Christmas is about making room, because God has made room for us. Through this baby born at Christmas, God calls us to look beyond the weariness of this world, beyond the weariness of our lives, and with a thrill of hope, rejoice. Merry Christmas!
Today’s message focuses on Luke’s account of the Christmas story in Luke 2:1-20, and continues our theme How Does A Weary World Rejoice from from A Sanctified Art. (There is no Advent 4 message because we did a congregational Christmas program last Sunday.)
Here’s the sermon podcast audio and livestream from Christ the King.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
How many of you have ever been part of a church Christmas program? My first time as a kid in a Christmas program, I was a yield sign (like, the red triangle). It was some kind of metaphorical interpretation? I’ve also been a shepherd, and a donkey at least twice. Micah loved being an angel in the program we did last Sunday.
There’s a story I heard about one Sunday School Christmas program about Mary and Joseph looking for a room in Bethlehem. In the program, a very pregnant Mary and Joseph move from place to place asking for lodging, but over and over, they’re told “there is no room for you here” and sent away.
Right in the middle of the story, one kid playing an animal in the pageant stood up, deviated from the script, and loudly called out, “Hey! Come over here by me—I’ll make room for you!”
I have no idea if this story’s true or not, but I love what it illustrates: Christmas is a story about making room.
As Luke tells the story of Jesus’ birth, he says Mary gave birth to Jesus, wrapped him up, and laid him in a manger. Why a manger? Well, there was no room for them in the inn.
That one line, “There was no place for them in the inn.” has led to millions of Christmas programs including an innkeeper and usually an innkeeper’s wife—the people who get to reject the holy family.
Maybe you’ve heard this before—if not, I’m very sorry if I’m destroying your picture of the nativity—but there was probably no innkeeper at that first Christmas. There wasn’t a Bethlehem hotel where Joseph forgot to make a reservation.
Remember, Mary and Joseph are traveling to Joseph’s home village. His family is from Bethlehem. He has relatives there.
In fact, the word translated as “Inn” really just means “Guest-room.” There’s an entirely different word for a hotel or lodging house, and Luke uses it in a different story. The “guest room” here is probably a lean-to built onto the end of a one room house, and the problem Mary and Joseph face is that it’s already full of other relatives who arrived home earlier.
But in a traditional Palestinian home in that time, there is another space available. About 80% of the one room house is a raised terrace where the family cooks, eats, and lives. But at the end, there’s a small, lower level for animals, and built right into the raised terrace is a manger.
Dr. Ken Bailey explains, “If the cow or donkey is hungry at night, it can stand and reach the feed on the floor of the upper family living space (often about four feet higher than the level for the animals)… What is unknown to the Western reader is the fact that in a traditional Palestinian home, the mangers are in the living room.”
Just as it is today in the Middle East, hospitality was a very important value in Jesus’ time. It’s unimaginable to think Joseph’s family wouldn’t have made room for him, and in fact, they did make room. Since the guest room was full, they cleared out the main family room for Mary to give birth.
He continues, “The traditional understanding of the story is a slur on the ability and integrity of Joseph. Is the entire village of Bethlehem so hardhearted that no home is open to a woman about to give birth?”
Far from leaving their relatives out in the cold, Joseph’s family goes to the effort of making room wherever they can, finding a space for Mary to have her child. Christmas begins with a family making room.
Our theme this season has been the question, “How does a weary world rejoice?” and tonight’s answer, the answer at Christmas, is that we rejoice by making room.
We might lose the innkeeper in the story, but the point about making room for Jesus is still true. Through hospitality, welcome, and inclusion, we make this weary world a little brighter.
Without an actual innkeeper, we can’t just blame one hotel clerk with bad customer service skills, and the story becomes more personal. The Christmas theme of making room isn’t just about that literal first Christmas in Bethlehem; it’s about recognizing Jesus in the face of the stranger, recognizing Jesus among us, even in distant relatives who show up when the house is already full.
In his 1543 Christmas sermon, Martin Luther said, “The inn was full… There are many of you who think to yourselves: ‘If only I had been there! How quick I would have been to help the baby!’ Why don’t you do it now? You have Christ in your neighbor. You ought to serve your neighbor, for what you do to your neighbor in need you do to the Lord Christ himself.”
What does it mean for you to make room for Jesus in your life today? How does seeing Jesus in neighbors around us change how we live?
Part of what sticks out to me this year is that the Christmas story is both cosmic and personal. We began tonight with John’s epic telling of Christmas, a cosmic story of God’s light breaking into a dim world. Our world needs that message. There’s plenty of gloom in our world, plenty of weariness in Jesus’ time and today. John describes how we need God’s light to break in.
Then we heard Luke’s story of Christmas, where this magnificent cosmic event takes place on a local, personal level. Luke plants this miraculous story firmly into human history, and it doesn’t look very magnificent or glorious.
Jesus is born during the rule of King Herod, in a time when a Roman emperor who ruled by force could make a decree and the whole population would have to travel to be counted so they could be taxed. In a crowded small town in Palestine, God enters this broken world. God comes to us in an unexpected, yet perfectly ordinary way.
At Christmas, God makes room for everyone. The angel says this is good news of great joy for ALL the people. People like shepherds, and magi, even people like us, 2,000 years later. This story, this baby born is a thrill of hope in a weary world. This baby is here to change our lives, your life, my life, the lives of magi and shepherds and kings.
There are good reasons for us to be weary, and as Pastor Sarah Speed’s poem on the back of the bulletin says, you and I can’t fix everything broken in the world. But, we can proclaim the hope of Christmas.
Every single day, in a million different ways, we can insist God’s love is big enough to include you, and me, and the whole world. We can insist on making room for everyone to be included. “We can’t calm every storm, but we can turn on the porch lights.”
We can rejoice in this weary world because God has come to us. Even in the times and places where this world doesn’t recognize God, doesn’t make room for Jesus, he comes to us anyway.
We can spread joy by making room, inviting others into the celebration, sharing the good news, making room for others because this good news is too good to keep to ourselves, joining the angels in proclaiming Messiah’s birth.
This Christmas, perhaps God is calling us to be the ones to stand up, deviate from the script, and say, “Hey! Come over here by me—I’ll make room for you!” Because God has made room for all of us.
Through this baby born at Christmas, God calls us to look beyond the weariness of this world, beyond the weariness of our lives, and with a thrill of hope, rejoice.
So make room for joy. Rejoice that God is doing something new.
Rejoice that God has come to dwell with us, that God has stepped into human history, entering this weary world to redeem it, to lead us to a better way.
The king is born! His kingdom will be justice and peace, he will reign forever, and there is room for you here in his kingdom.
Rejoice, for Christ our savior is born!
Merry Christmas.