If you could choose one character from the Christmas story to play, which character would you choose?
No one wants to be the innkeeper in a Christmas pageant. Now, I could be wrong on this, but I think no one wants to go down as having to play the person who said NO to Joseph and Mary and the soon to be born savior. We’d rather be “the littlest Angel shining bright” as my sister was so many years ago. In our bolder moments we might have the courage to play Mary and her freely chosen YES to all that God would ask of her. Or perhaps quiet Joseph, not only because Joseph’s is not a speaking part (no lines to learn) but somehow we get that “protective watching over family” role. If we knew better, we might be a bit more reluctant than we are to play the Shepherds. Our Christmas imagination has tamed them down into cute figures. The reality is that they were the “bad boy bikers” of their age. And I think most of us would even choose to be the donkey before playing the role of the innkeeper. To go down in history as the one who turned away a woman in labor and her husband… not so much…
And YET… if we are honest, I wonder if the “No room in the inn” finds a curious echo in us. If we are really willing to look deeply in to our hearts, we will find more instances than not of us playing that part, of not creating room for the coming of our God in the play that is Christmas and life.
And I wonder, if like the innkeeper, it is not a flagrant, obvious no that we say. Perhaps He simply didn’t want to have to deal with the messiness of a woman giving birth and how much longer it would take to flip that room once they were gone. We get wrapped up in our lives and find there is:
- No room for prayer in the business of our days
- No room for advocating for the unborn infant in the womb or the refugee at the border while we take care of our kids/grandkids.
- No room for service as we struggle through the loss and grief of a loved one, when it is all we can do to survive a day, much less to live it in looking out for others – because that demands an energy that the death of our loved one seems to have stolen from us.
I wonder if one of the truths of a Christmas play and this Christmas day – is that we are more like the innkeeper than we care to admit….
If so, if you find a bit too much of the Innkeeper in you, here is an enlivening truth about Christmas. It is never about the role that WE want in the Christmas pageant. While we might image ourselves as the innkeeper, or more hopefully as an angel choir member or even one of those “bad boy biker” shepherds, the reality is much more breathtaking. You see, it is not where WE want to put ourselves into this story but rather where GOD wants to cast US in HIS Christmas play/story. And the role is infinitely more difficult than a mere innkeeper’s no.
God consistently invites to play the part of being a Christ-bearer to this world. Not innkeeper, but CHRIST BEARER. Not the one denying room but the one creating room for his advent. And that can take on a lot of different forms.
- This apparently, was my advent to help at least one man prepare for his death. Healthy as a horse in October, he died yesterday, having been reconciled to both the church and his estranged father. What a surprising grace that journey has been for me.
- For others, being a Christ-bearer has called them to wrestle with the abuse crisis in the church – to struggle for justice for the perpetrators and seek healing for the victims.
- Maybe being a Christ-bearer will call you to work a FOCUS supper with our youth group. Or to be an Oasis tutor for one of our students. Or help with the Sunday Children’s liturgy of the word.
In this season of giving and receiving gifts,
- the best gift you might give another is to help them believe in their goodness – their love-ability. What would it take to write a letter describing the blessings a son, a daughter, a parent, an aunt has been to you?
- The best gift you might receive from this altar is to dare believe that Christ can be born in and through you. God took on our humanity in Jesus Christ through the Virgin Mary. And He continues that miracle when we dare believe the Christ could be born in us to continue his work of peace on earth, good will to all.
Who wants to play the innkeeper in a Christmas play? Not too many, I think. WHO DARES to believe they can be a Christ-Bearer? God willing, we all do. We all do…