Christ in Christmas
I remember the first time I discovered that there is actually no innkeeper in the Bible. Don’t worry, if this is the first time you’ve ever heard this, I was just as shocked as you are!
I was working on some Christmas curriculum for the children’s ministry at the church where I was working, writing out a reenactment of the famous birth story, when I needed to find out what exactly the innkeeper had said to Mary and Joseph.
I assumed it would be something like, “Sorry, we’re full. There’s no room for you here, but you can go sleep in my barn,” because that’s the way the story had always been taught to me. But as I read the birth accounts in Matthew and Luke over and over again, I could find no innkeeper. In fact, the NLT translation I was reading didn’t even say anything about an inn. And while some translations mentioned an inn, none of them mentioned an innkeeper:
...there was no lodging available for them. NLT
...there was no guest room available for them. NIV
….there was no room for them at the lodging place. HCS
Before I could continue writing the kids’ curriculum, I had to get to the bottom of this mystery. Why had I always been told there was an innkeeper who turned Mary and Joseph away, when in fact, there was no innkeeper in the Bible?!? Why do Christmas plays and children’s pageants continue to have this character, when he (or she!) never existed in the first place? Should I put this innkeeper in my curriculum even though it’s inaccurate, however common? Or should I make all the parents mad by letting their kids know they’d been duped for their entire lives?!?
In the end, I opted for no inns or innkeepers in my curriculum, choosing to focus on other aspects of the story instead.
As I continued my research, though, I discovered that Mary and Joseph likely didn’t even stay at an inn. They were returning to Joseph’s ancestral home, the small town of Bethlehem where he would have had lots of family members who were excited to see him and welcome him into their home. Likewise, based on everything I’ve read, hospitality was a huge value in Jewish culture, and there’s no way they would have turned away a pregnant Mary.
The original Greek word that we sometimes interpret to mean “inn” was kataluma, which means “lodging place” or “upper room.” Based on other places where this word is used in the Bible, “no room in the kataluma” likely meant “no room in the guest room.” Which means Mary and Joseph likely had to sleep in the main room of the house where the animals were also kept at night.
The manger, or feeding trough, made the perfect makeshift crib in this overcrowded, guest-filled home. Jesus was not born in a stable, the way all of our nativity scenes depict. Rather, he was likely born in a home, among friends and family, who were delighted to welcome him into the world.
It’s amazing what surprises we find when we read the Bible with clear eyes instead of relying on cultural tradition and what we’ve always been told to get us through the holidays. I used to be afraid of digging into the Bible in this way, and to be honest, sometimes I still am.
Sometimes I still think, “What if I chip away at the stories so much that there’s nothing left for me to hold onto?” But so far, my experience has revealed the opposite. The more I chip away at old beliefs, narrow interpretations that ignore context and accept the misconceptions, the more I get to know God.
The more I let go of what I want to hear or what I think I ought to hear when soaking in scripture, the more I experience the vast grace and goodness that is God. And though this vastness is sometimes terrifying, the more I let go of fear, the more I experience a love that is truly wider and longer and higher and deeper than anything I could ever imagine.
Last Christmas, I was invited, yet again, to consider just how much I have yet to understand Christ and Christmas and Jesus and the world he was born into. A friend of mine posted this painting by Anthony Van Arsdale for the National Black Catholics Congress.
It featured a brown Mary and a brown Jesus, and I remember feeling a bit shocked when I first saw it. Intellectually, I knew Jesus wasn’t white. But a cognitive dissonance occured as I looked at the photo, trying to make sense of what I saw.
“Wait...no...that can’t be right…” I thought. “This wasn’t the Jesus I had grown up seeing,”
And the longer I looked at the photo, the clearer I saw the roots of my discomfort. This Jesus was unfamiliar. This Jesus was unknown. This brown baby Jesus with his dark head of hair, and this mother Mary with her coffee colored skin and deep, knowing eyes. They were not the Jesus and Mary I had come to know. And yet, they were most certainly the Mary and Jesus I needed to come to know.
In May of 2020, six months after I first saw this painting, I took a four-week webinar called How to Decolonize the Bible with Rev. Rene August and Lisa Sharon Harper. That course split me open and laid the Bible bare right in front of me. Scripture came to life, convicting and inspiring me in ways I’m not sure it ever has before.
I was asked to consider how culture and tradition and, yes, even white supremacy had layered themselves onto the ways I read and understood the Bible. What role does power play in the narrative of scripture? Who is elevated and who is diminished? Who does Jesus focus on, and how does my position in society affect the way I read scripture?
Did I truly understand the implications of Jesus, a Jew who was a savior under Roman rule? A Jesus who did not seek power, but called out religious leaders for trying to hold onto it. A Jesus who lowered himself, served the poor, did not seek recognition, accepted everyone, and called me to do the same?
Do I see the value in diversity when reading and study scripture? Is it possible that someone whose life has not looked like mine might see something in scripture that I have yet to see? Would I be willing to listen?
Lately, I’ve been wondering how different I would be if I truly knew Jesus. What If I stopped letting what was normal determine my view of him and really looked at the way he lived and loved and walked and talked? Would I still want to follow him?
I know that this year has come with immense amounts of change. Like many of you, I am rolling into this holiday season exhausted, sad, and just ready for this hell of a year to be done. Perhaps the thought of seeing Jesus anew, of laying down what is familiar, feels like the very last thing you’d want to do. But could it be that’s the very thing we need in this season of disruption? To lay down our defenses and come broken and humbled before a God who himself, came down broken and humbled to us?
This Christmas, I pray you’d find the courage to lean into disruption, move past misconception, and find yourself facing a Jesus who both convicts and comforts, a Jesus who loves you too much to let you keep wallowing around in misconceptions, a Jesus who came truly as a hope for all in every good and perfect sense of the word.
As you fall into him, may you find, as one of my favorite writers, Sarah Bessey once said, that “It turns out Jesus is even better than we dreamed. It turns out the Story is bigger and wilder and more generous. It turns out the Gospel is truly The Best News for all of us. It turns out these are tidings of great joy, this is peace and good will for us all.”
Merry Christmas