[Members] Article from Christiany Today

[Rev. Christian D Boyd]

No Room in the What?

Mary and Joseph weren't trying to check into a hotel-they were staying with
relatives.

Ben Witherington III | posted 12/19/2007 09:03AM

 

I am here to tamper with a masterpiece, or better said, to share with you a
rather different reading of Luke 2:1-7, one solidly grounded in the facts,
but nowhere represented in Christmas carols and pageants. I must tell you
that I have heard endless sermons on how there was "no room in the inn" and
how it was typical of a cold, fallen world to cast the holy family and Jesus
out into the cold, and so on, often preached with great fervor but producing
no ferment at all.

 

We've heard it countless times before. We've all been inoculated with a
slight case of Christmas, preventing us from getting the real thing, or in
this case, from reading these texts in a more historical way. The problem
with the Christmas-pageant version is, this is not at all likely to be what
Luke intends to tell us in this much beloved and belabored Christmas tale.

 

When it came time for Mary to deliver the baby, the Greek of Luke's text
says, "she wrapped him in cloth and laid him in a corn crib, as there was no
room in the guest room." Yes, you heard me right. Luke does not say there
was no room in the inn. Luke has a different Greek word for inn (pandeion),
which he trots out in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The word he uses
here (kataluma) is the very word he uses to describe the room in which Jesus
shared the Last Supper with his disciples - the guest room of a house.

Archeology shows that houses in Bethlehem and its vicinity often had caves
as the back of the house where they kept their prized ox or beast of burden,
lest it be stolen. The guest room was in the front of the house, the animal
shelter in the back, and Joseph and Mary had come too late to get the guest
room, so the relatives did the best they could by putting them in the back
of the house.

 

Or perhaps, seeing that Mary was close to labor, the family put the
delivering mom in the already-unclean spot in the house. Many people
overlook the ritual uncleanness of childbearing in this story, although Luke
mentions it in 2:22, "when the time of their purification was up . "

 

Bethlehem was a one-stoplight town, and we don't have a shred of
archaeological evidence that there ever was a wayfarer's inn in that little
village in Jesus' day. All this silliness about 'no room at the Holiday Inn'
for the holy family or the world giving Jesus the cold shoulder is not at
all what Luke is talking about. It's a story about no inn in the room! It's
a story about a family making do when more relatives than expected suddenly
show up on the doorstep. It's a story most of us can relate to in one way or
another. Jesus was born in his relative's home, in the place where they kept
the most precious of their animals. One can well imagine the smell.

 

The question for us this day is: Do we still have the capacity to be
surprised, enthralled, by this remarkable Christmas story? Do we still have
the capacity to see all things new, once more? Can we make him room in our
homes, even if the calendar is full, and the head count high on the home
front? As Angelus Silesius, a 17th-century poet, wrote, "Though Christ a
thousand times/ In Bethlehem be born,/ If he's not born in thee/ Thy soul is
still forlorn." Let me tell you that if you let that Guest into your inner
sanctum, even if you put him in the very back, he will surely take over and
become the center of attention in due course.

Copyright C 2007 Christianity Today. Reprinted with permission. 

 

 

Rev. Christian Dominic Boyd

 

Pastor, New Creation PC(USA) in O'Fallon, IL

& Staff, Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy

Mob: 618.292.8583

www.NewCreationPC.org

Enriching our community 
through vibrant, Christ-centered relationships...
one life at a time.

(2 Cor 5:17)

 

"God is personal, not private. . . so is discipleship in Christ"

 

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