't say, "Isn't he a wonderful boy-preacher? Aren't we proud of him?" They were enraged by his teaching and wanted to kill him. They tried to force him outside the city to see if they could stone him. When he went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray before he was crucified, his disciples fell asleep. His brothers and sister thought he was insane. And he ended up on a cross. Luke's phrase, "no room in the inn" was indeed expressive of the rejection which Jesus experienced. Too often he was despised, rejected, and made an outcast by men and women of his day.
Reflective Of Our Own Response
Before you and I pause and point back to the past, we need to acknowledge that the crowded inn is often symbolic of our own response to Christ. Too often in our own society today, "no room in the inn" is symbolic of our own reaction to Christ. When Mary and Joseph came to that ancient Bethlehem inn years ago, I don't think they were denied lodging because there was some wicked innkeeper. Instead, others simply got to the inn before they did, and they were crowded out. There was no place for them because others got there first. In ancient times wealthy people stayed with friends. Alfred Plummer has suggested that Joseph may have relied upon the hospitality of some friends in Bethlehem where he was going to use their "guest chambers." But when they arrived, it was already full.4 But this is only speculation. Poor or common people usually stayed in inns. The poor stayed in inns because their friends didn't have houses large enough to keep them.
Christ Was Crowded Out
Mary and Joseph were crowded out of the inn because others got there first for the census. But you and I understand that problem, don't we? In a similar way, without being hostile to Christ, other things simply crowd him out. There is much cooking to be done, meals yet to be prepared, decorating to begin, presents to be wrapped, some still to be bought, traveling to be arranged, cards to be addressed and mailed, and open houses and parties to attend. There are so many last minute matters yet to do.
We are all busy with many important things. In our busyness, before we know it, we crowd Christ out of our Christmas. In our busyness at Christmastime, sometimes the real meaning of Christmas has difficulty finding lodging within our hearts. We make room for pleasure, pride, ambition, power, wealth, recognition, money, and sometimes even war. But we seldom have room for Christ. If we do give him room, it is often a tiny "stable" space outside the inn of our heart. We find lodging for him only in some outer chamber of our lives. We do not welcome him into the living room of our lives.
Many Did Not Recognize Christ
I also believe that when Mary and Joseph arrived at the inn centuries ago, if the innkeeper or someone else staying in the inn had recognized the importance of this couple, they certainly would have given them a place to stay for the night. If any of the people in the inn had thought for a moment that Mary was to be the mother of the Messiah, they would gladly have given their room to her. No one knew the significance of what was going to happen. How could they? Phillips Brooks noted that Bethlehem was the meeting place of "the hopes and fears of all the years" and yet "how silently, how silently the wondrous gift was given."
God sent his Son to Israel, his own people, who had been praying for him to come. They had been waiting and hoping for him to come, but when he came they did not recognize him. "They knew him not." They called him a winebibber, a blasphemer, and one who challenged the religious establishment. They longed and prayed for the Messiah to come, but when he came, they did not know him. We are quick to exclaim that we would certainly know him if he came today. But I wonder. Would we really recognize him?
Many Do Not Recognize Him
Too often Christ comes among us and we do not recognize him. We miss him because we look for a different image or expect another dress. Who would have thought God would enter his world through a stable in a small Palestine village?
Micah's reference to Bethlehem Ephrathah (Micah 5:2) brings to our minds Matthew's quotation (Matthew 2:6) that reminds us of Jesus' birth. When Micah wrote those words originally, Jerusalem was under siege by Assyria. Micah's words were an oracle of hope about a new ruler who would be born in Bethlehem to bring Israel deliverance. He likely thought that this would be realized in a few years -- in a decade or two. As the Messiah was delayed in coming, Micah's prophecy took on a new perspective, and the early Christians saw the birth of Jesus as the fulfillment of that promise.
God's Identification With The Poor And Needy
"No room in the inn" also indicates Christ's identification with the poor, common, obscure, lowly, and homeless people. The fact that Mary had to give birth to her child in such a place reveals the obscurity and poverty of Joseph and Mary. God's son was born in a stable and had a manger for a cradle. "No room in the inn" was God's way of identifying with humanity in a way that people could understand.
