I wonder how many of you are here
because you are visiting family this Christmas, perhaps back in your parents’
home, or gathering with other family members.
If you are, you might have come across the twitter hashtag #duvetknowitschristmas . People are using it to tweet pictures of the extraordinary sleeping arrangements
families come up with to fit in all their Christmas guests. Adult children are
squashed back in their childhood beds, sleeping under Thomas the Tank Engine
bedding which they loved when they were six, but somehow doesn’t feel quite
right when they are 28 and trying to look cool in front of their new girlfriend.
But they’re the lucky ones. Others are being put up in storerooms, offices, under
the stairs, under the dining room table, under the piano, in walk-in cupboards,
in camper vans on the drive, on rickety camp beds and inflatable mattresses and
yoga mats… My two children are home for Christmas and that means one has to
sleep in what I call my craft room, among my sewing bits and bobs. I do try
to make sure I’ve picked up all the stray pins and needles from the floor, but
still, it’s safest to keep your shoes on! If you’re one of those who’s enduring
“less than optimal” accommodation this Christmas, you might have some sympathy
for Mary and Joseph, who found there was “no
place at the inn” and who end up
putting their newborn in an animals’ feeding trough.
“There was no place … at the inn”. It’s a phrase which probably conjures up memories of
school nativity plays, where a series of grumpy innkeepers turn Mary and Joseph
away until one softens, just a bit, and says that, ok, they can bed down in the
stable round the back if they really must, but don’t expect any special
treatment, because it’s a busy night, and there are far more lucrative
customers needing attention in the bar…
In reality, though, it wasn’t
like that at all. For a start, the Greek word that’s translated as “inn” in our
Bibles doesn’t mean somewhere like the Five Bells in Seal. Luke could have used
the word pandocheion, literally a
place that welcomed all, if he’d wanted to. That would have been the equivalent
of our word “inn”. That’s the word he
uses to describe the inn to which the Good Samaritan takes the man he’s rescued
on the Jericho road in the story Jesus tells. But Luke uses a different word
here – kataluma – and it really just
means a “guest room”, the spare room, the room you put Auntie Flo in when she
comes to visit.
Many homes in ancient
Palestine would only have had one room, where the family ate, slept, and
worked. At one end, down a step or two, would be an area where the animals were
brought in at night. But if you could afford it you’d build an extension, a kataluma, a guest room, so you could
offer hospitality to visitors more easily. Welcoming others, even if complete
strangers, was an essential part of the culture Jesus grew up in. Pandocheia, those public rooming houses,
only existed in out of the way places where no one lived, like that Jericho
road out in the desert.
So when Luke tells us that
there was “no room in the kataluma”, all
it means is that the guest room was already occupied. Mary and Joseph had to
squash in with the family. And it must have been a squash. Because when Mary’s
child was born, there was nowhere to put him except the animals’ feeding
trough, a makeshift bed, so at least he wasn’t lying on the ground where
someone might tread on him.
There was no grumpy
innkeeper, just a family who wanted to show hospitality, but had to budge
up to a ridiculous extent to do so. Mary and Joseph weren’t rattling around in
a barn. They were cheek by jowl with the family - and their animals – in their
home when the baby arrived. They ‘d been made as welcome as that family could
manage, but all they could offer was a tiny space in a very crowded house in a
very crowded town, packed with people who’d been forced to return by the edict
of the Emperor in far-off Rome who wanted to count, and tax, his subjects, and
didn’t care how disruptive that was.
And, of course, it was always
going to be the poor who suffered most. It always is. Luke’s account of Jesus’
life is full of stories of his ministry to people on the margins, the kind of
people who are overlooked and pushed about, people for whom there is no room in
the world.The birth story he tells sets the scene for that, as Jesus is born in
an overcrowded house, where there is no room for him.
