“She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Lk 2:7). 

For many of us, these words cushion sweet, sentimental, and (probably) cartoonish images we have of a snuggly baby Jesus in soft blankets. But, with these words, Luke actually depicts a harsh reality. The Christ-child was born into utter poverty, in a shepherd’s cave in no-man’s land. He had no crib. No heat. No creature comforts. Why? Because there was no room for him. 

We Missed It

The fact that there was no room is shocking, given the history and the anxiety of a people awaiting the Messiah. God had long promised that he would do something about humanity’s predicament, its falling out of God’s family in the garden with that original sin of Adam and Eve. God promised to put enmity between the serpent and the woman, and their offspring — and that the woman’s son would crush the head of the serpent (see Gen 3:14-15). Throughout the history of God’s people, we see God making covenants and raising up patriarchs, judges, kings, and prophets to guide his people back to him. Sometimes the people listened. Sometimes they didn’t. But none of the rulers or prophets, and none of the covenants, could fully restore the people to God’s household — even if they could prepare the way for that homecoming. And so the people waited. They waited on God to make his move, for God to bridge the unbridgeable chasm between fallen humanity and the divinity to which we are called. They waited on God to move, and when he did, they missed it. In part, they missed it because nobody could have expected God to assume human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. Nobody expected him to bridge the chasm so personally. But, maybe they also missed it because they wanted to miss it. They didn’t want an incarnate God, one who would come so close. John’s Gospel captures this: “He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him” (Jn 1:11). There was no room for him in the inn. 

But, are we just talking about those people back then? Are we just talking about the inhabitants of Bethlehem at the time of Christ? Certainly not. So, the question inevitably arises for each of us: if Mary and Joseph knocked on my door, would I let them in? Is there room for them? Back in his 2012 Christmas homily, Pope Benedict XVI elaborated on this: 

Do we really have room for God when he seeks to enter under our roof? Do we have time and space for him? Do we not actually turn away God himself? We begin to do so when we have no time for God. The faster we can move, the more efficient our time-saving appliances become, the less time we have. And God? The question of God never seems urgent. Our time is already completely full. But matters go deeper still. Does God actually have a place in our thinking? Our process of thinking is structured in such a way that he simply ought not to exist…There is no room for him. Not even in our feelings and desires is there any room for him. We want ourselves. We want what we can seize hold of, we want happiness that is within our reach, we want our plans and purposes to succeed. We are so “full” of ourselves that there is no room left for God.

This is the harsh reality of the post-Christian time we’re living in. The Christian event is no longer a real concern for us — whether its meaning in world history or in the history of our lives. Instead, our concerns have to do with curating the next Instagram Reel or reeling in the remaining items on our Christmas lists. Our concerns have to do with how to get more done in a day, make ends meet, or figure out how to get what we want. Or, maybe we’re simply distracted or forgetful; we don’t think much about God. All of this is a regurgitation of the same old, same old. God wants to do something and we don’t want it, or we don’t want it the way he’s offering it. So we push him away. We box him out. We try to solve our own problems through AI, politics, technology, dieting, medicine, self-help gurus, or science. We numb ourselves through chemicals or the new, chemical-free drug that puts all sorts of images in front of our eyes as our minds float into the ether under the cool glow of our bluelight screens.  

Despite all this, here it is, it’s Christmas again. Pope Benedict XVI reflects on the meaning of this: 

Again and again it astonishes us that God makes himself a child so that we may love him, so that we may dare to love him, and as a child trustingly lets himself be taken into our arms. It is as if God were saying: I know that my glory frightens you…so now I am coming to you as a child, so that you can accept me and love me.

Why? Why does God still come to us though we don’t seem to care most of the time? Why does he still come if it seems like we don’t really need him? Why does he come if we don’t want him? Why does he embrace the harsh reality of being born on the fringe of society, as a pariah? Why? 

Because he wants to. 

Because he wants to reveal to us the extent of his love, such that he will even be born outside the scope of our concern. In fact, he was even born into the sphere of our rejection of God, precisely to reveal the depths of his concern for us. 

Here, we start to see how the no-room-in-the-inn birth of the outcast child at Christmas foreshadows his death on the Cross. When his hour arrived, the people had definitively decided there was no room for him. Rejected, he was dispelled from the city and his body laid, not in the wood of a manger, but on the wood of a cross. When he died, his dead body was wrapped, not in swaddling clothes, but in burial clothes. Gifts befitting a king — gold, frankincense, and myrrh — befit the preparation of the King’s body for his funeral. The manger (literally a feeding trough) held the Word of God who is the Bread of Life outside of Bethlehem (which literally means “house of bread”). With the Last Supper and on the wood of the Cross, Jesus definitively gives us his Body to eat as the true Bread of Life. Even in what looks like our final rejection of him — God is dead and we have killed him — he still gives himself as a sign of the extent of his love that even reaches out to embrace the sinner. Thus the mysteries of Christmas and the Cross converge in the Eucharist, the Sacramental manner in which he still comes to us today. 

Who is waiting for whom? 

Advent is a season of waiting. To be sure, we are waiting for him. But, in all reality, I wonder if it’s not the case that he’s waiting for us. He’s waiting for each of us to invite him in. Or, maybe he’s waiting for us to come out of ourselves and our selfishness so as to see the gift he is giving us, which is nothing less than himself. In these remaining days of Advent, God is waiting for me and for you to open some space for him, to prepare him room. Will I? Will you?