Merry Christmas!
All month,
I've been posting recipes and Bible verses to our blog about the concept of
hospitality. In today's Gospel, we've
heard the story we all know so well about the journey Joseph and Mary took to
register for the census. But as you may
come to discover as you listen here today, we may not have as clear a picture
about the time of Jesus' birth as we might think. Our culture has created a mythos, made
popular by children's Christmas pageants everywhere. I even included one of those stories in a
previous sermon, where a little boy was devastated when he was playing the
innkeeper and didn't have any room for Mary and Joseph – eventually shouting
out, "Wait, you can have my room!"
However, right
now, I'm going to mention the one thing I swore I would avoid after my New
Testament class – Greek. Luke was an educated man, and Greek was
certainly within his bailiwick. Within
any of the "Hebrew" scriptures, we can certainly hear the echo of the
Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures.
But today,
we're going to talk about hospitality:
the hospitality due to strangers, and the hospitality due to out of town
family. In Jewish tradition, offering
hospitality is a mitzvah, or commandment, for which one receives a blessing. It actually carries the rule of law, and if a
Jewish family knows of strangers who are hungry or need a place to rest, it
actually becomes a legal obligation.
These rules developed out of the fact that they were a desert people,
and travel of any distance often left people in need of that hospitality. The Talmud teaches that one's house should
always be open and welcoming to strangers.
Now, at the same time, strangers have an equal obligation to be a good
guest, and to not overstay their welcome.
In the Midrash Tellihim, it advises, "On the day a guest arrives, a
calf is slaughtered in his honor; the next day, a sheep, the third day, a fowl,
and on the fourth day, he is served just beans." Guests are to offer extra blessings while
they stay, and ensure that they do not eat everything on a plate they are
given.
When your
guest leaves, you should escort them part-way to ensure their safety, but at a
minimum, you should escort them at least 4 cubits from the doorstep - which is about 7 feet. Jewish hospitality was so well known that
when the Roman Emperor Julian set up hostels for transients in each town, he
recommended they mimic the Jews, "in whose midst no stranger goes uncared
for."
Just one more
example of how important Jewish hospitality is – in Genesis 18, Abraham is
literally talking with God – it had been only 3 days since his circumcision,
and apparently God was making a house call to see how he was – when Abraham
sees three strangers in the distance, and rushes out – leaving God there – to
greet them and offer hospitality. In
that instance, hospitality ranked higher than talking with God about his circumcision.
So, let's go
back to Joseph and Mary, who were in Bethlehem because they had to go register
for the census. Both of them were of the
tribe of Judah, so both of them would have at least had distant family close to
where they were registering. Also keep
in mind that they were descendants – very far distant descendants, but
descendants, nonetheless, of David, the greatest King the Jews had ever known
to that point. Family would have been
more than happy to take them in.
And here's
where we get to the Greek. The Greek
word for a commercial inn is pandokeion. And with current archeological findings,
there was no inn in Bethlehem. It was a
small village. And Luke did not use that
word in stating that there was no place for them – in what has been translated
as "inn." The word that he
used instead was kataluma, which
means guest room or upper room. With all
of the family in town registering for the census, it is highly likely that
everyone's guest rooms were a little crowded.
When I was
little, I lived in a tiny farming village in Germany. In the wintertime, the livestock were brought
in to what was essentially the ground floor, protected from the harsher weather
and temperatures. This served a few
purposes – the heat from the animals would rise and help heat the household;
the farmers' kids didn't have brave the elements to take care of the livestock,
milk cows, gather eggs, etc. – they could just go downstairs. The smell took some getting used to, but
eventually you didn't even notice it. I
caught the train to school every morning, and the stop was right next to one
such house.
Archeologists
have discovered the same sort of arrangement for the houses in Bethlehem. They would often build their house close to a
cave, or build it up, so there was space underneath for the livestock. That's where the manger would be kept, since
a manger is a trough out of which horses and cattle ate. According to the historians, it is unlikely
that homes had an additional heating source, beyond a cooking stove. So keeping the baby in the manger was both a
soft place, and one of the warmer places in the house. As good guests who would probably be staying
more than the three days acceptable for good guests, it is likely that Joseph
took care of the animals in the barn/stable and the new family was afforded a
bit of privacy in that way as well.
This sort of
puts a whole new spin on how Jesus came into the world. Rather than an inhospitable innkeeper and a
lonely stable, Jesus was welcomed into the world, surrounded by family – who
were probably in the main room and the guest rooms until all the excitement was
over – and a Son was welcomed and kept warm.
When the shepherds were told about Christ's arrival, even as they were
out in the fields, they knew just where to go – they didn't need
directions. It wasn't a separate stable
or cave, but rather the warmest room in the house of those descended from
David. Hospitality ensured that Christ's
birth was a celebration and happy event, even if everyone else didn't quite yet
know the story of who His father was.
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