No Room at the Inn

Davidson Loehr

December 17, 2000

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Five months ago today I left St. Paul, Minnesota and began the two-day drive moving me to Austin. Though I’d been born in Tulsa, I had lived in the North for the past thirty years and I knew there would be some cultural adjustments here. Before I moved here, I was instructed by e-mail in the proper use of the word “y’all.” It was explained to me that “y’all” is singular, while the plural version is “all y’all.” After arriving, there were other new things to absorb, in addition to the heat. Like the armadillo races in Leukenbach, or the amazing number of pick-up trucks that aren’t hauling anything.

As Christmas decorations began going up, I was surprised – though no native Texans seem surprised – to see that Santa Claus had a Lone Star belt buckle, a cowboy hat, boots and spurs. And I don’t know whether this is a state-wide custom or not, but I was also surprised to see that some of the public Christmas decorations down in Gonzales included not only four or five Wise Men, Santa with boots and spurs and assorted farm animals, but also Popeye and Olive Oyl!

Besides the funny and fun differences, there are some other new traditions, coming mainly from the Hispanic communities. And of these, one of my favorites is this seasonal custom of La Posada.

Dawne Spinale, our interim DRE, told me about it when she came up with the idea of turning today’s coffee hour into an invitation for the adults to visit the religious education classrooms. Then I was moved, as I know many of you were, in learning of the La Posada enacted in town recently between Hispanic and black churches, where Hispanic Christians went from church to church seeking admission, only to be told there was no room for them, until the final church welcomed them in for hospitality and food. It was very moving for the participants, and for most of us who read about it.

It’s a whole different lens through which to see the Christmas season, and a profound one. I had never seen the old story of Mary and Joseph being told there was “no room at the Inn” as being more than a prelude to the tales of the stable, the animals, and the birth of Jesus in a manger.

They really weren’t asking for much. Just a place that would take them in, someplace where a child might be born. But there was no room at the Inn.

La Posada, though, brings out so much more. It takes the focus off of Christmas presents and makes us the gifts to one another, whether we choose to offer those gifts or not. We want somebody to see us as a fellow human being, just to say, “Of course there is room. After all, you’re just like me: alone, in need, vulnerable, and dependent on the compassion of others. Of course there is room.”

For me, this changes the whole Christmas story. Something sacred wants to be born. The opportunity presents itself, as it almost always does, in the plainest, simplest way. A couple anonymous people who don’t look like anything special will give birth to something holy, and the world has no room for it. Religious stories are seldom about kings and queens. The surprise is always that the highest comes out of the lowest, if that’s not too crudely put. The holy is within and among us, just as Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was, and our abiding failure is the failure to recognize it.

Now if we could see these as sacred opportunities, there would always be room in our Inn. If these people dressed or looked like such important messengers should look, we’d be there for them. If they wore a crown, or came as movie stars or football quarterbacks or beauty queens – well then, of course there would be room at the Inn. But a couple simple-looking ragamuffins? Get away! Go sleep in the barn. This Inn isn’t for just anyone. It’s for the right kind of people, our kind of people. Go away.

This spirit of refusal has always been a part of us. It’s Scrooge, with his “Bah Humbug!” attitude. It’s the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. That’s what this spirit does, this “No-room-at-the-Inn,” Bah-Humbug spirit: it steals Christmas, turns it back into just another Monday. Something holy wants to be born and we won’t see it, so this spirit of refusal says “Sorry Mac, there’s no room at the Inn.”

It is a way of using what is or what has been to forbid what might be. That’s the sin involved here. It’s a way of keeping life small, forbidding its possibilities to grow beyond our habits. It’s ancient, much older than the Christmas story.

Something in us hates it when others might outgrow us, when they’re not like we are, not “our kind of people.” Churches do this too. In every church I have served, I’ve heard the same stories from visitors and newer members. They may not sound like they’re related to this La Posada story, but see if they don’t begin to feel familiar.

Newcomers to our churches usually arrive excited by this amazing range of possibilities, a religion for both head and heart, where no questions are forbidden. They have dozens of ideas for how we could spread this “good news” with the hundreds or thousands of others in the community that would love a place like this if only they knew about it. But when they say their ideas out loud, they feel that the old-timers just find reasons why they wouldn’t work, or want it studied by a committee for a year. New people come with excited ideas of what might be, and find them shut down by established habits of what has been. Looking at this from the outside, it feels like fear of change, fear of the new and different. Looking at it as an old-timer, it feels like protecting this institution you’ve loved and nurtured for so long. But if you’re an excited newcomer, it begins to feel like there’s no room at the Inn for the new life that is begging to be born.

So they go away: because, as they will tell you and as many of you have told me, they were never really invited in. There was no room at this Inn, so they left.

Nothing here is evil or awful; it’s just human nature. We get used to our people and our habits and we’re glad to see our people on Sunday, so we don’t notice there are lots of other people trying to find some room in this Inn, and not knowing how to get in. When they leave, they take with them the possibilities that might have been born here if they had stayed. There are starting to be more and more of them, they’re starting to wonder if there isn’t room for them here after all. It’s happening. And I think some new possibilities are beginning to be born. We’ll see, but I’m optimistic.

