No Room in the Inn

“Because there was no room for them in the inn.” Luke 2:7

Leafing through the latest mags, rags and blogs, I notice clever take-offs on the familiar phrase “no room in the inn” pop up everywhere. From over-booking practices of major hotel chains to discrimination against transgendered people, from lack of rooms for the handicapped to the denial of lodging for SARS virus victims, free-lance journalists recount multiple horror stories of beleaguered travelers. Everyone has a story to tell. It’s amazing how this spiritual event has taken root and continues to grow in the cultural language, forcing people who otherwise despise the Bible to talk about it anyway.

No room in the inn . It wrenches the heart just to think about it. An expectant mother, young and tender, far from home, wearied from travel, through no fault of her own…all the elements of a compelling drama brim over. The inn that they finally found was a khan or lodging house for caravans. An inner court yard spread out behind the main building and stables for caravan animals lined the outside back wall. Within each stable stood a manger, or trough, with straw to feed the animals. Jesus Christ was not born in a stable because Mary and Joseph were poor. He was born in a stable because “there was no room in the inn”. Census respondents had flooded the town and had taken all the available space.

A family of Jamaican origin who attended my father’s church years ago used to tell of traveling long into the night, before the Civil Rights Act became law, and finding no motel or hotel rooms in which to stay. Large, painted signs rudely reminded them that there were no rooms for them, no shared drinking fountains, no seats in the front of the bus, no service in many restaurants, and the list goes on. Americans of that generation were subjected to the harshest of prejudicial treatment. Forty years later, we have become so accustomed to civil rights that we cannot conceive of such blatant discrimination. Yet, for many thousands of older Americans, such scenes remain deeply etched into their memories.

Human society never has been nor will ever be free from discrimination in some form. The problem goes beyond politics, racism or any other prejudice that can be remedied by the houses of congress. It is the nature of man to throw up barriers, put up defenses and select the company he wants to keep. While skin color remains the most common trait that keeps many people out of certain clubs and cliques, it is by no means the only thing. Nationality, religion, political persuasion, language, appearance, ability, accent, height, weight, health and pedigree all act as a shibboleth for acceptance. We can add other characteristics to that list like education, style, personality, attitude and money. In fact, most of us would find ourselves excluded from a far greater number of groups than would accept us.

Rejection stings. Many of us know what it is like to be turned down for a job, cut by the team coach, flunked by the teacher, denied a loan, overlooked for a promotion or jilted by a lover. Even though these rejections may stem from an honest set of criteria, we don’t easily shake off the hurt. We all yearn to be loved, accepted, admitted and recognized. Few sentences strike us as deeply as “Sorry. There is no room for you.”

It was not an accident that the innkeeper had no room for Jesus. He was the most rejected of all persons in history. A virtual vagabond, he had no place even to lay his head. “He came unto his own and his own received him not.” The Pharisees and Sadducees, scribes and lawyers had no love for him. All but his closest disciples fled from him in the hour of his greatest need. Peter described him as “the stone which the builders rejected.” Isaiah foretold his pitiable condition like this, “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” When he died, he had to be buried in a borrowed tomb.

But, the innkeeper wrapped and delivered a marvelous gift to us when he sent Mary and Joseph to the stable. It was devastating to them at the time, yet it provided a glorious avenue of divine empathy for us. From his very entry point on planet earth, Jesus took up the cause of the rejected. “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Hebrews 4:15. In the dead of a lonely night, when the cold emptiness of rejection suffocates us, we find comfort in the fact that “there was no room for them in the inn.”

There will never be a welcome sign out for true followers of Jesus. Even as Bethlehem had no room for Jesus, the world continues to reject him today. We must take great comfort in his words, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” There is a place for us today, and there will be a heavenly place for us over there.