There Was No Room for Them in the Inn

         A Christmas Reflection

          “There was no room for them in the inn.”

 I had always made this sentence into a metaphor: no room in my cluttered heart for God, no room in our busy lives for the Christ Child.

But this year, it wasn’t a metaphor at all. Suddenly, I was the reluctant inn-keeper, and I didn’t like it one bit.

At first, like the inn-keepers of Bethlehem, I didn’t realize that the intrusion of this unknown little family into my world had anything to do with Christmas or Incarnation. I was sleeping soundly, enjoying the blissful and dreamless sleep of a tired woman about to embark on a whole week of relaxing Thanksgiving vacation. Suddenly, the phone rang. At four in the morning. The clergy colleague from Western Kentucky on the other end of the line apologized for waking me up so early and then asked for my help. As she unfolded her rather complex tale, my stomach began to wrap itself in knots, and my heart began to sink. “Not today,” I pleaded with the God hidden in the darkness surrounding my nice cozy bed. I imagine that those innkeepers in Bethlehem were reluctant to get out of bed, too.

“There’s a young couple,” she said breathlessly, “trying to get from Western Kentucky home to Nebraska for Thanksgiving. They don’t have any money, so I bought them tickets on the Megabus out of Louisville.  My sexton drove them the two-hours to downtown Louisville, but the Megabus driver wouldn’t let them on the bus without proof that I had paid for the electronic tickets. He shut the door in their faces and ran over the mother’s foot as he drove away. I’m out $400, and they are downtown with my sexton and don’t know where to go. There won’t be another Megabus tonight, and I’m going to have to contact the company first, anyway.”

 The first “inn” had violently shut its doors. I was too sleepy to be indignant.

My colleague continued: “It’s 19 degrees outside, and they have two small children. Can you help them?” At least it wasn’t below freezing in Bethlehem.

My mind still foggy with sleep, I tried to think of some way to help this family, without inconveniencing myself. I could certainly get up and drive downtown and take them to my house or even to St. Thomas. I could get up and take them all to breakfast and put them on a Greyhound. But I wasn’t feeling very generous. After all, I was on vacation, and I had no idea who these people were! I  wanted to make this my colleague’s problem. I would help her solve her problem. That usually works when I want to look like I am being helpful.

“Why don’t you find them a motel? I’ll pay for the room,” I offered. [I tend to throw money at problems when I don’t want to deal with them.] “What about that motel down by the Cathedral? They could stay there. Call me back if I need to pay.”

I snuggled back down into my pillows, happy to have solved the problem so easily.

Thirty minutes later, the phone rang again. It was my tired colleague.

“They drove over there, and the motel won’t let them stay. They won’t take payment from credit cards if you aren’t there to show them the card. The family really just wants to get going, anyway.”

 Well, I didn’t want to go down to the motel. I didn’t want to get out of bed. The second inn had shut its doors. The nerve of those untrusting innkeepers! What is our world coming to!

I was determined not to get involved. “I guess the Cathedral isn’t open yet,” I muttered, eying the clock. It was about 5:30 a.m. “I know, what about Wayside? Maybe they could stay there for a few hours, and then I can come down and take them to the Greyhound station later?”

I had no idea what time the Greyhound station opened. When my colleague called back with the news that Wayside would take them in the lobby for awhile, I heaved a sigh of relief.

“Give them my phone number,” I added with new-found generosity, “in case there is any more trouble.” And I pulled up the covers and shut my eyes.

At 6 a.m. or so, my phone rang again. This time it was the young mother. “Wayside won’t let us in!” she fumed. They say we have to wait out here in the cold until 8 a.m. before we can go in the lobby. I’m so tired, and the sexton wants to drive back home. He’s been up all night with us. Can you please help us?”

What, a homeless shelter that won’t take in a freezing family?! You’ve got to be kidding me! I start to wonder if the young mother is making up all of this rejection. I get suspicious and try to trip her up in her story. But that sexton is still there with her, so she must be telling the truth.

The third inn had barred its doors. There were no others that I could think of.

Now I was waking up, and I finally started to feel a twinge of moral outrage … or was it guilt? I recognized the familiar voice of an exhausted mother who was worried about her babies. And besides, it was after 6 a.m. now.  I might as well get up.

“OK, ask the sexton to drive you to the Greyhound station. I will meet you there and get you tickets home,” I finally offered.

I still didn’t think about the Nativity, until I saw the baby. There he was, only a few months old, nestled in the manger of an old baby car seat. He looked just like the Baby Jesus in those paintings by Rubens, with chubby little arms and legs, and pale white porcelain skin. His eyes were shut tight, as if they had been painted on, and “no crying he made.” He just looked different, like something the Holy Spirit might have conjured up. Animals didn’t stand around this baby’s bed, but his two-year-old brother tottered unsteadily around him with the jerky movements of an exhausted child. Mary stood there nervously, too, a tiny mother who looked to be about sixteen years old, though I knew she was older. She talked a mile a minute, clearly in charge of this little family and going on pure adrenaline. Joseph looked much older and stood quiet and removed, often looking down at the ground. He was the one who kept thanking me. Instead of shepherds, there were other early morning passengers shuffling around the baby, all a bit down on their luck, all looking tired. Instead of angels, there were Amish women in starched white bonnets and stiff dresses, looking very righteous and yet kind at the same time. Instead of wise men, there was an evangelist of some sort with a kingly gray beard and a thin black tie and shiny shoes, handing out little gifts and tracts to all of the waiting children, with a smile. The Greyhound Station on 7^th Street and Muhammad Ali was a perfect stable for this child of God, a typical refuge for the modern family that everyone, including me, had turned away.

As life would have it, I learned later that this little family was far from divine. As a real-life human family, it was troubled, and the story that they had told my colleague and me was not quite the whole story. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that they made it back home, and they opened my eyes to my role as inn-keeper, an inn-keeper with the tendency to keep my neighbor--not just my God--out in the cold for much too long.

I saw a photo this week that brings good news to us inn-keepers, though. It is a picture taken during a risky operation to cure a 21-week-old fetus of spina-bifida. The surgeon removed the mother’s womb from her body with the baby inside and then made a small incision, through which he successfully repaired the spinal cord of the baby. During the surgery, however, this baby stuck a tiny yet perfectly formed hand up out of the incision and grasped the finger of the surgeon, who froze for a moment, deeply moved. Someone snapped a picture. Looking at the picture, I saw the Incarnate God in the frail flesh of that baby’s hand, weak and white like the hand of the Greyhound Station baby, reaching out of Mary’s womb and curling tightly around my finger, refusing to let go. At the same time, I saw the frail flesh of my own hand in the hand of the fetus, a hand feeling its way up out of the darkness to grasp the healing finger of Christ, as he was repairing me in my brokenness.

The mystery of God Incarnate is both—and is the hope for us, the inn-keepers of the world.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150324906131611&set=a.404747486610.189592.349410501610&type=1&theater