The crowded inn symbolized God's involvement with the hurting, needy people of the world. Our text notes that there was no room in the inn "for them." In a sense, it was not Christ who was rejected. He had not been born. Mary and Joseph were excluded. Later Jesus would ask, "Who are my mother and my father?" His response: "Whoever does my Father's will" and "When you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me." Who are the brothers and sisters and the mother and father of Jesus? Whoever is in need, wherever people hurt, are hungry, homeless, outcast, and needy, these people are the mother and father, brothers and sisters of Jesus. He identifies with those people in need. Christ identifies with the thousands who were killed in the earthquake in China, with their grieving families, and the thousands who are homeless. He identifies with the 11,000 killed by hurricanes in the Caribbean and Latin America. Are these not our brothers and sisters and God's children? Are not the homeless in our country and the poor and needy around the world, God's children?
I am convinced that God through his providence chose this obscure stable to identify with the world in a unique way. Are we to believe that the birth of God's Son just happened by chance? I can't accept that. I believe in the providence of God. I am convinced that Jesus' birth -- in time and place -- was a plan carefully worked by God. Ernest Campbell, who was minister of Riverside Church in New York City for many years, has helped me with his insight.
"Because God has a way of coming into history from the outside -- from outside our theological systems, our social and religious institutions, our ingrown patterns and ways of doing," Ernest Campbell argues, "let the inn, therefore, represent the establishment, and let us learn from that first Christmas that God, more likely than not, will come to us without benefit of establishment, succor or support."5 Paul expressed that truth in his first letter to the Christians at Corinth. He wrote; "To shame the wise, God has chosen what the world counts folly, and to shame what is strong, God has chosen what the world counts weakness. He has chosen things low and contemptible, mere nothings, to overthrow the existing order" (1 Corinthians 1:27-28 NEB).
We need to remember that God has seldom identified with the establishment. The Bible depicts God as standing in opposition to the establishment because the establishment usually oppresses the poor and the needy. Through Moses, the eighth-century prophets, and supremely in Jesus Christ, God has identified with the poor and needy of the world.
Our Indifference
The crowded inn may symbolize our indifference or unwillingness to be involved with the needy people of the world. The crowded inn represents those who cannot find lodging, food, or assistance. Often the needy people in the world -- the hungry, the poor, the homeless, the outcast -- cannot find help or assistance from those who have the ability to help. Many of us will welcome family and friends to our homes at Christmas. They will experience love and acceptance. Others will not find a welcome sign awaiting them. Like our Lord, there will be no room for them, no one to help meet their needs. They will have to wander without food and shelter. Will our church genuinely welcome all people and reach out to the stranger in need, the lonely widow, the brokenhearted divorced people, or the elderly ill? Will our church be only a showplace, radiant with Christmas decorations, or a sanctuary -- a refuge -- for people who are in need and long to be welcomed?
In this Christmas season, many churches will attempt to symbolize their care for the needy through various avenues, such as the "Shoebox" ministry where articles for the poor are collected. The youth may assist families through their programs, and Sunday school classes through their church, community assistance centers, and the Boys and Girls Club. Many have also worked through a number of groups to provide assistance for those in their community who have particular needs. I am convinced that there is more reaching out to the needy in our community than we can ever realize. I hope that you and I will always try to find ways to help those who have real needs.
I remember reading an article in the Louisville, Kentucky, Courier-Journal several years ago. In the title to one of its features, it asked the question, "Who was that Superman?" A stranger in the Galleria mall had come to the aid of a young child. Five-year-old Maggie caught hold of the handrail on the outside of the escalator and was being carried up to the second floor. She was dangling on the outside of the escalator as it rose to a height of fifteen feet as it approached the second story. Everybody, including her mother, just stood there and gasped at Maggie and wondered what could be done as she approached the second floor and the narrow space at the top. Suddenly, a small black man moved through the crowd. This is the way the paper described the event: "Hardly noticed in the crowd, one shopper has done more than gape. Slower than a speeding bullet, he runs forward. Less powerful than a locomotive, he stumbles and falls near the base of the escalator. He gets up; he leaps moving stairs as if they were tall buildings ... A small elderly man is just in time to snatch Maggie into his arms." And she is saved.
