They had no room; they made room

A man and a woman are on the road. It’s late and they are desperate to find a place to stay. All the motels are full.

You know the story. It’s about two Jewish peasants, a poor carpenter and his teenage bride--a very pregnant, teenage bride--who have come up from Galilee to the Judean town of their ancestry.

When we retell the Christmas story, we move quickly to the birth and celebration of the baby Jesus. Then come the shepherds and angels, followed by the wise men bearing gifts. We forget about the innkeeper who gave them shelter. Here’s how I see it.

A middle-aged Jew with a wife and kids has a little farm on the outskirts of Bethlehem. To augment their meager income, he has added on rooms and opened an inn, a Bed & Breakfast of sorts. Thanks to the recent surge of travelers, all their rooms are full, and he and his wife are busy tending to the needs of their guests.

It’s late in the night when the innkeeper answers a knock on the door. At the door are two “foreigners”—he can tell by the man’s accent—and from the labored breathing of the woman, he can see they need help.

The easiest thing would be to turn them way, to point them down the dark road with a “Sorry, we can’t help you. Good luck finding something.”

But when the innkeeper looks past Joseph to his pregnant wife, already in distress, he leads them behind the house to the barn. There, after securing the animals in their pens, he pitches straw onto the floor and puts clean hay into the manger, the crude stable box where the cattle and sheep eat. Meanwhile, his wife sends for the midwife, and, ignoring the needs of the other guests, brings the last blankets from the house. After preparing a makeshift bed, she brings food and water.

Because we usually jump ahead in the story, we forget that the first miracle of Christmas sprang from the hearts of the innkeepers. Although they had no room, they made room. In doing so, they continued a tradition of compassion as old as time, embedded in the Torah:

“You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33).

Three decades later, the baby born in a born that night would express it this way: “For I was a stranger, and you took me in.”

© Ben Jacques