"Incarnate Joy"

“Incarnate Joy”

Isaiah 52:7-10 and Luke 2:1-20

How beautiful upon the mountains
    are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
    who announces salvation,
    who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices;
    together they shout for joy,
for in plain sight they see
    the return of the Lord to Zion.
Break forth; shout together for joy,
    you ruins of Jerusalem,
for the Lord has comforted his people;
    he has redeemed Jerusalem.
The Lord has bared his holy arm
    before the eyes of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth shall see
    the salvation of our God.                                                               Isaiah 52:7-10

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room. 

Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
    and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them, and Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told them.            Luke 2:1-20

Have you ever given much thought to the innkeeper of the story?  I do not know about you, but in every Christmas pageant I have seen, some rough-and-tumble boy is chosen as the innkeeper.  He is dressed in someone’s old bathrobe, and he answers the knock on the door with a blunt “No room in the inn!” response to a panicked Mary and Joseph.

Why in the world were not Mary and Joseph smarter than to have made reservations at an inn when they knew Bethlehem was going to be crowded at Christmastime?  (haha!)  On top of that, people were going there to fill out their census cards.  With Mary’s due date approaching, why wouldn’t they plan?  The innkeeper had no obligation to accommodate them.

One minor problem with the innkeeper.  The innkeeper is not mentioned in the Biblical text.  It simply states there was no room for them in the inn.  A closer examination of the ancient words translated “no room” really means no “appropriate place”.  There was no appropriate place for them in the inn.  What does that mean?  What is the big problem?  And what is the difference? 

Let me explain a bit behind the story.  To understand what the ancient audience would have heard in this text, we need to understand what a first century inn was like.  They were not like our motel or hotel of today.  Picture a courtyard with stalls in a desert climate.  People put their animals in the stalls.  There was hay for the people to lay on and there were three walls to block the wind at night.  An inn had many of these stalls where traveling folks and their animals could be blocked from the wind and have straw upon which to lay.  There was no privacy.  It was not an appropriate place to deliver a baby.

The Greek word translated “inn” in the Luke birth narrative is the word catamaluna which means guest room.  We might surmise from this that the inn described in the story had a stall available, but not a guest room where Mary and Joseph could have privacy to deliver a baby and welcome it home.

There is another thing you might want to know about many ancient eastern homes.  They were like a split-level house with only a few feet between the levels.  The top floor was a living room area that also served as a guest room for guests who came to visit.  Below that a few feet was a room where they could put animals.  In-between was a manger where the animals could come to eat.  The overnight guests stayed in the upper room – the living room – and their animals were put in the lower room. 

When reading this story, a middle easterner would understand that Joseph and Mary came to Bethlehem because Joseph was of the lineage of David.  One could assume that meant he had many relatives in and around Bethlehem and therefore, he and Mary were going to visit relatives.  They could stay in the home of an aunt, uncle, or cousin.  It would have been unthinkable for a traveler to stay in a public inn if there was family in Bethlehem.  Our western picture of Mary and Joseph knocking on a stranger’s door where there were lots of rooms, each of them private and some grumpy overworked guy coming to the door and saying, “sorry, no room in the inn” is not at all accurate.  Hospitality rules in the Middle East even today would rule that out.

Because there were so many relatives, the catamaluna – the guest room – was occupied.  Mary and Joseph would have been allowed to sleep in that lower, outer room.  This is the one in which animals were brought into feed.  It was customary to wrap a child in swaddling clothes.  Putting a child in the manger would have also been normal – it was the most central location in the home and near eye level – so people could dote on the baby and welcome it into its new home!

When Luke wrote his gospel, he was telling the story about Joseph going back to his roots – his familial home of Bethlehem.  Joseph was walking with his betrothed wife Mary into the bosom of a large family that could welcome and be thrilled with the birth of a new child in their midst!  I realize that thinking about Jesus being born into this kind of situation is quite different than our customary way of thinking.  But is there anything wrong with thinking that God provided a loving, typical Middle Eastern Jewish family into which Jesus came?  We still have that expectation and hope – especially at Christmas – that we will all experience a loving family around us in the deepest of the bleak midwinters.