Maggie's mother, who hardly had time to thank the man because he walked off and disappeared in the crowd, observed that she will never forget him. "A very nice-looking man, up in his years, five feet five or six, black, glasses, grayish mustache, a full-length coat, hat, no cape, no monogrammed chest." Later the man was identified as a seventy-three year-old man. He was retired and a Baptist deacon. Here is one instance of somebody who cared enough to help.6
Let Us Make Room
As we come into the Christmas season, I hope that we will make room for the Christ. This is our challenge. We can get our lives so crowded with other matters that we simply have no time for him. "The major enemy of Christianity itself," Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote, "is not atheism but secularism, not the theoretical denial of Christ but the practical crowding out of Christ and everything he stands for. When the hall is filled with immediate and temporal concerns, when every seat is taken and even standing room is crowded, how can anything else get in?"7
Unfortunately, the crowded inn is a parallel of what happens again and again in the human soul. We can be involved in many Christian activities that are festive, fun, and meaningful, yet not allow God's Son, which is the real focus of Christmas, to find lodging in our hearts.
You and I know better today than did the people in the time when Christ was born. We have heard the recorded words in the scripture of the angels' song, "You shall call him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." At his baptism, God says, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." John wrote in his gospel, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." We have the testimony of the Bible and others about Christ.
Now Jesus Christ stands at the door of your heart and mine. He knocks once again, seeking to find lodging. Will you and I open the door and let him find room? One of the Christmas carols instructs us, "Joy to the world the Lord is come, let earth receive her king, let every heart prepare him room."
What verb will you use to describe Christmas this year? Will it be "spent"? You spent a lot of money. Will it be "remember"? Will you focus primarily on the past? Will it be "observe," as though you can be detached from it all? Or will it be "make room"? Will you "make room" for Christ so that everything you do -- all of your celebration, festivity, and gift giving -- will not crowd out Christ, but provide him lodging within your life? Let's celebrate the great good news of the One who was born centuries ago, and who continues to come today to be born again in your life and mine.
Walter Russell Bowie wrote these lines about "The Continuing Christ" which captures the truth of the ancient Bethlehem story.
Far, far away is Bethlehem
And years are long and dim,
Since Mary held the holy Child
And angels sang for Him.
But still to hearts where love and faith
Make room for Christ in them,
He comes again, the Child from God,
To find His Bethlehem.8
I hope that Christ will find lodging in your heart and in mine this Christmas season. Let us not crowd him out.
___________
1. Anonymous. Quoted in H. Gordon Clinard, "A Good Word for the Innkeeper," The Baptist Standard (December 23, 1981), p. 4.
2. William E. Hull, "In Defense of an Innkeeper" (Unpublished sermon preached in Crescent Hill Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky, December 21, 1969).
3. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, "No Room for Christ in the Inn," Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 8 (Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications, 1969), p. 702.
4. Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Luke (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1956), p. 54.
5. Ernest T. Campbell, "The Outsider and the Inn" (Unpublished sermon preached in the Riverside Church in the City of New York, December 20, 1970), p. 2.
6. The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky, December 10, 1988).
7. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Riverside Sermons (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), p. 276.
8. Walter Russell Bowie, The Compassionate Christ (New York: Abingdon Press, 1965), p. 37. Used by permission of Abingdon Press.
After a journey of about eighty miles, Mary and Joseph arrived at an inn in Bethlehem where they had hoped to spend the night, only to discover that there was no room. In that day there was no possibility of making advance reservations at a Holiday Inn or some other motel. Ancient inns were really nothing but rough structures with a series of small stalls. One of these stalls was a "room" which provided a place to sleep. All the stalls opened onto a common courtyard.
