Christmas Eve 2005No room at the inn.
What sort of a welcome is that to the world for the Son of God? No place for them at the inn.
Well, it’s to expected really and I doubt there would be a better reception today.
It’s not that there would be any problem accommodating the expectant mother and her husband. Perhaps room for a donkey might be a bit more tricky. I mean, hotels don’t have stables anymore, they have subterranean car parks, cavernous dirty places where the air is full of carbon monoxide and the stench of stale cigarettes and alcohol. A donkey would suffocate in one of those all night. But the family would have no trouble at all. Unless of course they were homeless, destitute – then they would have trouble. But the pertinent issue these days is that there doesn’t seem to be real place for Jesus in the present world, or at least, here in Australia. And sadly, even less room for Jesus at Christmas time in this heavily secular society.
I wonder about the fact that there was no place for Mary, Joseph and the soon to arrive Jesus at the inn. I wonder if its not just that there was not the accommodation left, but that the inn keeper didn’t like their kind. I mean, they’re from Nazareth, country hicks. She is pregnant, they’ve been traveling, they’re probably filthy from the road. I wonder perhaps if they were treated the same way we treat homeless people these days. We have trouble finding places for them. They don’t fit in,they disturb us. Its not just that they are homeless that disturbs us, often its because they are different, strange, unwell, that makes them outsiders. They don’t fit anywhere and so are left on the streets. Its easier for us to leave them there.
So it’s kind of a strange paradox we have here – God’s Son, our Saviour, born into a world where there is no place for his kind. Born amongst the animals and their smells, their dung. Born amongst the lowly – the King in the outhouse. No finery, no fanfare, no thrones or bells ringing here. It reminds us of His death as well, a King on a cross, no crown of gold, just a crown of thorns, a crown of pain. We can’t separate his death from his birth, or his birth from his death. They are the bookends of His life that give it the meaning, they are the significant events of grace and mercy and love.
Because it is love, above all, that brings us Christmas. I guess we imitate this love a bit with the so-called Christmas spirit, that warm fuzzy feeling that makes us slightly more charitable at this time of the year, that makes us a little more friendly, until we’ve had too much to drink and start threatening photographers of course. It’s that Christmas spirit that inspired the truce on the battlefields of Gallipoli, where they stopped shooting at each other and got out of the trenches and met in the middle for fellowship. But just as that ended too quickly, and they got back to the process of shooting at each other, fighting some earthly King’s war, so our Christmas spirit seems to evaporate on Boxing Day. Yet the true Christmas spirit, that love and grace and mercy that God shows us in Jesus, never ends, never gives up, never evaporates. This love is what St. John writes about in the gospel attributed to him, 3.16, “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that all who believe in him shall not die, but shall have everlasting life.” It’s a love given to all, regardless of who we are or what we have done. All we have to do is accept it from God.
Now there is implicit in this equality, isn’t there. We are all offered God’s love. Yet I think there are some who are favoured in the message of Christmas, and it is made plain here in our gospel reading for tonight.
Its not one particular denomination, its not members of a secret sect or people who worship a particular way or who speak in toungues or who prophecy. Who is it then? It is the poor. The message of hope is primarily directed at the poor, the outsiders, the outcasts, the rejected. It is a message that God does not regard them as outsiders – indeed, God regards them as the true kingdom, those most deserving of God’s love, those who need it the most. In this, it is also a critique of the religious and political systems that keep them poor and outcast, that keeps them in poverty. Systems that are still in place today in one form or another. Perhaps our annual subscription to the “Christmas spirit” is our way of denying our complicity in this.
We see further evidence of Christ’s significance to the poor in the announcement by the angel to the shepherds of the birth of their Messiah. The shepherds were outsiders. They couldn’t leave the flocks at all, so they couldn’t worship at the temple. They slept rough, they probably didn’t clean all that often, and I imagine they would have been covered in wool fat and dags. Although perhaps the lanolin made their hands soft, who knows? But anyway, they were quite definitely outsiders. Yet they heard the news first. Blue collar workers heard it first. Outcasts, outsiders, the unclean, heard it first. They got the scoop. And they responded first. They accepted the Good News first, because it was meant for them. It was good news that they could handle, that was not threatening.
Now I wonder if the angel had appeared at the temple, and the religious authorities had heard the news first, what would have happened? If the angel appeared in the palace of Augustus, what would have happened? What if it happened now? I imagine the spin doctors and politicians having a field day, the religious authorities arguing over the theology and whether or not it fits in with what they believe, and what sort of service they should have to commemorate it. I imagine Bishops and Pastors and elders referring the matter to endless committees and conclaves and board meetings, the issue being pulled apart in the colleges and procrastinated about, finally being forgotten about cos it’s all too hard, and besides, we do have a church to run, don’t we? I imagine us rejecting him. Which is what happened back then. Jesus was rejected by those he came to save. Because He didn’t fit in with their plans, their politics, their power games, their bigotry. He upset too many people. He was friends with the powerless, not the powerful.
God’s rejection of human values of power and wealth can also be seen in the fact that God’s Son himself came into the world in the most vulnerable human form possible – a baby, new born, in a poor family in rustic and crude surroundings, laid to sleep in the feeding trough of cattle. The miracle of birth combined with the miracle and wonder of God encapsulated in this tiny, helpless body. That’s love. That’s true sacrifice, giving up the greatness, power, strength, of being divine, to be vulnerable for the sake of others. That’s real love.
I’m not trying to make us all feel guilty. Christmas is a celebration, isn’t it? But I am trying to say, in a roundabout way perhaps, that God’s love for us is huge, and in Jesus we see this. And that God cares about the little people, the defenceless, the vulnerable. I also want to encourage you not to give up the Christmas spirit, on boxing day, but rather to nurture it, and to make a place for Jesus in your lives all the time. Let him be born in you and dwell in your hearts. Live the wonder of Christmas everyday, reveling in the incarnate God, this God who is with us.
Have a wonderful Christmas, and may God fill your hearts and homes with joy.
The Lord be with you.
