At the church that sponsored me for ordination, the traditional Christmas pageant featured a cranky innkeeper whose role was to slam shut doors and windows when Joseph and Mary came looking for a place to stay in Bethlehem, and to shout, several times, “No room!”
I flash back to that several times a year, when I’m feeling crowded in an elevator or building, when my schedule is too full for one more thing, I just can’t take one more bit of news, or one more person than I can handle needs my attention.
Inside of me there’s a ten-year-old slamming a prop door or window, shouting “No room!”
I don’t know if you’ve felt something like that recently, but this year it’s just seemed to me like there’s so many more things to pay attention to, so much to do to get ready for Christmas, and my schedule, my brain, my life are too full.
There’s just no room!
Of course, after the door slams, the pageant story goes right on, and the cranky innkeeper is persuaded to become a helpful innkeeper, who leads Mary and Joseph and their donkey to the stable and tries to make them comfortable.
And then, Luke tells us, Mary gave birth to Jesus “and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn”.
No room.
But God makes room.
In an animal’s feed tray, when necessary.
Luke front loads his story of Jesus’ birth with the crowded politics of the day – emperors and governors who have no room for any new leaders; a census that’s crowding every town and people’s schedules and lives.
It’s a central feature of our Christmas story that there’s no room.
And that in the midst of all this, God makes room.
Makes room to be one of us, to be with us.
Every time I sit down at home to write a sermon, just when I’ve gotten launched and focused, my hands and laptop are abruptly or gradually re-arranged. In a minute, or sometimes five, there is an entire 12-pound cat in the space between the keyboard and my hands.
This is an ergonomically terrible way to write a sermon.
Laptops are not designed to have room for a cat.
I’ve pointed this out over and over, physically moved the cat, suggested that another place or time would be better for the cuddling and napping the cat is insisting on right now. Over and over I tell him there’s just no room right there, right now.
Every time – every time – the cat ignores this, and just…makes room.
Makes room for himself where there is no room.
It’s not just sermons. This particular cat absolutely, positively, WILL make room for himself in my personal space, no matter how critical the load I’m juggling or the document I’m typing, no matter how late I am running.
This cat insists that no matter what I am doing, this is the time and the place to be close to me, pin me down with affection, or “help”.
It defies physics, sometimes. Sometimes it makes an utter mess of my schedule.
But this cat makes room, no matter how little room there is.
And when he does, in spite of myself, I feel calmer.
I feel a sense of peace sometimes. Of belonging sometimes.
A sense of irritation often, but oddly mixed with a sense of generosity – as if everything else in my life has a little more room and flex to share now that the cat has made physical room where there was no room.
In spite of myself, I feel loved.
And I suspect something like that is going on in that manger, in that crowded hill town of Bethlehem, in the crowded business and politics of two thousand years ago, as Jesus makes room.
As God quietly, persistently, re-arranges a space and time where there’s no room for divine presence, and no room for a baby, to fit perfectly around both a newborn infant and the whole infinite power and presence of God.
Peace on earth, and goodwill, the angels announce in the fields outside of Bethlehem.
And perhaps, in spite of the crowds and the government business that leaves no room for wonder or anything else, there is a sense of peace, a softly-weighted calm, a little more sense of spacious generosity – of goodwill – sneaking into the bodies and hearts of the people of Bethlehem as Jesus makes room.
Perhaps, that night, this night, all the people feel – in spite of ourselves – more love.
More loving and more beloved, filled up with tender affection and that melting of our hearts that comes with the deep, personal trust of a sleeping infant.
Because Jesus made room.
Made room once upon a particular time, twenty centuries ago.
And over and over ever since,
Christmas after Christmas,
ordinary day after ordinary day.
Makes room, in our own crowded, busy, messy world here and now.
Sometimes it happens like it did in those Christmas pageants I’ve enjoyed, where God touches the heart of an innkeeper – of one person – who finds compassion and generosity making room in their own heart, and who then makes room in the world for God.
I watch this happen a lot this time of year, when I see people like many of you, going to a crowded mall – or squeezing online shopping into your crowded calendar – in order to find the perfect Christmas gift for a child who otherwise wouldn’t have anything.
Many times over any year, I watch one of my friends or colleagues listening to a story of heartbreak or need from a stranger, or from someone none of us really like, and offering sympathy or help.
And your compassion and generosity make room in my heart to feel God’s compassion and generosity toward you, and me – and then I discover unexpected room in my heart and schedule for compassion and generosity toward others.
Other times it happens like it must have been happening all around crowded Bethlehem long ago, as people scrunch up in a crowded house or at a crowded table to invite a traveler in.
Sometimes, God does this with friends or family who absolutely insist on dragging you to a party or event (or church service) you really did not have time for. And joy or love or wonder or peace make room in your calendar and your spirit in spite of everything.
Where there’s no room,
when there’s no room,
Jesus makes room.
And that’s probably the best news I’ve heard all year.
Because so often I just don’t have room. Even when I really want to.
There are so many other things crowding our time and attention.
Responsibilities at work and at home.
Public crisises of war, and politics, and a precarious climate, and inflation, and still Covid.
Private challenges in our work (or classes), our health, relationships, grocery budgets.
And of course Christmas: the baking and events and presents and packages and rehearsals and decorating and dinner….
So often it’s so easy to get distracted from God’s presence in our world. So often, for many of us, it can feel like there’s just no room to squeeze in the things that Jesus asks from us: prayer or worship or silence or service. No time for the time God wants to spend with me.
It’s such a relief, a gift, to be reminded that in spite of all of that, in the middle of all that, Jesus still makes room.
To be one of us.
To be with us.
With you, with me.
Rearranging our space and time with insistent affection, and presence, and love.
Squeezing the gentle weight of peace into our hearts,
the spaciousness of generosity and compassion into our spirits,
the whole infinite power and presence of God into the world in the tiny space of a newborn child,
until we cannot escape the knowledge in every part of our hearts, bodies, calendars, or souls, that we are deeply and insistently loved.
Tonight, tomorrow, all day and all year, wherever we have no room for God, or for ourselves,
Jesus makes room.
Room for love.
Room for everything.
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