“And Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
Our Christmas story is such a wonderful story. It is so well-known, and shaped by so much tradition handed down through the years. Over the centuries, this beautiful narrative has caught the imagination of painters and poets, song-writers and sculptors. The poetic imagination of our carols and Christmas stories often fill in the details left out by the simple account we find in Scripture. Our Nativity plays and Christmas cards often combine elements from the birth narratives of both Luke, the story we just heard, with the story from Matthew, about Joseph’s dream, and the wise men following the star, and the escape to Egypt. For example, if we look at the scripture accounts more closely, we can see that the wise men probably arrived up to two years later, rather than the actual night Jesus was born.
Nevertheless, all our Christmas imagery, all our poetic imagination, all the details we add to the story do help us ponder to beautiful and wonderful truth God became flesh and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus, a baby born in Bethlehem.
Have you ever had the opportunity to visit a place that you have read about or heard about for years? That happens for many of us when we travel.
Finally getting to see the Grand Canyon, or Hawaii, or Machu Picchu, or the Eiffel Tower after years of seeing postcards can be a thrill. Sometimes your experience can be even better than you imagined. Often times our descriptions, or even photos and videos, fall short of a reality that it better than we could imagine. Sometimes the reality doesn’t quite meet the expectation. In either case, having seen it in person gives you a picture in your mind’s eye for the next time you read or hear about that place.
A group of 22 of us with St. Michael’s had the privilege to be on Pilgrimage to the Holy Land this last October, and we got to see, in person, so many of the places that we read about in the bible. Visiting Bethlehem was early in our trip. Some of you may have had that opportunity as well. Being able not only to see Bethlehem and the surrounding area, but also to learn more of the history and context was very powerful.
As good a good pilgrim, it’s always good to come back and share your experiences, and so let me do some of that tonight, as we contemplate the ancient story of Jesus’ birth and try to put ourselves back into the first century and what it would have been like for Mary and Joseph.
Mary and Joseph would have been travelling from one small town to another. Nazareth was just a small village of about 40 households. Bethlehem, even though it was only 5 miles away from Jerusalem, would have been only about 300 people as well in the first century. Compelled by the Roman census, Joseph and Mary would have taken 8-10 days to walk the 100 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem. It is very likely that they travelled in caravan with others going to their ancestral homes for the census. The usually small village would have been crowded to many times its normal size with people there for the census.
In our Christmas imaginations, we often think of Mary and Joseph arriving as Mary is in full labor pains, ready to deliver, and Joseph is desperately going from hotel to motel to B&B trying to find a place for his wife to give birth.
In reality, Luke tells us “While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.” So although we don’t know when exactly in their travels Jesus was born, it was unlikely to have been the very day they arrived. In fact with such a long journey, they would have likely stayed in Bethlehem for a while, and they may have planned the journey to give Mary some cushion around when they expected the baby to be born. Of course, babies don’t always come on schedule, and we don’t really know.
What we can be almost sure of, though, is that there was no innkeeper who turned away the Holy Family.
There were no Motel 6s in Jesus’ day, and a small town like Bethlehem was unlikely to have any kind of inn at all. Bethlehem was the city of David, Joseph’s ancestral home. Even if they weren’t close relatives, there would have been some of Joseph’s family still in the area.
During our pilgrimage, our guide, Imri, often spoke about his “cousins” in the area. To the native Palestinians, Every one is a cousin!
The hospitality code of that culture would have made it unthinkable for Mary and Joseph not to have been welcomed into a relative’s home., even if it was the cousin of a cousin. And it would have been just as unthinkable that Mary and Joseph would have refused an invitation to stay with family even if there had been other options, even if it meant staying in a house crowded with other out of town guests,
The word that has been translated as “inn” in our bible is the word “Katalouma.” Elsewhere in the new testament it is translated as “guest room” or “upper room”.
It helps to know what first century homes were like in that region of Palestine.
The area, especially around Bethlehem, was hilly and rocky, full of caves. Trees were much rarer, so only kings and rich people could afford home made from wood or lined with wood paneling. Certainly stables were not made from precious wood.
The local population built their home from rock, and often took advantage of the natural caves as the back part of their home. Sometimes they even enlarged the cave. The back part of the home, the deepest part of the cave, was an area where the family would bring some of their animals inside at night. They would have brought in the sheep especially. This protected them from predators like wolves or even thieves. It also added a natural source of heat to the home for the family. The sheep and lambs were important especially because they were needed for the sacrifice at the temple, and for the Passover feast.
A feeding trough, or manger, would have been carved into the rock at the back so the animals could eat.
