Faith Works: Innkeepers on the road, in the story
If you are an innkeeper, a tavern owner, a manager of an establishment for rest and refreshment, you have to worry.
Is there room for all those who come seeking shelter? And will they pay?
You could think having too many customers would be a good problem, but the thing about turning people away is that they might be back your way again in the future, and you want them to think of you and your establishment. This is where you want them to turn aside, to rest their animals, to feed their bellies, to lay down their heads. At your place.
At Christmas time we hear about a couple turned away “because there was no room at the inn.” We can debate Koine Greek some other time on the details, but the point was somewhere they might have stayed, they couldn’t, and where they did go, this wasn't how it normally would have gone. Mangers, maybe a stable, certainly animals nearby, and we’ll trust Isaiah’s anticipation that an ox and donkey were in the neighborhood.
This feels like a sweet symmetry to me that from Luke’s nativity narrative to the stories of Christ’s resurrection we go from inn to inn, from temporary resting place to a table along the road. From Bethlehem’s birth to Emmaus and new birth, for Jesus and Clopas and someone else who could be anyone and whom Luke may well have intended to be us, sitting right there, unseeing until the breaking of the bread.
And in between, there’s another inn, unambiguously so stated in Luke 10, perhaps just a place in a parable by Jesus, but there had to be a resting place halfway from Jericho up to Jerusalem, a caravansary along the way too far for a single day’s journey by foot or even by camel. I’ve been there, thirty years ago, and I remember clearly the shock and delight of seeing an inn right where the story of the Good Samaritan would place it, and the sign on the door, indicating that Diner’s Club was indeed accepted. Perhaps that’s changed, but little else in two thousand years.
What happens at that inn? Someone who is hurting is helped; a traveler who may well have been a scamp or a rascal themselves is aided by a stranger, and not just a stranger, but an other, an alien, a Samaritan. Did the fellow fall among robbers by his own fault? We aren’t told. Did he deserve help? We most certainly are not told that. The point of the story, and that inn, is that someone in pain was cared for, and that the glory of God was shown in that care, given without regard for persons.
Is there a connection, then, between these three inns? In Bethlehem, where Mary and Joseph are not welcome; on the Jericho Road, where a stranger is cared for as a neighbor; at Emmaus, where in a place of public refreshment, God’s love is made known in a simple gesture of hospitality?
May your table be a place where those you love, and those whom God loves, will know Jesus, and his love which is alive and active this very day.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s met Jesus in the strangest places. Even in church! Tell him where you’ve seen Christ at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Faith Works: Innkeepers on the road, in the story
