First Presbyterian Church
Out with the Inn
Sermon for December 3, 2006
by Pastor Susan Barnes

Our unison psalm reading is on page 502. Psalm 25 is an acrostic psalm. Each line begins with the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet. This form shows the completeness of God. The psalm celebrates God's past faithfulness, and relies on that faithfulness to help with the troublesome present. Listen for the word of God as we read it together in Psalm 25: 1-10.

Of David. To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.

2 O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me.

3 Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame; let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

4 Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths.

5 Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.

6 Be mindful of your mercy, O LORD, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old.

7 Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness' sake, O LORD!

8 Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.

9 He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.

10 All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.

This ends our reading of the psalm.

Our epistle reading is on page 207. Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica at a time when they are persecuted. He wishes he could be with them. Listen for the word of God as it is found in 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13.

9 How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?

10 Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.

11 Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you.

12 And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.

13 And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

This ends our reading from the Thessalonians.

Holiness is the quality of life that distinguishes the Christian community from the world. The saints are the holy ones who are the people chosen and set apart by God, who at the coming of Jesus will prove to be blameless. Sometimes when we think of holiness, we imagine a rigid style of life that follows a clear code of conduct. You are holy if you do this but don't do that. But Paul asks God to make the Thessalonians' love for one another increase and abound, and to strengthen their hearts in holiness. So we see that God alone makes people holy and qualifies them as blameless at the coming of Jesus. Holiness is the gift of a gracious God, whose son came at Christmas and comes yet once again.

Paul talks about the coming of the Lord in the same way the prophets in the Hebrew Bible did. The day of the Lord was a day of future joy, when the innocent will be vindicated and saved. This is the day when justice for the oppressed and persecuted will come, finally. Later, the prophets used the day of the Lord to call people back into obedience, warning them the day of the Lord would also be full of judgment.

One theologian said of our reading, ‘The return of Jesus is not posed as a threat to keep the troops in line, but as a conclusion to the human story, when the faithful life of the believers will come to light.” 1

“For an isolated church faced with continuous persecution, just knowing that they would be a part of that grand event would surely have brought them great encouragement. Satan would not have the last word.” 2

That grand event will happen with the return of the king, when the Lord Jesus Christ comes again. So we wait with trust and diligence, waiting for our lives to be transformed.

Anthem

We read together the line in psalm 25, “Lead me in your truth.” Truth is very important to me.

Over the thanksgiving holiday, I saw a movie with members of my extended family. My brother-in-law asked me what I thought of the movie trailers for the new movie “The Nativity Story.” I have grown to dread it when people ask me about movies with the Bible in them. They never like my truthful answers and I don't like giving them.

When a reporter once asked a professor of mine what he thought about a Bible film, he said, “I doubt a movie can fully capture the nuances of the gospel.” I wish I could get away with that answer.

But I haven't been able to. I can't lie and say, “It was great” when I have problems with the film. Historical errors matter to me. For example, it always bugs me just a little when I see pictures of the Pilgrims at Thanksgiving with hats with buckles on them. The pilgrims didn't wear hats with buckles. Apparently Pilgrims' buckled hats started in the 1800s, when buckles on hats were considered old fashioned and quaint. Because the pilgrims were old-fashioned and quaint, their hats must have had buckles. We keep drawing them the same way.

Last month, when the Burgesses had fellowship coffee, they set two pilgrim dolls, a boy and a girl on the serving table. I said, “Wow, those are the most authentic pilgrim dolls I've ever seen.” Fran told me “We got them at Plymouth.” That would be the Plymouth plantation in Massachusetts, where they have a living history exhibit. No wonder the dolls were authentic.

Movies aren't known for being authentic. We go to films to be entertained, not taught. Usually I can suspend disbelief about physics in a science fiction movie, or in a movie about magic. My husband can usually suspend disbelief too, except in National Treasure, the movie about finding a treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence and searching for the treasure that ended up being in a huge room underneath Trinity Church in New York City. There were just too many historical errors for Mike to stomach and he didn't enjoy the movie at all. I think the solution is not for Mike to just give it a rest and not to be a perfectionist. The solution is for movies to be more accurate.

Biblical accuracy in movies is even more important to me. The words in the Bible matter to me, and that's why I struggle through translating the texts I preach from. It matters to me much more than American history.

I told my brother-in-law “They kept the inn in the story. There isn't any inn. No innkeeper either. The word ‘inn' is a mistranslation. The Greek word kataluma was better translated as ‘lodgings' or ‘spare room.' Bethlehem was too small to have an inn, and the word for a commercial inn is ‘pandokheion.'” 3

Here's my translation. Listen for the word of God as it is found in Luke 2:1-7.