Each traveler provided his own food. Only a fire and fodder for the animals were furnished. These rough structures provided almost no privacy for its guests.
Was The Innkeeper A Villain?
Down through the years, the innkeeper, who is never mentioned in this story, has become a villain. He is like a character mentioned in Nathaniel Hawthorne's notebook about whom he wanted to write a novel one day. The novel was going to be about a main character that would never appear in the novel. In Luke's account of this story, the innkeeper, who is made a villain, never appears in the story.
Nevertheless, this unknown innkeeper has been the whipping post for all kinds of stories, poems, and unfounded, imaginative sermons. For example, one anonymous poet writing about the innkeeper said:
He missed it all
That keeper of the Syrian Inn.
He did not mean to,
But the crowds were great, rooms few
And many guests had gold to give.
Had he not heard, a man must live
There was no room for Nazareth folk.
He missed it all
The angels sang their lullaby
And listening shepherds praised,
The wise men came by starlit ways.
He was too busy for the angel's song
He saw no star; he planned no wrong
Against these Nazareth folk.1
Some Defend The Innkeeper
For many people, the innkeeper has become the "bad guy." Many preachers have made this unknown innkeeper the symbol of all those who have rejected Christ. "We ought not to be like the old wicked innkeeper," some declare. This has provoked some articles and sermons in defense of the innkeeper. Several years ago, a prominent New Testament scholar, William Hull, preached a sermon titled, "In Defense of An Innkeeper." In his presentation, Hull argued along the following lines to counter the abuse which the innkeeper has received. Since the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was a long and hard one, it was unlikely that they would undertake it at the last moment. He believes that they had already been in Bethlehem several weeks before Jesus was born. Hull also argues that Mary and Joseph were likely not staying in an "inn" but at the home of a friend or relative. The word "inn," he states, can also be translated "guest room." This "guest room" was probably in the home of some friend of theirs.
Hull believes that the innkeeper provided them a place apart from the house so they would have some degree of privacy and keep from making his house "unclean" when the baby was born and blood would be passed. If the house was ceremonially unclean, it could not be used by other people then. Mary then was provided a place outside the home where she could give birth to her child and not defile the "guest house." The "cattle stall" was an appropriate place for such an event.
In this approach to the story, the innkeeper is not a villain but is really a quiet hero who provides the "holy" family a place to stay and have the baby. He provided not only a humble service, "but his act of kindness assisted the entry of the Lord Jesus into his world."2
The Symbolism Of "No Room"
There may be some truth in this defense. But, to be honest with you, I have difficulty with it, because it seems to me to do violence to the text in Luke's gospel. Luke wrote, "There was no room for them in the inn." I believe that these words are more than just a truth about the birth of Jesus. These words are symbolic of the struggle which Jesus had throughout his life and ministry. "No room" was symbolic of the world's refusal to give him room in their lives. When it was time for Jesus to be born, he did not find room in the palaces of King Herod nor Caesar Augustus. Neither of these people reached out to him and gave him welcome. Charles Spurgeon, the noted Baptist preacher, wrote the following lines years ago.
Alas! My brethren, seldom is there room for Christ in palaces! How could the kings of earth receive the Lord? He is the Prince of Peace, and they delight in war! He breaks their bows and cuts their spears in sunder; he burneth their war-chariots in the fire. How could kings accept the humble Savior? They love grandeur and pomp, and he is all simplicity and meekness. He is a carpenter's son, and the fisherman's companion. How can princes find room for the new-born monarch? Why, he teaches us to do to others as we would that they should do to us, and this is a thing which kings would find very hard to reconcile with the knavish tricks of politics and the grasping designs of ambition. O great ones of earth, I am but little astonished that amid your glories, and pleasures, and wars, and councils, ye forget the Anointed, and cast out the Lord of All.3
Jesus was not welcomed by kings. Wealthy individuals did not wait eagerly to celebrate his birth. When he began to teach, he often was met with rejection. When he performed a miracle and cast out the demons in a man in Capernaum, instead of rejoicing the men of the town exclaimed, "Get out of here." The religious leaders had no room for his teachings. He often said, "The foxes have holes ... but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" (Matthew 8:20). After his first sermon in his hometown of Nazareth, the town's people didn't say, "Isn't he a wonderful boy-preacher? Aren't we proud of him?" They were enraged by his teaching and wanted to kill him. They tried to force him outside the city to see if they could stone him. When he went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray before he was crucified, his disciples fell asleep. His brothers and sister thought he was insane. And he ended up on a cross. Luke's phrase, "no room in the inn" was indeed expressive of the rejection which Jesus experienced. Too often he was despised, rejected, and made an outcast by men and women of his day.
