No Room

MEMO for Those Who Preach

by

The 4th Sunday in Advent/December 23, 2018

Micah 5: 2-5a Psalm 80: 1-7 Hebrews 10: 5-10 Luke 1: 39-56

“Christmas is a spontaneous drama of the common folk ... all the while that Raphael was painting the Sistine Madonna, (the) French ... building the Cathedral of Chartres, English Bishops composing the Book of Common Prayer, Handel his Messiah ... the common people, out of whom these geniuses sprung, were composing Christmas.“ (Earl Count)

Of course, Dr. Count is correct. Christmas is the peoples‘ holiday. Riffraff revel and everybody gets into the act. Halls are decked. Wassail is quaffed. Christmas is on display in bars, nursing homes, bus stations and jails. Scrooges are converted. Generosity runs wild.

And it is all because of this line upon which the whole Christmas drama turns: "And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn." (Luke 2:7 NRSV)

Christmas honors everyone who has ever been told that there is NO ROOM for them:

  • Central American refugees seeking asylum in the United States;
  • people of Yemen being bombed by U. S.-backed Saudi attacks;
  • homeless citizens being banished from “respectable“ cities, charged with begging and loitering;
  • every lonely, laid-off, grief-stricken, spiritually depleted soul among us.

Do we not all feel a kinship with those who have been told there is NO ROOM for them? Can we not all understand the loneliness and share the pathos of the Holy Family? And so do we all not know that God draws close to those who have been shamed and rejected and shares their anguish?

“Incendiary Mary“ was branded a leftist sympathizer because she praised God for choosing her to mother the Promised One. She proclaimed to those who have always been shunted aside that a day of victory was coming, a day when the powerful will be brought down from their thrones and the lowly lifted up, the hungry filled with good things and the rich sent away empty. (Luke 1: 46-55, paraphrased)

So Christmas strengthens common folk. I remember visiting a poor terminally ill parishoner who kept her favorite Christmas ornament hanging from the headboard of her bed.

The composer/associate pastor Al Carmines (“Many Gifts, One Spirit“) wrote the oratorio "Christmas Rappings" in 1969 for Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village. Based on nativity scriptures, it became a Christmas tradition. Most haunting is “No Room,“ a song which so moved Al‘s Methodist mother visiting from the South that she requested it be sung at her funeral.

I‘ve always been drawn this time of the year to the opening of Leonard Bernstein‘s MASS, sung by a tenor soloist: “Sing God a simple song. Laude. Laude...For God is the simplest of all.“

At Christmas, God is as simple as a babe in a manger, surrounded, protected, adored by common folk – peasant parents and lowly shepherds – who know that everywhere there is human need the setting is sacred and the Holy One draws near.

The Rev. Bill Steward is a retired clergy member of the Iowa Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. Together with its founder, the Rev. Bill Cotton, Rev. Steward produces "MEMO for Those Who Preach." Click here to subscribe to MEMO by email.