Christ, born in a manger

The Christmas season reminds us to prioritize what is most important in life

No vacancy.

That is what might have been written on the sign outside of the Bethlehem inn the night an anxious, expectant couple arrived at the door.

Maybe Mary and Joseph knocked, their hearts beating hard as they awaited an answer. Perhaps the stressed, overwhelmed innkeeper shooed them away after they explained their situation. Or maybe he offered them his condolences: Sorry, there was nothing he could do. Too many people were in town for the census.

While no one knows what that exchange looked like that night, what we do know is that Mary and Joseph spent the night in a stable or some sort of cave where animals were kept. And the innkeeper often gets a bad rap. After all, he was the first one to reject Jesus, even before Jesus had been born.

I have often imagined the innkeeper red-faced and flustered, dismissing the young couple as someone else’s problem. He had paying guests.

But it is possible that the innkeeper was not so callous as I like to believe. He could have tried to make room, but to no avail.

I cannot help but think that, if the innkeeper knew exactly who was at the door, if he knew that God was in the womb of the young mother, he would have moved heaven and earth to make room for the couple.

But he did not. And the savior of the world was born among the animals, wrapped in rags and laid in a cattle trough, worshipped not by the innkeeper and his guests but by a bunch of smelly shepherds.

Regardless of what the innkeeper’s motives were that night, we all have a lesson to learn from him.

Reflecting on why I think about the innkeeper the way that I do, I am confronted with the uncomfortable truth that maybe I picture him that way because that is how I would have responded.

If I had been the innkeeper that night, I probably would have been worried about all the tasks that I needed to take care of, all the guests I wanted to please and whether or not I was going to get any sleep. Surely someone else could take Mary and Joseph into their home.

As I anticipate Dec. 25, I am pondering the innkeeper. How did he feel once he knew who he had turned away? Did he then go and worship him? Or was it too late?

The truth is, we are all innkeepers.

The human heart is often compared to a home. We let some people in, and we keep some people out.

So when Jesus comes knocking, are we going to answer?

Will we open the door to our inn and make room for him and give him the reception he deserves? Are we going to turn him away because he is an inconvenience?

I know, more often than not, that I have turned Jesus away simply because I am too busy for him.

Yet he comes to me anyway. He comes in meekness and humility, as a baby boy born of a teenage mother. Yeshua, the savior. Immanuel, God with us. The child born to die.

The innkeeper was human, fraught with failure. He was not expecting the Messiah to come as the innocent newborn of newlywed parents. But the Messiah came for the innkeeper and died for him because he loved him. And while the innkeeper may not have opened his door to Jesus, Je-sus opened his door to the innkeeper and invited him in.

And he invites us still.

This Christmas, may we remember that Jesus came not just for the shepherds and the Magi but for the innkeeper as well.

Oh come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

Graf is a feature reporter.