“and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.” ~ Luke 2:7b
The verse above comes from a beloved chapter in 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 never mentioned in the text. For no matter how closely you look at Luke’s account, you will not find mention of an innkeeper or a stable.
Both pieces of the story are so ingrained in our telling 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 Bed and Breakfast, 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; namely, 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”–katalyma– “where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”(Luke 22:11). That shared choice of a Greek word from 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. So, the child was placed in a manger.
That interpretation would seem unlikely if we picture 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 heads 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 he 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 its diversity to appear again.
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 a Ruling Elder and then move to receive a small cup from me that was 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 wanted to try something different.
The Book of Order, our procedural document in the PC(USA), at the time said, “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 held juice. The bulletin explained the setup. I told the congregation audibly how it would work, too. I’d taken all the precautions I could think of, yet things quickly deteriorated even so.
Since I was the only one serving the cup to worshipers, I got a close glimpse of what unfolded. It included wives frowning as their husbands took the wine, fathers who shook their heads as their teenage sons reached for the outer ring, and young children whose hands were gently slapped if they made a similar choice. When you add the strong smell of fermentation that filled the sanctuary, I knew before the benediction I would never offer wine again during 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 how God took the extraordinary step of coming to earth in human form so that creation might be reconciled to their Maker. Or as the gospel writer John reminded 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!