By Darryl Tippens

“There was no place for them in the inn.”

I wonder about some elements of the Christmas story, details not found in the Gospels. Did Mary and Joseph deliver the baby themselves, or was a midwife called in? And what happened to the shepherds after that wild, glorious night of angelic singing in the skies? Did they remember the celestial melodies and teach them to their children and grandchildren? Luke captured the lyrics, but what did the songs sound like? Was it a cappella or with full orchestra? (Handel wasn’t around, so he’s no help.)

And what about that innkeeper, the guy (I presume a crusty old fellow) who gave anxious Joseph and his longsuffering wife the awful news. “Sorry. We’re full up tonight.” Was he casual or cavalier about the turn down? Was he callous or concerned? I’m sure he had no inkling of just who he had turned away—just another rustic couple from the hinterlands. But after all the commotion that night, what with the shepherds and the magi and all, did he begin to wonder who these folks were? 

Maybe it was the innkeeper who came up with a backup plan, directing the Holy Family to the barn stall (or, more likely, the cave), where the big event unfolded. I keep thinking about the innkeeper. Whatever happened to him?

George Herbert, the great devotional poet of the 17^th century, believed we should find ourselves in the great stories of the Bible: “Their story pens and sets us down. / A single deed is small renown. / God’s works are wide, and let in future times.” Herbert, in other words, believes that we should find ourselves in the Christmas story. When I do this, my attention is drawn to that nameless, hapless innkeeper.

The turning away of Joseph and Mary—the turning away of the Savior of the world—bothers me because it keeps happening. The Christmas moment repeats. Jesus continues to show up among us. He is the Christ Child in the guise of the sick, the hungry, the naked, the prisoner: He says to us, “Truly I tell you, just as you do it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you do it to me” (Matt. 25:40). “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Or maybe we didn’t.

I wonder: Am I repeating the role of the clueless innkeeper? Have I inadvertently told Jesus, “Sorry. There’s no room here”? The old Gaelic rune of hospitality tells us what’s at stake:

Often, often, often
goes Christ
in the stranger’s guise.

O, oft and oft and oft,
goes Christ
in the stranger’s guise.

The Christmas story is surprising and paradoxical. It glitters with dissonance, features too strange to appear on a Christmas card. (Among the many messages we will read on Christmas cards this year won’t be, “There was no place for them in the inn.”) This is the story of the Creator who takes on human flesh in an out-of-the-way corner of the world, born among peasants, who wakes up in a smelly feed trough. How strange that the divine Carpenter who fashioned worlds couldn’t get a room in a village inn. 

I find an implicit warning in the story: Do better than the innkeeper. Welcome the Christ who walks among you now, today, in stranger’s rags. The American poet Phillips Brooks teaches us something along these lines in a mostly overlooked stanza of “O Little Town of Bethlehem”: 

Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child,
where misery cries out to thee, Son of the mother mild;
where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door,
the dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.

The great thing about Christmas is not just that it happened once upon a midnight clear, but that it keeps happening. “God’s works are wide and let in future times,” Herbert reminds us.

Christmas is a kind of “Groundhog Day” experience for Jesus followers. Like Bill Murray, a selfish man caught in a time loop in that classic movie, at Christmas we are given a fresh opportunity to transcend our preoccupations and welcome Jesus.

Christmas is God’s offer of a “do over,” to do better than that innkeeper, to hold wide the door in our improvised reenactment of the timeless story as we welcome the hidden Christ into our hearts and homes. When we do this, only then can we sing, “Christmas comes once more.”

Darryl Tippens is retired University Distinguished Scholar at Abilene Christian University