BLOG 12/13/16. THE CENTRALITY OF HOSPITALITY IN THE NATIVITY STORY
Maybe we need to do a bit of de-mythologizing of the Nativity story given all the ostensible nativity scenes gracing the yards of numerous church buildings this time of year. I am indebted to New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey for doing this for me. Ken, an American, grew up in Lebanon with missionary parents, and then spent his life there teaching New Testament and so is intimately familiar with that culture. One of the first cultural realities you confront in this story is that of hospitality as normative in middle-eastern culture, i.e., you open your home to those in need of a place to stay. They didn’t have motels, and only a few inns. This concept is all to alien to our own culture. We make homes our fortress, a place to escape, a place that is our private preserve … all too much of the time. We’ll come back to this, because in New Testament teachings, being given to hospitality is even a qualifier for becoming a church leader, and taking the homeless poor into your home is deep in Jesus’ injunctions to his followers. This sounds much stranger to those of us who are western than it would have to those first century middle-eastern Christian folk.
So, Joseph had to go to Bethlehem to register for taxation because he was, note, of the house and lineage of David. We read over that year by year routinely and it doesn’t register to us that Joseph was of royal lineage. He was not some poor, non-credentialed guy—he was royal family. And then there was no room in the (probably small) inn, for this royal heir and his pregnant wife. Now note: that when Mary’s time of delivery had come she bore the child and laid him in the manger. But this was no cow shed in the back yard. People didn’t keep their livestock out in some back pasture, but the animals were kept in (according to Ken Bailey’s explanation) in the house in what would have been something like an attached garage in our experience, separated only from the rest of the house by a low wall, and it was by that low wall that they kept the hay to feed the animals, i.e. the manger. The animals provided some warmth for the homes, which also were basically one great room where all their living took place.
It would have been considered an honor to provide hospitality, especially to one such as Joseph and his wife. Here again we need to do a bit of de-mythologizing. Often our Christmas scenes have shepherds, angels, wise men and all gathered around some feed trough in the shed. But the shepherds got the message first, and came and worshiped. But they had their sheep to care for so couldn’t have lingered for long. But the wise men arrived seeking Jesus, whose star they had seen, and who had already been born. Later, Herod would have all the boy babies born in the recent two years to be killed. Which means that it could have been weeks, or months after the birth of Jesus that the wise men turned up in Bethlehem. All the while, Joseph and Mary and the infant Jesus were recipients of the hospitality of some un-named givers of that hospitality. There are undoubtedly many details that we do not know, obviously, but the hospitality of those unknown folk in Bethlehem is the backdrop of the story.
Or consider that when Jesus and his followers were journeying around Palestine in his earthly ministry, they had to stay somewhere, and eat somewhere. We know that there was the Martha and May home, and that Jesus asked to stay in Zacchaeus’ home, but in the background, they experienced middle-eastern hospitality. The home was a key place of ministry. Now to take the leap to the 21st century. Where does hospitality take place in our experience? Yes, we have multiple hotels of all sorts. It may be that the Airbnb phenomenon is one of the closest approximations we have. We modern westerners to not ordinarily plan our homes for taking in homeless folk and strangers. We may send money to the local homeless shelter, but this is a bit impersonal. Somehow we who are followers of Jesus need to reclaim the role of hospitality for those physically or spiritually homeless, and how our homes fit into this ministry. Got any ideas?
