A Place for the Night--December 24, 2019

A Place for the Night--December 24, 2019

"Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them..." [Luke 2:4-7]

Jesus is always borrowing places to stay for a night or two.

I never really thought about it until just the other day, but it's true.  And especially at the pivotal moments that bookend his life, Jesus just borrows space to lay down--or rather, a place for someone else to lay his body down to rest--but only for a couple of days, tops.

At his birth, of course, Joseph and Mary have to borrow space in the room where the animals stay for the night (and quite possibly where many others in the family were also staying for the night, since the ordinary home of peasant-folk in 1st century Judea was maybe two rooms, and the town would have been packed with relatives coming home for the census).  They don't have a proper crib for the newborn, so they borrow a place to lay their baby down... but just for a bit.  It wouldn't be long before Joseph and Mary and their new little baby would be on their way out of Bethlehem again, and presumably soon enough they got themselves a decent sleeping place for their infant son. The manger sufficed when he was born, because they needed something, and it was just a place for the night, after all.

But flash forward to a Friday evening a few decades later, and once again, folks are scrambling to find a half-decent place to lay the body of Jesus once again.  You know how that story goes, too, I expect.  The baby who was laid in a manger grows up and is perceived as such a threat to the Empire and the Respectable Religious Crowd that they put him to death on a cross, and in order to treat the corpse with at least some bare minimum of decency, his closest friends borrow a tomb in which to lay the body of their rabbi.  It wasn't what anyone had planned, it seemed--but then, of course, nobody seemed to expect the rabbi to be executed before that week's events, either.  So they use the tomb that was nearby, because they needed something.

And, as it turns out, that was just a place for a night or two, as well.

Funny, isn't it, how the story of Jesus begins with a borrowed place to lay his tired body as an infant for his first night of life... and how at his death, there is another borrowed place his mother has to borrow to lay down his weary bones.  Mangers and crosses.  A food trough and a borrowed grave.  These turn out, both of them, to be temporary accommodations.  And even the grave in which they laid him on Friday evening turns out only to be a place for a few nights, as well.  With resurrection on Sunday morning, Jesus is up and out the door once again, and loose in the world.

There is an inextricable connection between birth and resurrection, both for Jesus and for us.  It is a reminder, for one, that the story we celebrate at Christmas isn't an ending, but a beginning, and that the Good News of the Nativity is not simply, "Look, here's a cute baby," but "This human being will be the one through whom death itself is broken open."  The coming of Jesus isn't about a sentimental God wanting to stick a toe in the waters of humanity like a divine tourist just visiting.  Jesus is about the work of bringing us to life. From beginning to end to new beginning, from manger to cross to empty tomb, Jesus is about bringing life.  Whatever things in us are dead... whatever places inside our hearts are on the verge of giving up... whatever places in our bodies are hurting and wounded... whatever relationships between us are severed and estranged, Jesus is on the loose bringing us to life again... and life in the full.

Maybe that's why Jesus never stays in one place for very long.  The manger and the borrowed grave are only a place to lay his head for a night or two, along with all the upper rooms he used and couches he crashed on, in all the other nights of his ministry, because he is always headed to the next place, the next situation, the next face that needs to be brought to life again.  Jesus borrows a place for the night just long enough to resurrect what is dead in us, and then he's off to do it all over again somewhere else.

That's what we are brought into as followers of Jesus.  We are part of the ongoing procession, the parade of the Yahweh Administration, that keeps on moving from one dead end to another, and bringing life wherever folks are stuck in the grip of death.  And that's really what Christmas marks: the first stop on the tour, the first place this Jesus is laid for a night or two, before life breaks out in a new place, and another, and another.

May the frozen, dead soil of our hearts be brought back to life right now as he comes among us today.

Amen--Come, Lord Jesus.  Bring us to life here in the dead of winter.  And then let us be on your way with you.