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Adopted into Love; No Room at the Inn

Dr. Joe Kutter

12/23/07

Where is a baby supposed to be born? 

It was the day before Christmas when the very young woman, very pregnant, and her husband arrived in Bethlehem. It had been a very long walk for this very pregnant woman and she was no doubt very exhausted. They arrive in this little desert village, five or so miles from Jerusalem, and look for a place to stay.

The more familiar translations say that there was no room in the inn. A newer translation says that there was no guest room available.  Why? Our scholar Corey tells us that there were no “Inns” at that time. Our notion of the motel or the hotel or the inn transposes our notion of a place to stay back onto another culture that did not do it our way. O the subtleties of biblical translation!

So let me paraphrase. When Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem, there was no room; no inn, no guest room, nobody’s empty bedroom, no room! 

Sometimes, stories are true because the mundane facts are accurate. And sometimes, stories transcend the facts to tell the truth about all of human nature. Some true stories are more than true – they tell the ultimate truth or they ask ultimate questions. And this little story about a baby with no good place to be born is one of those stories that point to ultimate questions and to ultimate truth.

Where in the world is a baby supposed to be born?  Where in the world is a child of God supposed to be born?  Where in the world is the child of God supposed to be born? 

The hills around Bethlehem are filled with limestone caves. To this very day, if you drive around the area, you will see caves, with coverings and television antennae and parking places that have been turned into homes in which people live. Some of those caves, in Jesus’ day, were used for stables for the animals and they provided wonderful protection in inclement weather.

It appears that Joseph and Mary found one of those caves, one of those stable-caves and there Jesus was born. Where is a baby, any baby, any of God’s babies, supposed to be born?  It is a question that tests our humanity. Where are God’s children supposed to be born? 

We can look at this stable in a couple of ways. First, we can see it as the place where humanity’s inhumanity to humanity is made most clear – or in more familiar language, man’s inhumanity to man.  In the middle of all of those animals and all of that animal stuff, this child of God was born because there was no room!  From the moment of his delivery into this world, he is the target of sin and evil – the sin of inhospitality and a callous disregard for God’s babies and the evil of relegating God’s children to the home for sheep and donkeys and flies! Jesus’ destiny is almost foreshadowed in his birth, the one who bears the sin and evil of this world in redeeming the world.

A second look at that cave could cause us to say, some kind soul pointed them to the best available place. It was the one place that was warm and protected and private and some hospitable person gave them the best possible place to stay. In a society where houses were small and privacy was nearly non-existent and guest rooms would be stuffed from wall to wall with paying patrons, why would Mary and Joseph want to deliver a baby in the midst of a loud, crowded, dirty bunch of strangers?  Of all the bad places available, this may have been the least bad! So, this may indeed have been somebody’s genuine hospitality in a very bad time.

And why were they dependent upon the hospitality of strangers?  They were the outsiders. They were the visitors. They were the homeless in that town. They were the family that did not belong. They were the ones who needed somebody else’s hospitality.

We Christians believe that God was in Jesus. We believe that in special ways, God experienced the world through the life of Jesus. And if that is so, we know that God himself experienced the need for hospitality in the experience of Mary and Joseph and Jesus. And the people who responded in kindness to the displaced family were responding to God.

There is a wonderful story in the book of Genesis in which Abraham greets three traveling strangers. He makes them welcome and attends to their needs. It turns out that one of the traveling strangers is God himself who announces that Sarah is about to become pregnant. The point is this, when we practice hospitality to the stranger, we may be making God Himself welcome.  That is the way it was for old Abraham. And that is the way it was for those unknown souls who found a place for Mary and Joseph and the almost born Jesus.

So, we should ask, what in the world does all of this have to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ?  Everything!

It speaks to the experience of God and it points us to the character of God.

The Gospel is that God has experienced everything that we experience.

• Does God know what it is like to be a stranger? Yes.
• Does God know what it is like to be left out?
• Does God know the experience of loneliness? Yes.
• Does God know what it is like to choose the less bad rather than the really good? Yes.
• Does God know what it is like to hope that somebody in some way will step up when your personal resources are expended? Yes.
• Does God know what it is like to be you?  Yes
• In Christ, God became one of us. That is the Gospel.

But it is only a part of the Gospel. It is not enough for God to simply understand our problems.

The Gospel is that God has an answer and the answer is that God is a hospitable God. Read 1 John 4:16 (NIV).

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

One expression of God’s love is God’s hospitality, God’s habit of welcoming men and women into his Kingdom.  This has been a theme of this sermon series and I hope that it will be familiar to you by now.

Look at the characters in the Christmas drama and get a sense of God’s hospitality. Look at the participants.

·         Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, was an old and childless woman, shamed by her barrenness.

·         Zachariah, Elizabeth’s husband, a priest who lived with the nagging shame of having no heir.

·         John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, who was a wild, religious eccentric – to say the least.

·         Mary, a betrothed, (in our culture, the closest parallel would be to say that she was engaged) girl who became pregnant in the most unusual way.

·         Joseph, the man who discovered that his fiancé was pregnant.

·         Shepherds in the field, working guys who came straight from work

·         Magi, foreigners, alien in their religion, astrologers who followed a star to Bethlehem

God, in the Christmas drama reveals his own hospitality. And the cast of characters make it clear that all are invited, including you and me.

So, here, I believe, is a part of the gospel. God knows exactly what it is like to be you. If you feel left out or lost out or alone or you just feel that you don’t quite belong, God knows all about that. God experienced it first hand in Bethlehem

And God wants to make you welcome in his home. Come to the stable, come to the stable cave, come to the place where Jesus is born and here you are welcome. Here you will find that you belong with the shepherds and the magi, and with Zachariah and Elizabeth and John the Baptist, and with Mary and Joseph and Jesus himself.

Here you belong. Right here with God’s people.

My friend, Gene Bartlette had a sermon in which he declared that water is thicker than blood when the water is baptism. We who have been baptized into Christ belong to one another in a way that is even stronger than blood relationships. When we gather together in Christ, we all belong. We all belong in the hospitable household of God.