Photo by Richard Bell on Unsplash

Many of us will know the familiar lines from Luke 2 that echo down through the ages to our present time: “And she gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” While many a Christmas pageant has sought to take artistic license and cast an innkeeper to tell the Holy Family there is no room for them, we know nothing of the person that turned the young couple away from the inn and toward a collision course with the majority of human history. The only reason we know where they were intending to stay was because of Luke 2:7. But I’d like to propose this small verse holds much more than one might read at first glance.

I’m a pastor by vocation, it is my primary tongue and voice. Yet, three years ago, when my wife and I adopted our two girls, I took a job as a night auditor at a local hotel so that we could stay in the community that we loved to raise our kids. I’ve come to love this work, as it has become an extension of my ministry. There are encounters I have with people who are on their last leg, who have experienced traumas of all sorts, or are traveling to bury a loved one. There were guests this past year whose livelihoods were destroyed by Hurricane Helene, and a guest who in the final stages of their life, especially sticks out to me. This guest asked me to pray with them and for them. Don’t let anyone tell you that being an innkeeper is a bit part in a pageant. I think Jesus being enfleshed in human form was an act of hospitality and ministry from its very outset.

From what we know of Caesar Augustus’ taxation in the first century, it not only caused economic hardship, but social upheaval as well, as folk of all kinds traveled to their places of origin to register for the census. The people in Bethlehem’s hotel were not there for vacation at a resort, they were there out of necessity. They had come because they were required by the law, not because they needed a quick getaway to the rural backwoods. Perhaps there was an older couple in room 103 of the Bethlehem Hilton Garden Inn. Maybe the family across from them in 104 had the room overbooked with guests, putting a strain on the already overextended hotel staff. Just maybe above them on the second floor was a person who had to neglect their medical treatments for the census. While it is impossible to know the guest manifest of that inn in Bethlehem, I personally love that Jesus’ entry into the world did not require someone to be kicked out of their room to make room for him.

We who sit on this side of the Incarnation know how the story plays out, and we can draw connections between Jesus and the lineage that led back to King David. We can take great comfort in knowing that the one who called creation into being was bursting onto the scene that was created. But those who were experiencing the narrative play out could only glimpse what we now know.

That said, as someone who has worked at a Hilton Garden Inn in the cold of night for three years now, I fully believe the innkeeper gets a bad rap in our telling of the story. The innkeeper could not have known Mary held within her the God of all time and space — sometimes hotels just fill up. Yet in Mary and Joseph’s willingness to make do, we see that Jesus’ birth ushered in a hospitality of epic proportions.

While God could have easily been born in the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem or the Four Seasons in Rome, God chose a new way of doing things in a cave behind an inn on the outskirts of an empire. While God could have insisted that the innkeeper make room for God’s self through kicking others out, the Holy Family found shelter out back. The story of “no vacancy” in the inn shows that God chose hospitality over comfort. God’s invitation and welcome do not cost us our seat at the table but beg us to make room for others as well. Next time you’re checking into your room at a hotel, give thanks and remember that God made room for you. This is the heart of Christmas; when there was no room, God still made a way.