The family space would have been in the room adjacent, just off the front door, in front of the back area of the cave. It was usually one medium size room. The place where they would have gathered to talk and eat, if they couldn’t be outside. Their beds would have been rolled up and stored against the walls during the day. At night, all the beds would be unrolled, and the floor covered with the family.
It would have been a lot like I remember it being at my grandparents house during Thanksgiving… wall to wall relatives taking up the floor and the couches and the spare bedrooms. All twenty of us sharing one and a half baths. (But of course, there were no bathrooms in these homes!)
Some of the households of that time were built as Insulas, where multi-generational families lived. Several family areas adjoined a common courtyard where people gathered for cooking and visiting. Other homes that had just the main living area and place for animals might add on an upper room for guests and visiting relatives, as well as a roof area that would be a great place to rest, bathe, or even sleep in the summer.
“And Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the guest room.”
The family Mary and Joseph were staying with had other relatives there as well. The guest room was taken, but they were given the back room where the animals were often kept. It would have given them more privacy. The town Midwives would have been called in to help with the birth. The manger, the feeding trough, would have been a lovely little cradle for baby Jesus.
It’s rather heartwarming to me to think that Jesus was born in this kind of situation. In a bustling household, a forced family reunion because of the census.
The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was built by Queen Helena, Constantine’s mother, in 323 AD. She built it over the cave that locals showed her that had been revered as Jesus’ birth place for at least 200 years before that. Her church, and the churches build there since then when the first one was destroyed, don’t make it look much like a simple 1st century home any more. We waited in a jostling crowd inside the church for over an hour and a half before we got to descend to the cave area under the church, now gilded with gold and lanterns. We were only able to spend 15 seconds touching the stone, and seeing the place where the church remembers Jesus was born and laid in a manger. It was disorienting in many ways, although it was also powerful.
I was so glad that earlier in the day we had seen another first century home that had been excavated, at the shepherd’s fields in Bethlehem. Bethlehem, by the way, means “House of bread” Beit Lehem. The first century cave home had been preserved like it was in the first century. There we looked over the hills to Jerusalem, not so far away, and climbed down into the home, since with sandstorms and the build up of normal age, old things are now below the surface. We all gathered in the cave… In the back of the cave was a stone manger, and a small area a few steps below the main level.
Our guide shared the history that I’ve just shared with you, and then, illumed with the lights from a few cell phones, our own Carolyn Lawrence read the Gospel from Luke
Then, with all the lights off, we sang, “Away in a Manger.”
It brought tears to the eyes of most of us gathered. Such a simple dwelling. Such a humble beginning. But a beginning where Jesus was welcomed in, where hospitality was offered and received. Where the humanity of Jesus was so evident. Born to a peasant family which is part of a larger family… a family that, by extension, we can belong to too.
A few steps away from the cave house, set in the middle of the shepherd’s field area, is a small church, entitled appropriately, Church of the Angels. It commemorates the angels coming to the shepherds who were watching their flocks by night in the fields surrounding Bethlehem. We got to the cave house early in the morning, so we were the only ones there. But by the time we got in the church, it was already filled with other pilgrim from all around the world. There was a group from some African priest, speaking French. There were some Italians there as well. think there was also an Asian group there. We were all walking around the small church, that’s maybe a third or a fourth of the size of St. Michael’s, admiring the murals of the angels and the shepherds and the sheepdogs.
Our plan was to gather at the side to read the last part of the Lukan story, the part about the shepherds, and then to sing “Angels we have heard on high.” It must be a popular thing to do, because while we were there, one of the other groups began singing that very hymn in French. But the refrain, the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, is in Latin, and we all know it. So without even giving it any thought, our group joined in singing the refrain, as did the rest of those gathered in that space. A few minutes later we did read the story and we began to sing a stanza in English. At the Gloria, all the multitude gathered in that space sang as well. The beautiful harmonies rising to heaven. We had just done the very same thing, but when it happened to us, it was amazingly powerful. Again, tears sprung to my eyes. It reminded me of that beautiful image from Revelation where people of every family, language, people and nation all gather around to worship the lamb who sits upon the throne.
Jesus, the lamb on the throne was born in a place where the sacrificial lambs were kept, laid in a manger where the lambs ate. Jesus became the sacrificial lamb who, through his death and resurrection, took away the sins of the world. Jesus, the baby born in Bethlehem, became the Living Bread, whose words and very life brings us substance and life as well.
We are all pilgrims in this earthly journey, and through Jesus, all children of the same heavenly Father. In a world so divided by culture and politics, let us dare to join in singing Glory to God in the Highest with those of every language and tongue.
Jesus is born in Bethlehem. Rejoice! Amen.