Christmas Day 2025
Listen to audio version:
Readings: Hebrews 1: 1-12 and Luke 2: 1-20
The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, experienced a moving visit to Christians in Palestine last month, and reflected on that visit in The Times on Saturday. While he was there, he took part in the blessing of a new-born baby called Dina, a girl, he said, born into extraordinary circumstances – amid the violent turmoil of the West Bank.
He reflected that at the heart of the Christian story of Christmas is a birth – an ordinary birth in extraordinary circumstances. We were hearing the background to the birth in the gospel last Sunday – St Matthew’s account of how it was that Mary and Joseph found themselves in the situation we celebrate today. Today’s gospel is St. Luke’s record of those events which we have come to love and know so well.
There’s always been discussion about that phrase ‘Mary laid him in a manger, ‘because there was no room for them in the inn.’ The word used for ‘inn’ here, in the Greek, is kataluma. It is not the same word, for instance, as Luke uses in the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the injured traveller is taken to an inn for respite. Biblical scholar Paula Gooder says that inns were for travellers on roads, making long journeys. It is unlikely that Bethlehem would have had an inn. Rules of hospitality in those days dictated that people – even entire strangers – should be welcomed into your home and cared for. It is interesting that the Greek word I mentioned – kataluma – is the same word as used for the ‘upper room’ where Jesus and his disciples met for the Last Supper. It might have been a room on the roof of the house. But in smaller homes, the kataluma is more likely to have been a corner of the one-roomed abode that most people had, and where whole families dwelt. In such houses what normally happened was that the family lived ‘upstairs’ on a kind of mezzanine level, with the animals on a lower level in the same space. So what Luke probably imagined was that Jesus was laid in the feeding trough of the lower level, as the upper level was so crammed with people.
Of course, there is no mention of animals or inn-keeper in the bible’s accounts of the birth of Jesus, but all our school nativity plays would be poorer without them! And we normally like to emphasize this ‘no room at the inn’ message to suggest that Jesus was deliberately refused room; that he was shut out. If there was an inn, somebody refused Jesus accommodation; if it was just a guest room or animal space, no one refused him room – he just didn’t quite fit in. In fact, it’s much more warming to think that somebody made space for him. Jesus was born in a cramped corner of a very crowded place – real incarnation; born into a messy busy world.
So often, we assume that people’s lack of acceptance of Jesus is deliberate – like the supposed innkeeper’s refusal. More probably, people are unsure about Jesus, don’t know much about him; haven’t had to consider who he is, and wouldn’t know where to fit him into their lives. And that says much about how the Church reaches people; about how you and I live out the faith we proclaim and present it to others. And so that raises the question for us – how much space are we to give Jesus – just a corner of our lives, or something more?
I was told of a conversation a mother was having with her small daughter recently, overheard by one of our congregation. It seems the girl was taking part in a school nativity play. She asked her mum, “Mummy, where was I born?” She replied, “You were born in the hospital at Worcester.” The girl responded, “Oh – I wanted to be born in a manger.” We can only guess what was going through her mind, but we can say that in some way she wanted to be like Jesus.
Perhaps we don’t often think of living the experience of Jesus. I mentioned Archbishop Stephen Cottrell earlier, and his visit to Palestinian churches. He says the Christians there spoke with astonishing grace and dignity about how they feel abandoned by the rest of the world, not least by the churches. They placed their plight firmly in the context of the New Testament, pledging to follow their ancestors who ‘endured Roman occupation, poverty and marginalisation, yet remained steadfast in faith.’ They described how they are ‘sanctified’ when they have to flee their homes like the Holy Family when they fled to Egypt; when their husbands and sons are humiliated at checkpoints like the labourers in the scripture waiting for work, and when they are denied medical treatment and have to wait like the paralysed man at the pool of Bethesda.
“If the works of God are to be displayed through our suffering’ – they write ‘we will accept his will with faith”. Well, what faith! The Archbishop observes that the ordinary birth of Jesus in extraordinary circumstances begins the story which continues to inspire astonishing bravery.
Most people are moved by the story of the Nativity, of course, in that it is all about a helpless dependent baby, whom God entrusted to us to raise and care for, so great is his love for the world. So how are we going to respond to this gift? Shall we make room, or shall we shut him out, or shall we remain undecided? And is Christ still dependent on us to make him known?
Somehow I was reminded of the famous prayer of Teresa of Avila: “Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours, no feet but yours, no eyes but yours. Yours are the only hands with which he can do his work, yours are the only feet with which he can go about the world, and yours are the only eyes through which his compassion can shine forth upon a troubled world.”
“O holy child of Bethlehem … be born in us today.”