Brick Church - Sermons

God of all time and every place: as you came into one specific place at one particular time, so come, Lord Jesus, and be near to us in this time and our place. Come again, come as near as our breath, come now in word and sacrament, indeed, come in any way you might choose. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

Believe it or not, there's something of a literature built around children's Christmas pageants. Usually, the plot revolves around things that go wonderfully wrong with them. Barbara Robinson's hilarious novella, The Greatest Christmas Pageant Eve, for example. I took a crack at misbegotten Christmas pageantry in a novel several years back. But to my mind the wildest and the most wonderful Christmas pageant gone wrong is the one embedded in John Irving's Viet Nam-era novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany.

I don't recall which pageant includes the episode of the innkeeper I have in mind tonight. A young boy has been chosen to play the role of this hypothetical character in the church pageant. No innkeeper is mentioned in the Bible, but when you have lots of kids, parts must be created. Well, the kid was well rehearsed; he had only one line, and that one line was cribbed on a three-by-five card he held in his hand. Simple enough: Joseph knocks at the door; the innkeeper opens it, and speaks his one earnest line: "I'm sorry, but there's no more room in the inn."

But come the moment, in spite of the rehearsals, in spite of the three-by-five card, this innkeeper opens the door and sees Mary with Joseph standing there. The kid finds himself blown off dramatic course. After a moment's hesitation, he ad-libs an unscripted innkeeper line. He looks at Mary and Joseph and says, "Oh... come on in, come on in, we'll make room somewhere."

Later tonight, there'll be a knock at your door.

It'll come when bread and wine move down the pew to you,
bread and cup that are emblems of the presence of Christ,
bread and cup that are signs Christ is waiting again at life's door,
bread and cup that are tokens of Christ inquiring if there's any room for him in the inn that is our life.

When that knock comes, my simple Christmas Eve hope for you and me is that we ad lib the kid's line, "Oh... come on in, come on in, we'll make room somewhere."

I suspect that there could have been plenty of room that night in Bethlehem. Inns back then were not like modern motels with separate rooms. They were open spaces, often a complex of shared chambers. Somebody might have moved aside, somebody might have squeezed together; somebody might have offered a corner for two more travelers. Failing that, somebody hale and not pregnant might have given up their spot and moved to the stable out back. Somehow, room could have been made.

And when the knock comes to our door later this night, the truth is the same:

however crammed with stuff the inn of your life may be,
however complicated and full of doubt,
however crowded with questions your life may be,
room can be made.

In the end, there is only one thing you have to do to make room for him.
You don't have to have all the details of your theology lined up.
You don't have to stop asking questions.
You don't have to be quite sure about everything.

In order to make room, all you have to do is admit that God is the one guest you need to make room for. All you need to do is to realize that this guest matters more than all the others jockeying for space in your inn. In fact, your only essential line is that that kid's brilliant ad lib, "Oh... come in, come on in, we'll make room somewhere."

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.