Going home for Christmas is a tradition that most of us have come to expect.  Some of our best memories are built around Christmases at home.  We remember the beauty of childhood Christmas trees decked with lights and covered in balls and colorful things that we made as children and sprinkled with icicles.  We remember the magic of packages that were secret to us, and we shook them under the tree to guess what could be inside.  We remember the smell of food cooking… the sound of our favorite Christmas carols.  Even today, most of us can summon up those senses inside us when we think about it.  That’s what coming home for Christmas means to us.

I believe the sense of home we desire at Christmas is a deeper sense of belonging… a sense of cosmic belonging … as if at this special time of year, we come to know eternity better than we usually do.  That is what incarnation is, after all.  God with us.  Can we simply step into our belonging with God at Christmas?  Or do we have to stay on our own safe, comfortable side? 

Perhaps that is why we want to see the innkeeper shut Jesus out because inside we are not certain we really belong, and we feel shut out in the cold at Christmas.  So, we have the innkeeper shut Jesus out in the cold.  We wrote the innkeeper into the script even when he was not there.

Some of you know who author and spiritual teacher Henri Nouwen was.  Before he died, he had an experience where he was very ill and survived.  Afterward, he wrote about it.  He was hit by a passing van.  The rearview mirror of the van hit him in the back as it was driving along.  Nouwen was walking on the side of the road, and it knocked him unconscious into a ditch.  He went to the hospital and found that he had five broken ribs, a ruptured spleen and internal bleeding.  They were going to do surgery on him and began to wonder about whether his life was in danger, so he decided to prepare himself and his family for his possible death.  He wrote, “I let myself enter a place I have never been before – the portal of death.  I wanted to know that place I wanted to walk around it and make myself ready for life beyond life.  What I experienced there was something I had never experienced before – pure and unconditional love. Better still, I experienced an intensely personal presence which pushed all my fears aside and said, ‘come, don’t be afraid, I love you.’  This gentle, non-judgmental presence simply asked me to trust, completely. It was not a warm light, it was not an open door that I saw, or a rainbow but it was a human yet divine presence I felt and invited me to come closer and to let go of all my fears.  It was a feeling of homecoming.  Jesus opened his door to me and seemed to say, ‘here is where you belong.’  The homecoming had a real quality of return.  A return to the womb of God.  The God who had fashioned me in secret and had molded me into the depths of the earth, the God who had knitted me together in my mother’s womb, was calling me home.  Still, I felt the resistance to the call, a sense of unfinished business, unresolved conflicts with people with whom I live or have lived.  In my mind’s eyes I saw people who arouse within me feelings of anger, jealousy and even hatred.  They have a strange power over me.  Their criticism and their rejection of me still affected my feelings about myself.  By not forgiving them I gave them a power that held me back from God.  In the face of death, I realized it was not love that kept me clinging to life but unresolved anger.  The real struggle had to do with leaving behind people I had not forgiven and people who had not forgiven me.  I suddenly felt an immense desire to call around my bed all those who were angry with me and all those with whom I was angry and ask them to forgive me and offer my forgiveness to them.  I said to one of my friends, ‘please tell everyone that hurt me that I forgive them, and please ask everyone whom I have hurt to forgive me.’  When the nurses rolled me into surgery and strapped me onto the operating table, I experienced immense inner peace.  As I looked at the masked faces bending over me, I have a wonderful sense of peace, of being home.”

Most of you know the song “I’ll be home for Christmas”.  I remember the first year I was away from home, and I heard the song on the radio.  Tears came to my eyes as I realized I would miss the whole season away from home – it was only Christmas Day that I would be home.  “How can I miss the whole season with my family?” I thought as a tear rolled down my face.  It was then I realized that being home for Christmas is something you feel.  It is a sense of belonging inside.

Incarnation is God assuring us that life and love are eternal… that God has a home in us.  At Christmas, we know that we are at home whatever happens – whether or not we are with our families – because we have a home with God and God is at home in us.  That is the joy of incarnation!  And there is no better joy than that!