See how reality changes, depending on what kind of story you view it through? If you just see classic stories like the La Posada story as fables from a distant past, they’re not much help. But if you enter them, and let them enter you, they are a window onto our own lives, our own world. I just tried using the metaphor of people finding no room at the Inn to talk about the experience of many newcomers to many churches, including this one. But there are many more down-to-earth, more personal, examples of finding, or allowing, no room at the Inn. You can think of many as you let this subject settle in this week.

I’ll share just one story with you, a personal. I hadn’t thought of it as relating to the Christmas story at all until I learned about the La Posada tradition, but now I think it was a good example. It involved the last time I saw my grandfather, thirty-one years ago this month, just a few months before he died.

I hadn’t seen him in nine years. I had moved out of state, gone into the Army, gone to Germany and then Vietnam, then gone to Michigan to finish college. My brother called to say he didn’t think our grandfather would live much longer, so I decided to drive the four or five hundred miles to visit. He had always been such a sweet man.

I phoned information for Clarinda, Iowa, got his number, and called him. He was very happy to hear from me, and it would be “just fine” if I visited after Christmas. I called again a couple days before leaving, and he was still very happy to hear from me and it was still “just fine” if I visited.

A few miles outside of Clarinda, which is in the extreme southwest corner of Iowa, my car broke. I went up to the farmhouse, but the lady didn’t want to let me use her phone. Finally her husband came down, a big burly fellow, and she allowed that I might come in while he was there, but don’t go walking into other rooms.

The operator gave me the Ford garage, the only garage in town that would be open now. They towed my car in. I had a 1966 Datsun 1600 two-seater sports car, and I had some doubts that there would be a Datsun mechanic in Clarinda, Iowa. Once they got the car in the garage and popped the hood, it got better for a minute, as three big old farmer-mechanics in overalls all leaned over to look at the engine. I heard some positive, approving grunts. Then one of them looked up at me and said “Nice car. Did you make it?”

And I thought, ” I’m going to die here!” It was the alternator, they said. The alternator was broken. I know nothing about cars, and an alternator sounded like an exotic piece of equipment. My mind began replaying the worst scenes from old Alfred Hitchcock movies as I imagined how my end might come. Then they discovered that my little Japanese Datsun used a Delco alternator, which was made by Ford and which they had in stock! I accepted it as a miracle. They charged me a very fair price, gave me a donut, and told me where to find my grandfather’s house, just a few blocks away.

By the time I got there, it was about nine o’clock: cold, dark and windy, with blowing snow. I knocked at his door, and within just a few moments he came. When this dear old man opened the door, I was suddenly aware of two things, simultaneously.

The first was that he had no idea who I was. He was quite senile; his mind was almost completely gone. He didn’t even know he had grandsons, and he didn’t know me, though he thought my last name rang a bell, since it sounded like his.

I came to see my grandfather, and he opened the door to find a complete stranger, come from far away on a cold, dark, snowy night.

The second thing I noticed just as quickly was that, even while he had no idea who this strange young man on his porch was, he was opening the door as wide as he could, and welcoming me inside. There was room at this Inn, even for a strange young foreigner.

I stayed for two days, and in the few lucid moments he had, there were some warm and wonderful memories with this dear old man. His mind was mostly gone, but his heart was still working, and working well. I would have to introduce myself to him several times a day. Every time I would come out of one of his rooms and he would come out of another, he would be mildly shocked to find a stranger in his home and would say again “Well hello and welcome! And who may you be?” Every time I would tell him my name and let him know I was his grandson. And while he tried to react politely, I knew that for all but a few minutes he had absolutely no idea who I was.

I remember some of the stories he shared during his few lucid moments, stories from sixty-five years earlier, the story of how he had proposed to my grandmother, back in 1907, stories told in crisp and poignant detail, as though he were still there – which, in some ways, I guess he was.

Now when I think back on that strange visit of so long ago, I am transfixed by that image of him throwing his door wide open to invite into his home a total stranger on a cold dark night. I keep trying to remember the lines from the poem: “I was hungry and you fed me, I was alone and you took me in-” That’s not quite right, I can’t quite remember them.

But I do remember what it felt like the night I knocked at a stranger’s door and he took me in. I try to write a script for him as I replay the scene in my mind. I have him saying dramatic things like “There’s room at this Inn!” But the words aren’t right. They’re too phony, too contrived. He did it better, without any words. He just opened the door as wide as he could, welcomed me inside, saw my little suitcase, and showed me to a bedroom where I might sleep. I learned it was his bedroom; he had taken some blankets to the big sofa. But he wouldn’t hear of offering his young guest – whoever I was – anything but the best bed he had. I will remember that visit for as long as I live.

Well, that’s kind of how the Christmas story ends, too. Mary and Joseph were finally welcomed in, and something holy was born, something holy and memorable that had the power to save the world.

That part’s true. It can testify to it. Every time there is room at an Inn, every time we overcome fear with love, the stage has been set for another kind of manger scene where something holy can be born. And the attitudes, the spirits, the memories that are born of that encounter of finding that yes, there is room at the Inn and we will find you a nice bed – that attitude really can change the world. It changed mine. Even hearing about it second-hand in this story may bring a change into yours. Something happens to the one who, against all odds, was welcomed in by the stranger, something that will never be forgotten.

If only, somehow, this spirit could become contagious and others could catch it! That’s the kind of miracle that really might save the world. In fact, it’s the only miracle that could save the world.