1 And it happened in those days a decree went out from Emperor/Caesar Augustus for all the world to be registered. 2 This was the first census and happened while Quirinius was governing Syria. 3 All went to be registered each into their own town.

4 Joseph also went up from the Galilee out of the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.

5 He went to be registered with Mary, his betrothed who was pregnant. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to a son, her firstborn and swaddled him, and laid him in a manger, because there was not a place for them in the guest room.

This ends our reading from the gospel.

Needless to say, Patrick was surprised, and irritated that even though he had attended church all his life, no one had ever told him that before. I have preached on it often. But some people haven't heard it yet, so I'm doing it again.

I think part of the reason we have kept alive the tradition of the inn and the mean innkeeper is that it makes such a good contrast: the evil greedy innkeeper versus the pregnant young woman.

It's much easier to show that confrontation than it its to deal with King Herod's slaughter of the innocents.

And the idea that the world has no room for Jesus is compelling. We don't always make room in our lives for our savior; some of us crowd our lives with things and activities that aren't life-giving; we don't do justice, love kindness, or walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). But we can still talk about making room for Jesus even if the verse is not “no room in the inn.” The choir sang “Is your heart prepared for a king?” And that is the question. Our king didn't come in a blaze of glory, but in an ordinary peasant home.

In traditional first century Palestinians home, mangers were in the living room. Guests were put in a loft, or a room on the roof, or even in an outbuilding nearby. That is the kataluma, the spare room. The animals lived on the ground floor, and the main floor, the living room, was raised from the ground floor. Mangers were at a convenient height for the animals. Even today, in plenty of developing countries, family homes share living space with animals.

The shepherds were told “you will find the child, swaddled,” or “wrapped in bands of cloth, lying in the manger.” Mary laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the guest room. It was full. Kenneth Bailey, a Presbyterian missionary who spent decades living in the middle east, says that the traditional idea that Mary and Joseph arrive in the middle of the night in the dark, with Mary in labor and a mean innkeeper who refuses them admittance is just not biblical.

Here's what he wrote in 1988:

If we read the story biblically, “the ‘mean old innkeeper' evaporates, along with his non-existent inn. The cold drafty stable becomes a warm, cozy peasant home which the shepherds find fully adequate, for they go home praising God for all they had heard and seen. If they had found the family in a stable, they would have taken them at once to their own homes. So the inn and the innkeeper evaporate. Yet much is gained. The incarnation itself becomes more authentic—Jesus was born in and into a simple peasant home as any other village boy.

The shepherds, outcasts from their society, were given a sign indicating this simplicity. They thereby discover that this Messiah comes welcoming the poor and the marginalized. Joseph emerges as a man fully able to arrange for his family. No hardheartedness is attributed to Bethlehem.” 4

My brother-in-law said, “How come I've never heard this before? I never learned that in church.” I felt the same way when I learned this in 1988 in seminary. I wondered “Why, if my pastors knew Greek, didn't they ever tell me?” So when I became a pastor, I told people. Accuracy is important to me.

Many of the pageants and stories about Christmas rightly complain the world today has no room for Jesus. We all need to make room for Jesus in our hearts and our lives – but not in non-existent inns.

We aren't middle eastern first century peasants, and so we don't always immediately know what the Bible verses are saying. I hope that when we learn the Bible's connections to middle east people, we will recognize the characters in the Bible as Arabs and Jews. Sometimes, we white Americans think of Bible characters as white Americans.

And because we are twenty-first century Americans, we have to do a little more work to understand what the gospel is about. It's not about making us feel good about our personal choices or our country's leadership. It's not about scaring us into toeing the line. The gospel is about following Jesus, allowing the holy spirit to work in us, so that we can live into God's grace, to live as if the kingdom of God has come, is coming, and will come. I agree with the theologian who said “the goal for us, then, is to draw on the strength of the Holy Spirit, the seal or guarantee of the new age's consummation, and to wait with trust and diligence for the full transformation of our lives.” 5Amen.

1 Brueggemann, et al, Texts for Preaching,Year c, p. 6-7.

2New Interpreter's Bible, XI, p. 715.

3 The good Samaritan takes the injured unconscious man to a pandokheion in Luke 10:34.

4 Bailey, Kenneth E. “The Manger and the Inn; A Middle Eastern view o the birth story of Jesus,” Presbyterian Outlook, January 4-11, 1998.

5New Interpreter's Bible, XI, p. 716.