Scripture: Revelation 21:3b

Text: Luke 2:1-7

Weekly Bible Study: Bible Study Blog

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We are getting our home ready for Christmas. We are traditionally a Friday after Thanksgiving family. The boxes come up from the basement, the tree is put up and the entire house is decorated on that one day. But this year our schedule has been a little more complicated. We didn’t get started until Saturday and we haven’t had an entire day to work on it. All week long there were boxes around. If you’d dropped by the house to bring us a fruit cake, we might not have opened the door. The place was a wreck and we would have been embarrassed. Nothing was in its place and frankly, at one point I was ready to pack it all up and put it back in its home in the basement.

 

I am fascinated by the variety of ways you prepare your home for Christmas. What are you doing to get your home ready for Christmas?  Some of you have very little tradition and some of you have traditions that are just wrong. One family in our church puts the tree up just after Thanksgiving but they don’t put anything on it until Christmas Eve. That’s just weird. I wouldn’t make it in that family. Why do you want a Scottish pine in your living room with nothing on it? At the other extreme is one family who decorates the Saturday after Halloween and takes everything down on January 6^th, the day of Epiphany.  They are really into Christmas. In fact, they take an annual trip to Frankenmuth, Michigan every year to soak up a town that is Christmas year round and buy more decorations at Bonners CHRISTmas Wonderland. 

 

One of our families is excited about getting a new home ready for Christmas. Their previous home was so small that they had to move their sofa into the guest bath to make room for a Christmas tree.  Had they not moved, they could have decorated with an upside down Christmas tree. Upside down trees are a hot decorating fad for Christmas, borrowing from the 12th century European tradition of hanging your Christmas tree upside down from the ceiling. Besides being trendy, it gives you more room and shows off your Christmas ornaments better.[1] Does anyone here have an upside down Christmas tree?  Good, because when it comes getting your home ready for Christmas, that’s just wrong. For Christmas to be right, everything has to be in its appropriate place.

 

You understand this about Christmas. One of the challenges that couples have when they marry is the battle over Christmas. Half of Ann’s family Christmas traditions were wrong; of course, she’ll tell you that half of the Spleth traditions were wrong. We pushed and shoved a little and created a few of our own traditions. Now we do Christmas just right with everything in the appropriate place. Of course, many of you might think we are wrong.

 

We have these same feelings about the story of Christmas too even if there is more universal agreement among us.  Everything has to be in the right place. The Magi must arrive just after the shepherds. The innkeeper has to be grumpy and point to the stable. There are donkeys and sheep and maybe an oxen watching Mary give birth in a manger. It’s picture perfect and we reinforce these pictures each year by the Christmas cards we send and the crèches we use to decorate our houses. We know what the right story is even if it isn’t the right story.

 

We talked about this last year when we rented a theater and watched the release of The Nativity Story. If you attended or saw the movie, you will remember the scene when Mary and Joseph arrive in Bethlehem. It is late on Christmas Eve and just as they hit the city limits, Jesus wants to come into the world. Joseph starts pounding on doors wanting to be let in, to find an appropriate place for Jesus to be born. The innkeeper points to a cave like stable and says, “That’s the best I can do.” Dust and straw fly as Mary and Joseph enter. It is clearly a place where only animals live.

 

Over the centuries, western culture has woven together the stories of Matthew and Luke with strong cultural traditions, most of which become so sacred they are unconsciously affirmed. They have to be in place for Christmas to feel right.  For instance, how do the shepherds find the manger? Well, everybody knows the star led them there. In fact, you can see this in The Nativity Story. A brilliant light shines into the grotto, leading the adoring shepherds right to the holy couple. But in the gospel of Luke, there isn’t a star. That’s in Matthew’s gospel. What about the innkeeper? Which gospel do you find the innkeeper? There is no innkeeper. In fact, there is no inn, at least in the way we might think about inn.

 

It is easy to read our customs into the Bible story. The inn mentioned in the Bible isn’t a

hotel or an inn or even a bed and breakfast. The word is “kataluma” (kataluma).  A better translation of this word is guest room. This makes sense when I tell you that the very same Greek word, “kataluma” is used for the upper room where Jesus has his last meal.  “And say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks: where is the guest room (kataluma), where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’” (Luke 22:11) “she gave birth….in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn (kataluma).” (Luke 2: 7b) Now, everyone say kataluma. See, you are well on your way to becoming scholars of biblical Greek! Say it with me. There was “no room in the kataluma.”

