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The Inn - Housing the Holy

We are reeling from prolonged uncertainty and instability brought on by the pandemic. In the United States alone, millions lost their jobs and are affected by whether or not landlords will evict them from their homes for failure to pay rent. A staggering number of families are food insecure for the first time in their lives. And those who were already on the brink are even less sure how to survive.

And we are all exhausted in some way. Even if it is decision-fatigue. We have problems to address. And so did the Holy Family that night. An oppressive regime had demanded everyone upend their lives and hightail it to their home towns to register for the census–for tax purposes, likely. Mary was on the verge of giving birth and the AirBnB app just wasn’t an option.

 Whether they got to town late or for some other reason, they had a housing problem that night. The Innkeeper is a figure of our imaginations. Not referenced in the sacred texts, we assume that since Luke said there was an “inn,” then there must have been an “innkeeper.” Often our stories cast him in a negative light, someone who banished a pregnant woman to where the animals were kept.

But what if, since we are engaging our imaginations anyway, what if he was truly an entrepreneur? Someone who saw a problem and thought, literally, “outside the box” to solve the problem of where Mary could have her child? Instead of thinking “there’s nowhere,” he said to himself first, “there has to be somewhere.”

This worship series was inspired by churches who are asking these kinds of questions.