Have any other two sentences generated so much drama for so many centuries?
“While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
That’s it, all Luke says. But because he mentions an inn with a no-vacancy sign, every Christmas pageant has to include an innkeeper, and every nativity drama a race against the clock by a desperate couple frantically seeking a place to have a baby, who is going to pop out any minute now…
Maybe Mary and Joseph had been in Bethlehem for a while before her contractions started. Maybe they camped out somewhere, needing shelter only when the baby arrived. Maybe the place in the house where the livestock were kept was the warmest, and that’s why they put the infant Jesus in the manger filled with straw. Maybe they wrapped him in cloths because onesies hadn’t been invented yet.
We know so little, yet we make so much of these few words. Because it’s a great story, all of it. The homeless couple, the rough shepherds, the glorious angels, the friendly beasts… and in the midst of all of it, the incarnate son of God. You couldn’t make up a story this good.
Do the details matter? Maybe not – but there’s richness in them. It is significant that Jesus spent his first night on earth in a feed trough in a stable. It reminds us that he did not come to make his home in this world. He did not seek the comforts that keep so many of us holding on to more than we need while others go without. Though the Gospels suggest he lived a regular home-based life once he and his parents settled back in Nazareth after a period of exile in Egypt, once he began his ministry he stayed on the move. “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” He almost didn’t have one to start with either.
Jesus is never recorded as leading anyone into a building – he led his followers out. Out of the building is still where most of our church ministry is to be lived. We church folk can get it backward, imposing onto our churches the assumption that home is where the heart is. It’s not the only place.
Tomorrow night my church will host the annual National Homeless Persons Memorial Day service, remembering those who have died homeless in our community in the past two years (22 candles will be lit…) This happens on the longest night of the year all over our country as the highly preventable scourge of homelessness persists decade after decade. Jesus spent his first nights not at “home,” but camping out in temporary lodging, sharing space with animals, in a city his parents were forced to visit. What we call homelessness was his first reality. The company of the marginalized was his first community.
We might pay more honor to the life going on outside our homes. Though there is dysfunction and injustice in it, let’s not miss the life in people whose lives aren't in a mold we consider normal. Even as we work to eliminate homelessness, we can draw nearer to those who find themselves unhoused, because in doing so we may just draw closer to Jesus.
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