I tend to keep a pretty orderly home. When our toddler granddaughter comes to visit, though, the whole house is a mess by the time she leaves. There are plastic blocks scattered all over the floor and toys of all sorts underfoot. The dining room table is littered with scribbled-on paper and jumbo crayons. My Anglican rosary collection, that she calls her “jewelry,” is carefully hidden away under chairs all over the house. There’s a food-smeared high chair in the kitchen, and the floor underneath is decorated with rejected pieces of her latest meal. In the bedroom, there’s a diaper smell in the air, and there are forgotten pacifiers under the bed. Babies and small children certainly bring both delight and chaos to our lives; they soak up our attention and leave change in their wake. The same could be said for the baby in the manger: Jesus—a bearer of both delight and chaos, demanding our all and leaving change wherever he goes.
On a visit to the Holy Land about 12 years ago, I saw a re-creation of a first-century home in Bethlehem. On this holy night of Jesus’ birth, let’s imagine ourselves in this home in Roman-occupied Bethlehem. It was a one-room affair, dark, windowless, and cave-like in atmosphere, with a little section near the front door for the animals. As in many places across the world today, the animals spent nights inside the house, together with their owners. There were indentations hollowed out in the dirt floor for hay, and that’s where the sheep and goats and donkeys would sleep and feed. Right there next to mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, an old aunt, and all the kids. Besides the front alcove for the animals, there was also a small attached guest room. This guest room could either be an alcove in the back of the house, or it could be up on the roof. In first-century Jewish culture, hospitality was a vital practice. If someone stopped by your home, you invited them in for a meal and a place to stay. There was no question about it. So you had to have a decent place for guests to sleep, no matter how small.
I imagine that you’re wondering right now why I’m telling you this. You’re probably thinking: “But Rev. Anne, Jesus was born in a stable, not a house. Remember?! Mary and Joseph were turned away from the inn, which was already full of weary travelers, so they took refuge in a stable out back. That’s the story we heard in our pageant last week. That’s the story on all the Christmas cards. That’s the story in all of the carols! Just look at the creche up here beneath the altar—isn’t that a stable?! Why are you telling us about houses?”
OK … I agree that we just heard in Luke’s Gospel: “there was no place for them in the inn.” But what this text really says in Greek is: “there was no place for them in the guest room.” That’s right. The guest room was full. “Inn” is a totally different Greek word. What if Mary and Joseph, traveling to Joseph’s ancestral home for the census, stopped at the house of distant relatives. That’s what people at the time would have done when arriving in a new town: they would have sought hospitality from relatives. But with so many people of Joseph’s lineage back in town for this enforced “family reunion,” all the guest rooms in all the relatives’ homes would have been full. To fulfill the obligation of hospitality, however, someone in Joseph’s distant family might have said, however reluctantly, “Well, there’s no room in our guest room, but come on in. There’s a little bit of floor space over here with the animals. There’s probably a bit of clean straw where Mary can lie down to give birth. That’s the best we can do. But welcome.” There was no stable. And so Mary would have given birth to Jesus in the living room, surrounded by animals on one side, by an unfamiliar mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, aunt, and all the kids and babies on the other side. God became flesh in the midst of strangers and animals. God became flesh in the chaos of a family. God became flesh in the living room.[1]
Can you picture it? Can you imagine being the hosts, your peaceful slumber interrupted by a surprise visit from some distant relative about to give birth? Can you imagine trying to go back to sleep, with a woman in labor next to your bed? Mary panting through contractions, the family dog panting with her, the donkey snuffling around behind her, goats bleating, your own awakened toddler whining, your own baby crying. And then of course, there are the shepherds knocking on your door, shouting about angels, bringing their unwashed bodies into your living room. It would be far from a “silent night.” More like an “inconvenient, messy night.” But God is making Godself manifest, right there in your family.
I think that I’m stuck on the living room image this Christmas because of Covid. We have been so isolated from one another these past two years. Our living room these days, except for those visits from our granddaughter, has been woefully underused. Visitors are so very rare. The thought of distant relatives banging on my door, giving birth on my floor, is even more shocking to me in our Pandemic times. I’d want to know if they’d been vaccinated. I’d run to get masks. I really wouldn’t want to let them in. Longing and fear would wrap themselves around me all at once.
Evelyn Underhill writes about the baby Jesus being laid in a manger, surrounded by the ox of passion and the ass of prejudice, “animals which take up a lot of room and which … most of us are feeding on the quiet.”[2] Yet those animals bow down before the newborn King, she points out. Underhill’s metaphor makes me wonder what’s in my sterile living room tonight, waiting to be transformed. When Jesus enters in, will the selfishness of luxury finally bow down before God? What about the orderliness of perfectionism? The dust-bunnies of laziness or the complex cobwebs of anxiety?
The last time that our granddaughter came over, I rushed around after she left—like I always do--to clean up and get things back to normal in the house. Finally collapsing on the couch, I looked over and saw a small plastic figure standing like a sentinel on the base of the grandfather clock, blending into the antique wood. It was one of the little people from our granddaughter’s doll house, quietly keeping vigil. She must have secretly set it there as part of some imaginative game. I thought about putting it away, but then I smiled to myself. I decided to leave it there, a small sign of love, a reminder of her presence when we are apart. A sign that our house is no longer just our own. And neither are our hearts.
We might relegate God in Christ to a quiet stable far away, but Jesus comes to us right where we live. Jesus comes right into the middle of our private lives, right into the middle of our hearts and minds. And he sets his mark of love there…A sign of the grace that his birth leaves in our living rooms… A bit of disorder … A reminder that he has come to make us new.
[1] Ian Paul, “Jesus wasn’t born in a stable—and that makes all the difference.” In Psephizo, November 30, 2020. Found at https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-wasnt-born-in-a-stable-and-that-makes-all-the-difference/?fbclid=IwAR3stVSq_KTwsCz-B11Rk_AevXAVLeUmTNrBB9fY8vFqsASfv04iHtIDCOc.
[2] Quoted in Richard Rohr, “The Birth of Christ in Us Is What Matters.” Found at https://cac.org/themes/christmas-presence/