Reflective Of Our Own Response
Before you and I pause and point back to the past, we need to acknowledge that the crowded inn is often symbolic of our own response to Christ. Too often in our own society today, "no room in the inn" is symbolic of our own reaction to Christ. When Mary and Joseph came to that ancient Bethlehem inn years ago, I don't think they were denied lodging because there was some wicked innkeeper. Instead, others simply got to the inn before they did, and they were crowded out. There was no place for them because others got there first. In ancient times wealthy people stayed with friends. Alfred Plummer has suggested that Joseph may have relied upon the hospitality of some friends in Bethlehem where he was going to use their "guest chambers." But when they arrived, it was already full.4 But this is only speculation. Poor or common people usually stayed in inns. The poor stayed in inns because their friends didn't have houses large enough to keep them.
Christ Was Crowded Out
Mary and Joseph were crowded out of the inn because others got there first for the census. But you and I understand that problem, don't we? In a similar way, without being hostile to Christ, other things simply crowd him out. There is much cooking to be done, meals yet to be prepared, decorating to begin, presents to be wrapped, some still to be bought, traveling to be arranged, cards to be addressed and mailed, and open houses and parties to attend. There are so many last minute matters yet to do.
We are all busy with many important things. In our busyness, before we know it, we crowd Christ out of our Christmas. In our busyness at Christmastime, sometimes the real meaning of Christmas has difficulty finding lodging within our hearts. We make room for pleasure, pride, ambition, power, wealth, recognition, money, and sometimes even war. But we seldom have room for Christ. If we do give him room, it is often a tiny "stable" space outside the inn of our heart. We find lodging for him only in some outer chamber of our lives. We do not welcome him into the living room of our lives.
Many Did Not Recognize Christ
I also believe that when Mary and Joseph arrived at the inn centuries ago, if the innkeeper or someone else staying in the inn had recognized the importance of this couple, they certainly would have given them a place to stay for the night. If any of the people in the inn had thought for a moment that Mary was to be the mother of the Messiah, they would gladly have given their room to her. No one knew the significance of what was going to happen. How could they? Phillips Brooks noted that Bethlehem was the meeting place of "the hopes and fears of all the years" and yet "how silently, how silently the wondrous gift was given."
God sent his Son to Israel, his own people, who had been praying for him to come. They had been waiting and hoping for him to come, but when he came they did not recognize him. "They knew him not." They called him a winebibber, a blasphemer, and one who challenged the religious establishment. They longed and prayed for the Messiah to come, but when he came, they did not know him. We are quick to exclaim that we would certainly know him if he came today. But I wonder. Would we really recognize him?
Many Do Not Recognize Him
Too often Christ comes among us and we do not recognize him. We miss him because we look for a different image or expect another dress. Who would have thought God would enter his world through a stable in a small Palestine village?
Micah's reference to Bethlehem Ephrathah (Micah 5:2) brings to our minds Matthew's quotation (Matthew 2:6) that reminds us of Jesus' birth. When Micah wrote those words originally, Jerusalem was under siege by Assyria. Micah's words were an oracle of hope about a new ruler who would be born in Bethlehem to bring Israel deliverance. He likely thought that this would be realized in a few years -- in a decade or two. As the Messiah was delayed in coming, Micah's prophecy took on a new perspective, and the early Christians saw the birth of Jesus as the fulfillment of that promise.
