The Innkeeper

“Hello, I’m the innkeeper. I see that you are going to read about me again. I want to put in a word first. Preachers have been on my case for 2000 years all over the world. Every year they get after me  for putting Mary and Joseph into the stable. You know, if your wife kept reminding you every day for a week about a mistake you made, you would be upset. What about me? This has been going on for 2000 years. Just think of how low my self-esteem is by now.”

The innkeeper has a point. For centuries people have questioned what kind of an innkeeper would allow a woman to go to the stable to have her child born. Did he care? Did he have a choice?

Perhaps he was a helpless pawn caught in the crush of circumstances? Maybe he had no real choice. He didn’t make everybody come. He couldn’t provide for everyone. Why are we blaming him if Mary and Joseph had no place left to stay? He had more than enough problems before they even came. The Romans and their demands made life nearly unbearable for the townspeople. The stream of poor people that kept coming for help was more than one innkeeper could handle. He really had too much coming at him.  He could hardly cope with day to day life and now he’s being called on the carpet for this too?

Maybe the innkeeper was not stressed out, just a hardened man, tossed around by the vicissitudes of life, battered by hard knocks, calloused by the cruelties of those who had taken advantage of him. He had long ago learned not to be vulnerable, not to show concern. To make it in life you had to be tough, when the going gets tough the tough get going. Wimps get trampled. Giving people get ripped off. Show a crack in your emotions and people will worm their way in to drain you of all you’ve got. Why should he care about this couple pleading for a place to stay? They would just have to tough it out somehow themselves. If they could make a go of it in the stable, fine. If not, too bad.  Life never gave him any breaks, and he won’t be handing them out to others either.

Perhaps the innkeeper was neither stressed out nor hardened, but just a greedy hoarding type. The forced inflow of people due to Caesar’s decree was a windfall for him. He was rubbing his hands with glee late into the night each day as hapless souls scoured the town for a place to stay. Each traveler was measured in terms of dollars signs. Every nook in the inn had a price. The value of life came strictly in terms of material gain and he was out to get as much of it for himself as he could. Kindness, caring and generosity had long ago taken flight. Everybody was looking after himself and he was not to be outdone.

Maybe the innkeeper was not all stressed out, nor greedy, nor hardened. Maybe he figured that people are doing OK. The world is getting better and somehow we are going to save ourselves eventually. He was a secular humanist. He sounded and looked good. He came across as civilized and caring. He did what he could to find a place for Mary, but to the explanations Joseph gave he said, “So, this child is to be some sort of Messiah? What makes you think this world needs a Messiah? Civilization is developing. We are improving so many things constantly in government, education, medicine, culture agriculture, etc. The great teachers of our time are showing us the way. Mankind is going to elevate itself above much of the negative stuff that is happening now. We are moving toward the utopian society. A Savior Messiah is not needed.”

Within a few months the children up to age 2 in that same Bethlehem were massacred. A few years later the religious leaders themselves engineered the crucifixion of the only good man around. By 70 A.D. the Romans had perpetrated one of the cruelest conquests of Jerusalem known, crushing and destroying the people and the temple. So much for utopia.

There is a sense in which each of us is an innkeeper in life. Who we allow to lodge there, the things we make room for and the things we exclude show what we believe in. Perhaps you see yourself reflected in one of the innkeepers conjectured above. Or maybe there is room in your inn for the Lord today.

If we let Him in He’ll bring the sunny side along,

Henry Wiebe