Christmas Eve 2008
The Rev’d Dr. Hugh Tudor-Foley
The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Hemet, CA

I, for the most part am glad, that the tradition of our church doesn’t ask clergy to come up with snappy titles for our sermons. Most weeks it would be just about impossible for me to do it.
But – this evening – I will burden you with one. The popular song goes, “I’ll be home for Christmas.” And my title, ”Who – who will be home where for Christmas.”
In another church in another year the Christmas pageant had gone well. Mary and Joseph came into Bethlehem, right on cue. They were met by the nine-year-old innkeeper who dutifully informed them that, though he would like to help them out, “There was no room at the inn.” Sorry. No Vacancy, like the sign says out front.”
Then he – this nine-year-old innkeeper – looked at Mary and Joseph again – and they really looked tired from their journey, and he blurted out, “But there is a great motel with HBO just around the corner from the church.”
And the pageant was a shambles. Just so you are sure – that never happened here at Good Shepherd.
Besides, that’s not the way the story is supposed to go. That’s not the way the story of Mary and Joseph is supposed to go.
Or is it?
We all know by heart how it’s supposed to go don’t we? Mary and Joseph come to Bethlehem for the government’s enrollment and there, because everybody else from out of town is already there, there is no room for them in the inn. So Mary is forced to give birth to Jesus in a cattle stall because, quote “There is no place for them in the inn.”
I ran across an idea recently from the Bible scholar Kenneth Bailey – he points out that the word our Bibles translate, as inn is, the Greek word kataluma – Maybe, I should have called this sermon, kataluma.
Kataluma correctly translated means “guest room” not inn.
In Jesus parable about the Samaritan, the wounded man is taken to a pandokheon, which does mean “inn.”
But, here St. Luke tells us that there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the kataluma, no more room in the family guest room, so they had to be placed elsewhere in the home.
In the typical mid-Eastern home, Bailley says, there is a designated room for overnight visitors. Moreover, it would be unthinkable, according to the dictates of eastern hospitality, for out of town relatives to be sent to an inn by their own family – ven if there was HBO.
They – Mary and Joseph – were back in Bethlehem because Joseph was “of the house and lineage of David.” The problem was that there were many, many relatives back for the government’s enrollment.
By the time they arrived, the guest room, the kataluma, was filled. So Mary and Joseph had to stay in the next best room the family had, which Bailley says would have been the outer room where the family’s animals were brought in at night for safekeeping. Especially in cold weather, the family livestock was brought in for the night, and in the morning let out, and the room was swept and used for other family needs. That is where the manger was, in this outer room.
Some of you, who are home for Christmas, slept last night and will sleep tonight on the sofa in the family room, or curled up in a sleeping bag somewhere else, because there is no appropriate space for you in the guest room. Uncle Oscar from Cincinnati got the room before you got off the plane or train.
BUT, because your family loves you so much, and is so delighted you are home for Christmas, they are giving you the honor of sleeping on the floor of the playroom.
That, I believe, is also what Mary and Joseph faced.
All of this puts the Christmas story – the story of coming home – in a different light. According to Bailey, Jesus was not born in a stable of some cold, impersonal hotel or inn, but rather born in the front room where doting aunts, uncles and other random relatives – and a few animals – could enjoy this new member of the family.
For Mary and Joseph, these days among family must have been a particular treasure. Soon enough they would be forced to flee from the wrath of King Herod. There would be dark and difficult days ahead. Soon enough they would have to be refugees.
But for now, they were at home, among family as most of us are tonight.
When God incarnate, Jesus, was most frail and vulnerable, a baby, he was cared for in a warm, safe place amid all the simple blessings of a family. As I look out this evening, I see a larger family, and that is what we are.
Some of you have made incredible efforts to be home for Christmas. You have managed to get through security and flown US Air or Delta. You have suffered the indignities of the interstate highway system. You may have even tried Amtrak.
Tonight, even that fold out sofa bed – you know, the one with the iron bar across the middle of the two inch foam mattress – will feel good because you are home. Home for Christmas.
And for those of you who feel alone this day, just look around – you too are with family.
Homelessness is much on our minds as is hunger. Many, many people will be spending today and tomorrow at the Mission, many, many families will be eating food from the Cupboard. They could tell us a great deal about what being homeless means.
Homelessness is also a metaphor for the way a lot of people feel. And a matter of face, a good bit of the Bible was written by and for people getting ready to be homeless, in exile. Most of the lessons in the just past Advent season were written by prophets talking about home, homelessness, exile and homecoming.
“There’s no place like home for the Holidays,” may sound trite, but it is true. Many of you have not only come home to your families but also home to Trinity Church, because this is home too.
We long to belong. We want somewhere where we can share our lives, our feelings, our faith. How does the opening of the TV series “Cheers” go? “You want someplace where everybody knows your name.” Although it is sort of sad that place for some, is no better than a bar. Yet the song does suggest that home is much a state of mind as a place.
Christian Morgenstern puts it, “Home is not where you live but where they understand you.” Or, of course, Robert Frost, “Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.”
But more that even all that, Christmas, as St. Luke tells it, is not just about Mary and Joseph coming home, safe in the kataluma of the family, and it is not even about your coming home for Christmas.
It is about God, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Prince of Peace. It is about God becoming human with Mary’s help. God came to us, coming amidst this ordinary family story we cherish as the nativity.
What we call incarnation – God becoming human out of love for us – is somebody sleeping on the foldout sofa downstairs in the playroom, or in a manger in the kataluma.
That somebody there is “God with us.” Our God came out of the cold to dwell with us. That’s the joy of it.
I can’t think of another religion that would allow or understand their God to be so domesticated. A domestication of the divine is just unheard of. Most faiths would be completely confused and scandalized by our faith in a God who takes on our flesh and is born in a manger – born among us, as a baby no less.
When we sing, “I’ll be home for Christmas,” we mean us. When Luke hears this tune, he hears Messiah, Immanuel, God with us proclaim, “I’ll be at your home for Christmas.”
Why are we all gathered here? I have a suggestion. Moving right into the midst of your family with all of its problems, secrets, sin and silliness; the love, the laughter and all the little joys of your house, there comes this God. And I think that is why we are all here, and that is why there is joy tonight.
The last…..well, almost the last chapter of the last book of the Bible, says this, joyfully this,
See, the home of God
Is among mortals.
He will dwell with them
As their God;
They will be his peoples,
And God himself
Will be with them.
So sleep well tonight, at home – on the couch, in the hide-a-bed, on the floor – because this day and every day,
God is truly home with us – and we are home with our Loving God.
Amen.