Preparing for Christmas
Part 4 - Two Inns
The word “inn” only occurs twice in the New Testament – each using a different Greek word.
The First Inn
The first inn was a place of rejection.
We find it in Luke 2:7 - perhaps the most evocative sentence ever written:
“There was no room for them in the inn.”
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But there was a little boy who was given the part of the innkeeper in a nativity play.
When the moment came for him to fold his arms and say, “No room!" Mary looked so tired and disconsolate, that he stepped aside and said, “You can have my room.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of us received Jesus as openly as that?
Almost all Nativity plays have a fearsome innkeeper standing in the doorway with his arms folded. I found this picture on the internet – and you can see that no one is going to get past him!
The word used for Inn in the Christmas story is the word kataluma meaning “break apart” – i.e. a place to break your journey. The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was about 160 km. Imagine doing that on a donkey while eight months pregnant. By the time Mary arrived, she must have felt her body was breaking apart, and when there was no room for them, she must have felt her whole life was breaking apart. And then the humiliation, the dirt, the smell, the unhygienic conditions.
Yet this is how the creator of the universe, who could have arrived on clouds of glory, chose to enter our world.
The Second Inn
The second inn was a place of acceptance.
We find it in the story of the Good Samaritan. After the good Samaritan picked up the wounded man, we read that,
“He brought him to an inn.” (Luke 10:34.)
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The Greek word used here is pandocheiou which means “receive all.”
That word "Receive."
Such a good word.
The Christmas story is all about receiving or not receiving Jesus.
This series has been all about being ready to receive Jesus. We cannot compel him to come into our lives, but we can prepare a place for him.
Prepare a place
A friend of mine went to stay with a cousin in Switzerland. One morning she opened the knives and forks drawer and this is what she saw. This is how Swiss people tend to live.
When we received the picture, we were staying in our caravan. So I opened my caravan drawer and took a picture. This is exactly how it was - I haven't 'staged ' it at all!
Perhaps this is how my life looks sometimes – all clutter and mess, and no room for Jesus.
We need to prepare a place. It may involve some tidying of clutter. it may involve some changing of priorities. it will almost certainly involve making time for him. This is not to say that Jesus won’t come into a messy life – the situation in Bethlehem could hardly have been a worse mess. Jesus has a way of tidying and cleaning up a mess. In fact, sometimes, we are unable to clean up the mess until he comes in. Nevertheless, I need to do what I can to prepare a place for him to come.
This is how my daughter looked eight years ago – just a couple of days before her first child was born.
How do you think she spent those nine months? I went down the passage to the spare room and took a picture.
She had, of course, spent those eight months preparing a place for him.
Isaiah 40:3 says: "Prepare a way for the Lord."
My hope and prayer is that many will make it a way of life in the coming year.
Conclusion:
The Innkeeper and the Hairdresser
We do give the innkeeper rather a hard time. His inn was, after all, full. He couldn't change that, and it wasn't his fault. I suppose he could have given them his own room, and that would have been exceptional. But at least he gave the manger.
If all you can give is the manger, then give that. And God will accept it and turn it into something beautiful.
When I was assistant pastor at Rosebank Union Church, I was approached by a woman one day, who asked me if I would be prepared to take a funeral. I said of course, and asked who had died. To my embarrassment she told me that it was someone who had been in our church for 10 years, yet I knew nothing about her. Admittedly it was a big church, and I was told that she used to slip into the side chapel and then slip away very quickly after church.
Nevertheless.
Then I was told this woman’s story.
She was a single mother who had brought up a daughter and put her through university with no financial help from the father. She was a hairdresser by trade, and, rather than try to find a lucrative position in an upmarket salon in Sandton, she had chosen to work at Happiness House - a retirement centre for old woman who didn’t have very much money. The salary had always been meager, but she had stayed with that job, because she believed that it was the ministry God had asked her to do.
I was humbled to find out that we had such a woman in our church and I had never even known about it.
I took the funeral.
We held it in the side chapel because we knew there would not be many people there, and there weren’t. But there was row of grey-haired old ladies. During the funeral I told the story of how she had worked at Happiness House out of a sense of calling. And when I said, “I’m sure that everyone who went to her to have their hair done got more than a hairdo. I’m sure they got Jesus as well,” whole row of grey heads nodded.
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She gave what she could.
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If all you can give is a manger, then give that, and Jesus will sanctify it.