NO ROOM IN THE INN GUEST ROOM
(Saturday) Russ Reeves seems to enjoy revisiting this quote and I can understand why. It's from a Will Willimon sermon:

You know by heart how the story goes. Mary and Joseph come to Bethlehem for the government's enrollment and there, because with everyone from out-of-town, there is no room at the Inn so Mary is forced to give birth to Jesus in a cow stall because "there was no place for them in the inn."

But scholar, Kenneth Bailey points out that what our Bibles translate as "inn" is, in the Greek kataluma, which means literally "guest room" not "hotel" or "inn." Later, in Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan, the wounded man is taken to a pandokheion which does mean "inn," but here, Luke says 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. The actual wording does not really say "there was no room in the inn" but rather "there was no appropriate place in the guest room."

In the typical Mid-Eastern home, says Bailey, there is a designated room for overnight visitors. 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. Mary and Joseph were among relatives. They were back in Bethlehem because Joseph was "of the house and lineage of David." The problem was, there were undoubtedly many relatives back for the government's enrollment. By the time Mary and Joseph arrived, the guest room , the kataluma, was filled and so they had to be placed in the next best place in the family home, which Bailey says would have been the outer room where the family's animals were brought in for safe keeping during the night. Especially in cold weather, the family livestock was brought in to this outer room where they stayed the night, then they were led away at morning, the room was swept, and used for other family activity. That's where the manger was, the feed trough for the animals, in this outer room.

Some of you who are home for Christmas will sleep tonight on the sofa in the living room, or curled in a sleeping bag elsewhere, because there is no "appropriate place" for you in the guest room. Uncle Oscar from Hoboken commandeered that room before you got here. Well, that's probably the case for Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Rather than send you to the Washington Duke, because the family loves you so much and is so delighted to have everyone home for Christmas, they are giving you the honor of sleeping on the floor in the play room.

All of this puts the story of that first Christmas a bit differently. Jesus was not born in the stable of some cold, impersonal hotel, but rather born in the front room of a home where doting aunts, uncles, and other random relatives doted on the new baby.