No room

Luke 2:1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to his own town to register. 4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Familiar story.  Here's your common everyday comprehension question: Why was Jesus (presumably) born in a stable?  Answer: Because there wasn't any room in the inn.  Simple, right?

OK, so how about this one: Why were Mary and Joseph looking for a room in an inn, anyway?  Think about it: they are traveling back to Joseph's ancestral home town.  Surely there were still some relatives hanging around the place, willing to take in a couple imminently expecting their first child, right?  And if not, all of the relatives that he did know were also traveling to the same place about the same time, to take part in the same census. Surely some of them could have made a little room for them, right?  So why were they even going to an inn at all?

Well, as you know, there was this large matter of a suspicious pregnancy.  It's likely that their relatives didn't want to have anything to do with this man and his young wife with her strange story of visions and angels.  Or maybe, Joseph himself didn't want to make his presence known to them.  Maybe he had gotten grief about Mary from relatives in Nazareth, and so he had decided to just not contact his relatives in Bethlehem.  Whichever it was, it resulted in him scrambling for some place for his wife as she gave birth to her first born.


Now, here is an interesting twist.  When Jesus was born, an angel appeared announcing that the Savior had been born, and then a whole company of angels appeared at the announcement, praising God.  Pretty impressive, huh? That would make a believer of you, huh?

Wouldn't it have been so just if the angels had appeared to Joseph's family?  "Hey, go down and see the son of the man whom you rejected! He really is the Annointed One!  Go offer them a room, or at least make a meal for them!"  But of course, that didn't happen.  The angels appeared to poor shepherds, men who didn't have much in the way of influence in the community but who had great metaphorical relationship to the Messiah.

But, as low on the economic scale as they were, many people believed and were amazed at their testimony. It is likely that Joseph's relatives eventually came around to see the child of which this remarkable story was told.  Maybe, evenually, they thawed out a bit.  Maybe, even, the house that Matthew 2:11 says they were staying in was that of a relative.

I mention all this because it is so easy to lose sight of all the messiness of Jesus's birth (not like that) in the sanitized version of the story that we are familiar with.  The matter of Mary's pregnancy likely caused great passionate responses in Joseph's family. It might have caused such an uproar that they were planning to stay in Bethlehem and away from Nazareth permanently (remember that they may have been there for as long as two years) until they were warned off to Egypt.  I'm amazed at God's humility, as he allowed all of this drama to accompany the birth of His Son in order that Jesus could be made perfect through His suffering (Hebrews 2:10).