Poverty and overcrowding tend
to go hand in hand. In our own nation, the urban poor of the Industrial Revolution
were crammed into slum tenements, and back to back terraces, while the rural
poor crowded their large families into tiny cottages that now sell for hundreds
of thousands as bijou holiday homes for one or two. In more modern times, cramped
shared houses, with rooms divided and divided until there is barely enough room
for a bed, command ridiculous rents in our cities, and sheds and garages are
often illegally converted to house people too. Space is a luxury that only the
rich can afford; the poor have always been expected to put up with living on
top of each other. Official figures say over 84,000 UK families are in B&
B’s, hostels or temporary accommodation right now, often in just one or two
rooms, with cooking and washing facilities shared with others. More than
126,000 children in the UK will wake up on Christmas Day in places like that, often
with barely enough room for everyone to lie down, and that number has been steadily growing.
According to this story,
Jesus would have been one of them, spending his first night in the world
squashed into a narrow, hay-filled trough. It was the least likely place for
the Son of God, the new Messiah, the great leader his people had been expecting.
And yet that little space was enough,
says Luke. A tiny child, a manger bed, a small beginning was all it took to
change the world. In that small space a huge thing happened.
A thousand years ago, a monk
called Aelfric (955-1010) put that into words better than I can. "[Jesus] was crowded in his lodging place”
Aelfric said, “so
that he could give us spacious room in the kingdom of heaven." Aelfric’s words echo the words of the
Psalms in the Bible “Out of my distress I
called on the Lord,” says Psalm 118, “the Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.”
Spacious room, a broad place: these are images that
we can probably all understand, even if we’ve never been physically crammed in
somewhere. We may have felt hemmed in by circumstances, with no room for
manoeuvre, mentally and emotionally overcrowded. We talk about being in “dire straits” when we’re in trouble,
when we can’t see any options, when we don’t know where to turn. Strait, in this sense means “narrow”, like the Straits of Gibraltar.
Many of us live lives that are over-crowded with
busyness. We’re bombarded with words and images, demands and opportunities ,
haunted by FOMO, the fear of missing out.
And then there are the possessions we crowd our
lives with. Marie Kondo, the decluttering guru, has a huge following, but
perhaps that’s just an indication of the hunger we have for that “broad place”, a place where there is
room to breathe, room to move, room to be ourselves.
The good news in this Christmas story, though, is
that God doesn’t wait for us to declutter before he comes to us. He doesn’t need us to get ourselves sorted out
before he can act. It doesn’t matter whether your t-shirts are folded just so,
or you’ve got rid of everything that doesn’t “spark joy”. A manger is enough
for him, a tiny space. That’s all God needs to start to change us, to bring us
out of those “dire straits” into his “spacious room”.
Our mess and muddle and shortcomings are no
problem. That manger was never meant to be a baby’s bed. It was quite
unsuitable, horribly unhygienic – someone should have made a safeguarding
referral – but that didn’t matter to God. He doesn’t wait until we’ve been to
the spiritual equivalent of Mothercare to get the kit we think we need to live
a holy life. We don’t have to know the words of the hymns or be able to find our
way around the Bible or understand what’s going on in church services. Just as
he made his home in that narrow manger in Bethlehem, he can make his home in us,
however unprepared we feel.
So, whatever your sleeping arrangements are this
night, whether you are crammed in like sardines, or on your own, but over-crowded
with worries and cares, the message of Christmas is that there is plenty of
room for us all in God’s heart, the “broad
place” which is our true home. All
we need to do is whisper “yes – come in!” and that’s enough.
I’m going to leave the last words to the
seventeenth century poet, Richard Crashaw from his poem, The Holy Nativity of Our Lord.
Poor World, said I, what wilt thou do
To entertain this starry
stranger?
Is this the best thou canst bestow,
A cold, and not too cleanly,
manger?
Contend, ye powers of heav’n and earth,
To fit a bed for this huge birth.
…
Welcome, all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span;
Summer in winter; day in night;
Heaven in earth, and God in
man.
Great little one, whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav’n to earth.
Amen
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