 

Katalumas are private homes which had a guest room attached to them. In Jesus’ time, in fact even in some places in the East today, these were about the only places to stay. It was one large room where everyone bedded down, dressed and washed, if the luxury of water was available. At a busy time, such as during a census, this room was packed. Now I have never had a baby nor do I want to have a baby. But there are some people who have had babies here today. How many of you find this as an appropriate place to have a baby—a room packed with strangers? Nothing at all is appropriate about it. This brings us to our second lesson in biblical Greek, “topos” (topoV). Since I’m teaching you biblical Greek, let’s all say it together, “topos”.

 

Topos is the root word for topography and it is actually infrequently translated “room”. Often the translation is “appropriate place.” So if we mix English and Greek into some sort of Greeklish language, we might read the passage, “she gave birth….placed him in a manger, because there was no topoV in the kataluma."(Luke 2: 7b) Why don’t you try it? “She gave birth…and placed him in a manger because there was no “topos” for them in the inn (kataluma).” (Luke 2: 7b) Now you can show off your new knowledge at the neighborhood Christmas party.

 

Our new translation in English reads “and she gave birth….in a manger, because there was no appropriate place for them in the guest room.” (Luke 2: 7b) The moms who’ve had babies said, “Okay, I’m with you on how inappropriate the guest room might have been but what about the manger?”

 

This one is easy too when you understand the architecture of first century Palestinian homes. They were split level homes with a small, lower level terrace on one end and a larger area, about 80 percent of the one room is raised about four feet higher, which is the living room where the family cooks, eats and lives. The two levels are connected by a short set of stairs. During the winter, family cow, donkey and a few sheep are brought each night to the lower level. In the morning, these animals are taken out into a courtyard, the area is cleaned and the house is ready for the day. In those homes which had a kataluma, the guest room was a room within the large family room or perhaps an upper room where Jesus and his disciplines dined.[2]

Where was the manger? Archeological studies show that the mangers are built into the floor of the raised terrace on which the family lives. If the cow or donkey is hungry in the night it can stand and reach the feed on the floor of the upper family living space, about four feet higher which is just about perfect feeding height. With all this in mind, Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus was written to a Palestinian reader in the first century. It would make sense to them. They would start with the assumption that mangers are in the living room and guest rooms are attached to one-room homes and are used only for guests. When they read, “she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn”, the first century Palestinian would think, “Manger? Oh. They are in the main family room! Why not the guest room?” And the answer is, “there was no place in the guest room.” The reader would conclude, “Okay, that makes sense. The guest room was full. But the family room is a more appropriate place anyway.” [3]

As Ann was finishing preparing our home for Christmas displaying our collection of Christmas crèches with all of the freestanding mangers and stables and stars guiding the way, I told her this. Her reply was, “That is just so wrong!” My messing with the Christmas story was inappropriate, even for my wife!

 

Besides getting myself in trouble with my wife and probably with many of you, why does this matter? It matters in two ways. Jesus was born into a simple peasant home as any other village boy. The shepherds were told by the angel, “this will be a sign for you.” The sign was the simplicity of Jesus’ birth, born just like they were born in simple Palestinian homes. When they left the manger, they go home “glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen” (Luke 2:20b) They saw that Jesus was just like them. The Son of God is one of us. Who are the next guests? They are wise men from the east who come from afar and have immediate entrée to King Herod. They aren’t put off lowering themselves to visit a young couple in a peasant’s living room. Our Savior is indeed one among us, rubbing shoulders with the poor and marginalized and the high and powerful.  John’s vision of the end is actually also the beginning, the alpha and the omega. “…the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them;” (Revelation 21:3b) Jesus is named Immanuel because he is God with us. This is what matters to Luke.

 

And this is what matters to us. As we prepare our home for Christmas, we need to make sure there is an appropriate place for Jesus. That might seem simplistic, but consider it carefully.  With all we do to prepare for Christmas, too often there is no room left. With decorating and shopping, writing cards and listening to music, attending parties, concerts and plays, even coming to worship, everything and all the things that we do,  we get so busy preparing for Christmas, doing it our right way,  that we simply don’t have room left to worship our Savior. I say this in all sincerity because I say it from the voice of experience. Ministers and church workers are often the guiltiest. We get so busy preparing our church home for Christmas, sometimes we don’t create that appropriate place to consider what Christmas is about. God came to live with us. Strip everything else away, upside down or right side up trees, birth in a stable or in a family room, with or without innkeepers, it is about God so wanting us to experience Him that God became a baby that we could hold and see eye to eye. God came to dwell among us.

 

I don’t want to take away how you do Christmas nor do I want to take away the wonderful weaving of Matthew and Luke and tradition into our beautiful story. What matters to me and I hope to you is that you are ready. There is a little poem that goes like this:

 

Take time this Christmastide to go
A little way apart,
And with the help of God prepare
The home that is your heart.
—Anon.  [4]