God's Identification With The Poor And Needy
"No room in the inn" also indicates Christ's identification with the poor, common, obscure, lowly, and homeless people. The fact that Mary had to give birth to her child in such a place reveals the obscurity and poverty of Joseph and Mary. God's son was born in a stable and had a manger for a cradle. "No room in the inn" was God's way of identifying with humanity in a way that people could understand.
The crowded inn symbolized God's involvement with the hurting, needy people of the world. Our text notes that there was no room in the inn "for them." In a sense, it was not Christ who was rejected. He had not been born. Mary and Joseph were excluded. Later Jesus would ask, "Who are my mother and my father?" His response: "Whoever does my Father's will" and "When you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me." Who are the brothers and sisters and the mother and father of Jesus? Whoever is in need, wherever people hurt, are hungry, homeless, outcast, and needy, these people are the mother and father, brothers and sisters of Jesus. He identifies with those people in need. Christ identifies with the thousands who were killed in the earthquake in China, with their grieving families, and the thousands who are homeless. He identifies with the 11,000 killed by hurricanes in the Caribbean and Latin America. Are these not our brothers and sisters and God's children? Are not the homeless in our country and the poor and needy around the world, God's children?
I am convinced that God through his providence chose this obscure stable to identify with the world in a unique way. Are we to believe that the birth of God's Son just happened by chance? I can't accept that. I believe in the providence of God. I am convinced that Jesus' birth -- in time and place -- was a plan carefully worked by God. Ernest Campbell, who was minister of Riverside Church in New York City for many years, has helped me with his insight.
"Because God has a way of coming into history from the outside -- from outside our theological systems, our social and religious institutions, our ingrown patterns and ways of doing," Ernest Campbell argues, "let the inn, therefore, represent the establishment, and let us learn from that first Christmas that God, more likely than not, will come to us without benefit of establishment, succor or support."5 Paul expressed that truth in his first letter to the Christians at Corinth. He wrote; "To shame the wise, God has chosen what the world counts folly, and to shame what is strong, God has chosen what the world counts weakness. He has chosen things low and contemptible, mere nothings, to overthrow the existing order" (1 Corinthians 1:27-28 NEB).
We need to remember that God has seldom identified with the establishment. The Bible depicts God as standing in opposition to the establishment because the establishment usually oppresses the poor and the needy. Through Moses, the eighth-century prophets, and supremely in Jesus Christ, God has identified with the poor and needy of the world.
Our Indifference
The crowded inn may symbolize our indifference or unwillingness to be involved with the needy people of the world. The crowded inn represents those who cannot find lodging, food, or assistance. Often the needy people in the world -- the hungry, the poor, the homeless, the outcast -- cannot find help or assistance from those who have the ability to help. Many of us will welcome family and friends to our homes at Christmas. They will experience love and acceptance. Others will not find a welcome sign awaiting them. Like our Lord, there will be no room for them, no one to help meet their needs. They will have to wander without food and shelter. Will our church genuinely welcome all people and reach out to the stranger in need, the lonely widow, the brokenhearted divorced people, or the elderly ill? Will our church be only a showplace, radiant with Christmas decorations, or a sanctuary -- a refuge -- for people who are in need and long to be welcomed?
In this Christmas season, many churches will attempt to symbolize their care for the needy through various avenues, such as the "Shoebox" ministry where articles for the poor are collected. The youth may assist families through their programs, and Sunday school classes through their church, community assistance centers, and the Boys and Girls Club. Many have also worked through a number of groups to provide assistance for those in their community who have particular needs. I am convinced that there is more reaching out to the needy in our community than we can ever realize. I hope that you and I will always try to find ways to help those who have real needs.
