Christmas With the ChosenSample

If you want to hash out which role in a Christmas pageant is the best, have at it; we’ve already identified the worst: the innkeeper.

To play the part of the fella who turned away Joseph and a (very) pregnant Mary — not to mention Jesus himself? No thanks.

To be fair, the poor guy was painted into a corner — what with Caesar Augustus sending everyone off to their hometowns for an Empire-wide census. Given current events, of course there was no room in any of the inns in Bethlehem.

Still, when the moment comes in the pageant for the innkeeper to shake his head at the young couple and point them to the exit, everyone in the audience wants to boo.

But not us.

We swallow the heckling for reasons we’ve given and one reason more: the innkeeper is a sort of invitation — a summons to reflection that’s necessary, even if not always welcome.

To reiterate, the lack of room for Joseph and Mary — for Jesus — is in many ways nothing more than a practical matter born of geopolitical circumstances. But it has the power to make us reckon with spiritual realities beyond it.

Truth is, much of the world has little room, if any room at all, for a Child who will grow into a man who will change everything in grace — and then expects change in the world in return. We tend only to offer spiritual room and board to the people, places, and things that allow us to keep being who we’ve always been, doing as we’ve always done. John says as much in his own version of the Christmas Story: “Jesus came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”

But then, right there alongside the innkeeper is Mary — from the role no one wants (but is quite able to play) to the role everyone wants (and hopes to be).

There Mary is in that imagined scene from The Chosen, whispering a prayer of worship and welcome to God, even as one more voice spits, “No vacancy!”

While there was no room for Jesus among so many, there was with and within her.

Which brings us to us.

We boisterously sing, “Let every heart prepare him room!”

Will you at least let yours?

And what might that look like?