“and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.”

–Luke 2:7b

The chapter from which the verse above comes is a beloved part of Scripture. It is often dramatized in churches during December. Despite that broad familiarity, every Christmas pageant I have seen has included a character and location not mentioned in the text.  For no matter how closely you look at Luke’s account or which Biblical translation is used, you will not find mention of an innkeeper or a stable. 

Both pieces to the story are so ingrained in our telling of it that we might think they must be mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament. They aren’t. Instead, I suspect those two details are standard in pageants because they make sense. After all, when Luke says that Mary placed Jesus “in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” we imagine there must have been someone to turn the family away. Likewise a stable for the child’s first night seems reasonable for where else would you have a manger? 

I’m not here to definitively refute either tradition, but want to offer another possibility. Namely, that Jesus’ first night was spent in the living room of a relative.

Kenneth Bailey, a professor of Biblical studies who spent years living in the Middle East reached that conclusion as he focused on the Greek word katalyma translated here as “inn.” (Bailey, Kenneth E. Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008. pp.27-36) That term might cause us to think of a B&B and there was such a place in first-century Bethlehem. Still, the reason Bailey wondered if that was not where the Holy Family sought shelter was that the only other time Luke speaks of an “inn” is Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) where the injured man is taken to such a place. In that account he doesn’t call the place a katalyma, but uses another Greek word.

Such a difference raises the possibility that what Luke meant in the Bethlehem events was another understanding of katalyma, a guest room in a private home. The gospel writer speaks of a katalyma one other time. Years later when Jesus sends his disciples to prepare for their final meal, the group delivers his message to a homeowner of “Where is the guest room”–or katalyma–“where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”(Luke 22:11). That shared choice of a Greek word in that moment and our passage raises the possibility that when Mary and Joseph were looking for a place to spend the night that they went to one of his relatives and found no space in the guest room. Thus, the child was placed in a manger.

That interpretation would seem unlikely if we think of the manger as being in a stable and thus outside a home. Again, Dr. Bailey points out that for many families of that day, there was often only one main room to the house where everyone slept and ate. Animals were kept in that room at night, though in an area a bit lower than the floor for people. At one end of the level on which people lived was a place cut out in the floor where animals on the lower level could raise their head to eat. It was a manger, a feeding trough for livestock when in the house.

So when Luke tells us that “she gave birth to her firstborn son…and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the katalyma,” perhaps the gospel writer was saying the family was not turned away, but given sparse accommodations inside a home. That the child was placed in a manger, but instead of it being in a stable, the trough was in the living room. A possible difference in meaning that allows for humanity in all of its diversity to center stage again this Christmas.

In 1987, I was making plans for my first Christmas Eve as a pastor.  In the congregation I served, there was a tradition for worshipers to come forward and receive the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Each person would take a piece of bread from an elder and then move to receive a small cup held in a tray. Most Presbyterian churches don’t use wine for communion, but grape juice. The tradition in my first pastorate was to use that alternative, too, but on my first Christmas Eve since ordination I tried something different.

The procedural document for the PCUSA at the time declared “Whenever wine is used in the Lord’s Supper, unfermented grape juice should always be clearly identified and served also as an alternative for those who prefer it.” I followed those instructions closely. Since the trays had several rings of cups, I filled only the outermost one with wine. All the rest contained grape juice. The bulletin explained the arrangement. I told the congregation audibly of how it would work, too. I felt as if I’d taken all the needed precautions to allow for meaningful choice, yet it quickly deteriorated.

Since I was the one serving the cup to worshipers, I got a close glimpse of what unfolded as I saw wives frowning as their husbands took the wine, fathers who shook a head as their teenage son reached for the outer ring and young children whose hands were gently slapped if they made a similar choice. When you add that disruption to the strong smell of fermented grapes permeating the sanctuary, I knew even before the benediction I would never offer wine again as part of Communion!

Such reminders of humanity are fitting. For whether there was an innkeeper in Bethlehem is not the critical piece. Whether the child spent his first night in a stable or the living room of extended family is not essential either. Nor is the choice of using wine or grape juice in the Lord’s Supper of ultimate importance as I learned the hard way years ago.

Rather, the key fact about Christmas is that God took the extraordinary step of coming to earth in human form so that you and I and all creation might be reconciled to Him. Or as the gospel writer John reminds us (John 1:14)so poetically, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”  

Merry Christmas!

Emmanuel, God-With-Us, how blessed we are by your choice of long ago. May the significance of that decision transform our responses still on this and every day. Amen.

Postscript: In a Christmas Eve sermon at my last pastorate I shared this alternative view of Luke’s words. Afterwards a worshiper, as he was leaving the sanctuary, said to me “I just bought a new crèche scene complete with an innkeeper and stable. Thanks a lot!”