I remember reading an article in the Louisville, Kentucky, Courier-Journal several years ago. In the title to one of its features, it asked the question, "Who was that Superman?" A stranger in the Galleria mall had come to the aid of a young child. Five-year-old Maggie caught hold of the handrail on the outside of the escalator and was being carried up to the second floor. She was dangling on the outside of the escalator as it rose to a height of fifteen feet as it approached the second story. Everybody, including her mother, just stood there and gasped at Maggie and wondered what could be done as she approached the second floor and the narrow space at the top. Suddenly, a small black man moved through the crowd. This is the way the paper described the event: "Hardly noticed in the crowd, one shopper has done more than gape. Slower than a speeding bullet, he runs forward. Less powerful than a locomotive, he stumbles and falls near the base of the escalator. He gets up; he leaps moving stairs as if they were tall buildings ... A small elderly man is just in time to snatch Maggie into his arms." And she is saved.
Maggie's mother, who hardly had time to thank the man because he walked off and disappeared in the crowd, observed that she will never forget him. "A very nice-looking man, up in his years, five feet five or six, black, glasses, grayish mustache, a full-length coat, hat, no cape, no monogrammed chest." Later the man was identified as a seventy-three year-old man. He was retired and a Baptist deacon. Here is one instance of somebody who cared enough to help.6
Let Us Make Room
As we come into the Christmas season, I hope that we will make room for the Christ. This is our challenge. We can get our lives so crowded with other matters that we simply have no time for him. "The major enemy of Christianity itself," Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote, "is not atheism but secularism, not the theoretical denial of Christ but the practical crowding out of Christ and everything he stands for. When the hall is filled with immediate and temporal concerns, when every seat is taken and even standing room is crowded, how can anything else get in?"7
Unfortunately, the crowded inn is a parallel of what happens again and again in the human soul. We can be involved in many Christian activities that are festive, fun, and meaningful, yet not allow God's Son, which is the real focus of Christmas, to find lodging in our hearts.
You and I know better today than did the people in the time when Christ was born. We have heard the recorded words in the scripture of the angels' song, "You shall call him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." At his baptism, God says, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." John wrote in his gospel, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." We have the testimony of the Bible and others about Christ.
Now Jesus Christ stands at the door of your heart and mine. He knocks once again, seeking to find lodging. Will you and I open the door and let him find room? One of the Christmas carols instructs us, "Joy to the world the Lord is come, let earth receive her king, let every heart prepare him room."
What verb will you use to describe Christmas this year? Will it be "spent"? You spent a lot of money. Will it be "remember"? Will you focus primarily on the past? Will it be "observe," as though you can be detached from it all? Or will it be "make room"? Will you "make room" for Christ so that everything you do -- all of your celebration, festivity, and gift giving -- will not crowd out Christ, but provide him lodging within your life? Let's celebrate the great good news of the One who was born centuries ago, and who continues to come today to be born again in your life and mine.
Walter Russell Bowie wrote these lines about "The Continuing Christ" which captures the truth of the ancient Bethlehem story.
Far, far away is Bethlehem
And years are long and dim,
Since Mary held the holy Child
And angels sang for Him.
But still to hearts where love and faith
Make room for Christ in them,
He comes again, the Child from God,
To find His Bethlehem.8
I hope that Christ will find lodging in your heart and in mine this Christmas season. Let us not crowd him out.
___________
1. Anonymous. Quoted in H. Gordon Clinard, "A Good Word for the Innkeeper," The Baptist Standard (December 23, 1981), p. 4.
2. William E. Hull, "In Defense of an Innkeeper" (Unpublished sermon preached in Crescent Hill Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky, December 21, 1969).
3. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, "No Room for Christ in the Inn," Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 8 (Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications, 1969), p. 702.
4. Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Luke (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1956), p. 54.
5. Ernest T. Campbell, "The Outsider and the Inn" (Unpublished sermon preached in the Riverside Church in the City of New York, December 20, 1970), p. 2.
6. The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky, December 10, 1988).
7. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Riverside Sermons (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), p. 276.
8. Walter Russell Bowie, The Compassionate Christ (New York: Abingdon Press, 1965), p. 37. Used by permission of Abingdon Press.
