No Room at the Inn, but plenty of room at the Table

My earliest memory of Christmas is the Christmas pageant at church.  When I was about five or six, I was selected to play Joseph.  I didn't have a speaking part.  My job was to escort Mary down the aisle and then sit on a paint can.  Boy, that took some acting.  Even though I was skinny and small, sitting on that paint bucket was painful.  Today, I look back at that experience and chuckle for the event we celebrate is about a young woman who was engaged but also pregnant.  Religious rules automatically declared that she was a fornicator and should be stoned to death.  Yet, her fiance chose to embrace the child and went with her to register in Bethlehem as required by law.  When they arrived, she went into labor.  Since so many visitors had come to register as decreed by Caesar, there was no rooms available at the inn.  The Son of God was born to a poor couple in a cave used to house animals.  Jesus was one of the 47% that Romney described.  He was one of the 99% who are not rich.  He was one of the 40% of births who are born to unwed parents.

For a nobody with so much against him, his birth made rumbles in the King's palace.  Herod ordered the death of all male babies below the age of two in Bethlehem.  When he was 12, he challenged the doctor's of canonical law at the temple in Jerusalem.  In his ministry, he lived like a homeless person with no job who lived off the welfare of people.  He dare to challenge the rites, the rituals, and the interpretations, and applications of religious practices.  He called the religious leaders hypocrites because they sought to appear righteous and holy in public but used their positions for personal wealth and gain.  He told them that their requirement were so harsh that no one could make it into God's kingdom.  To all,  he declared "whosoever will come."  He hung out with the undesirables of the day:  the woman in adultery, the tax collectors, the man born blind, the poor, the children, and the masses.

The little baby born in a stable brought the good news to all men as declared by the angles.  His message was simple for God so loved the world.  God is love and love is God.  He preached transformation by promoting justice, mercy, and walking humbly before God.  He declared that judgement will be based on how we treat the hungry, the homeless, the sick, the widows, the orphans.  He told us to love God and to love others as we love ourselves.  In his parables, he told us to do good for evil like the Good Samaritan did to the Jewish who was robbed and beaten. Today, that would be a gay man or a black man or a homeless man stopping to help a white man or a wealthy man or a homophobic man.  In the prodigal son, we see God's love and forgiveness is given to us even when disown God.  We also see the jealousy of those who claim to love God in the other son.

Jesus showed us a better way.  In the parable about the Last Supper, the invited guests make excuses for not coming to the feast so the Host told his servants to go invite the woman walking the streets, the homeless man sleeping under the bridge, the child who has been beaten and abused.  The Host made room for all of them at the table.

This month we celebrate the birth of the one who would teach us about the table.  God's table is open to all will come.  The table is for everyone.  No one should be excluded.  No preparation is necessary for we encounter God when we drink the cup and eat the bread as way of remembering what God showed us when God became Jesus at a time when there was no room for him to be born.  In a few months, we will remember why God came by remember God's death, burial, and resurrection.

If there is anything to celebrate next week, it is the celebration of being included not excluded.  It is the celebration of being loved and not rejected due to the color of our skin, how we dress, who we worship, who we love, where we were born, or our economic status.  God loves us...everyone.

Galatians 3:28 (NLT)

 There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Colossians 3:11 (NLT)

 In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.