What is in Kelvin's Head?

Always the Inkeeper – a sermon for Christmas Day 2018

25/12/2018

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I, was always the innkeeper.

I’m not sure how many times I was in a nativity. Nor am I sure how it happened. But somehow, I was always the innkeeper.

And the innkeeper doesn’t get the best of lines.

“I’m sorry, there is no room at the inn”

Of course, there’s no actual innkeeper in the Bible. Just that line which says that Mary laid him in a manger because there was no room in the inn.

From the lack of room in the inn there is presumed to be an innkeeper.

And the innkeeper must therefore turn the holy couple away. Not for them the comforts of the inn.

But how to play the innkeeper – stern and uncompromising as he shakes his head at the holy couple. Or kind and compassionate finding them a corner round the back with the animals because you can’t just let a woman give birth on the street?

I’m not sure that my knowledge of theatre was all that developed in those days but there was still clearly a choice to be made.

If you’ve only got one line, you’ve got to make it count.

I never got to play the part of Joseph – concerned, compassionate, gentle and strong.

I never got to play a shepherd shivering on the hillside nor a king come from the East to worship the Christchild.

I never got to spit like a camel or baa like a sheep. Nor was I to ever become any of the whole host of angels who came to sing peace to God’s people on earth.

I always knew that I’d have made a fabulous Gabriel, all sparkles and glitter, even if the world was not at that time ready for me to play the Blessed Virgin Mary.

But it was never to be.

I was always the innkeeper.

Carrying my lamp (I always had a lamp) it was my solemn duty to tell Mary and Joseph that there was no room for them in the inn.

So far as I can tell the inns of Great Western Road, do not seem to come with adjacent stables these days. The memory of the cow byers in the West End where animals were stabled after being brought into town for market lingers in the name of Byers Road. But generally speaking, for most of us the idea of a stable is a bit foreign.

But it was to such a place that the innkeeper showed the holy family and in such a place as that, the Lord of heaven and earth first laid his head, all wrapped in swaddling bands.

Perhaps the modern equivalent is a garage around the back.

I wonder whether those of you who played a part in nativity scenes in your youth have found the character that you played has played out in your later life. Is there still an angel in you – announcing news whenever there’s great news to tell? Are you still searching like one of the Magi? Are you someone who still looks after the sheep.?

I find myself wondering whether constantly saying “There is no room at the inn” in my childhood Christmases somehow contributed to wanting to preside over a congregation which is trying to be open, inclusive and welcoming and trying to say, yes, there’s always room for more around the crib at Christmas and around the altar where God is alive to us the rest of the year too.

Maybe I am rebelling against my old Christmas script. No more will I proclaim no room at the inn. There’s room for everyone here.

It may be because it was my part to play that I’ve tended to think that the church has neglected the innkeeper somewhat. There’s no carols about the innkeeper. No icons of the innkeeper. No relics of the innkeeper to visit. No shrine.

Once he has delivered his line in the nativity play, the innkeeper fades away.

Well, he fades away from view but somehow we each get the chance to play his part and not just at Christmas. Whom will we welcome? Who precisely will we make room for.

For there must be room for the wandering and the lost. There must be food for the hungry. There must be shelter for the homeless. There must be refuge for the refugee.

And the vocation of all of us innkeepers is to work out how to welcome just one more.

And the Christmas story is at its weakest if we locate it only in Bethlehem and only in a time long, long ago.

Like all the best stories it comes to life when we find ourselves acting the parts of the characters not simply in childhood but when we can see and influence the same drama as it plays out in our lives.

The Christmas story is not simply that God came once and laid his head in straw and that was that.

The Christmas story is that Glasgow is the holy city in which God is born. The Christmas story is that people still discover that same God in the most unexpected ones. The true Christmas story is that there’s always room for one more beloved child.

And the true Christmas story is not that God loved the world so much 2000 years ago that he came and for the blinking of a lifetime was part of it.

It is that God loves the world so much because God loves you.

And that love doesn’t happen then or there, but here and now.

God loves you, here and now.

This place is Bethlehem. And unto us a child is born.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Amen.

62 responses to “You condemn it, Archbishop”

Rosemary Hannah

06/04/2014

I think the point could be made like this. We know that the Taliban dislike women and girls getting education. One of the reasons they say it scares them is the way some women behave in the West. They blame behaviours they do not like, promiscuity, public drunkenness, on women being educated.

I don’t agree. I do not think an education encourages one to be legless on a Friday night. But the fact is, that is how the Taliban see it, and they harm young women going to school. In fact, among others, they shot Malala Yousafzai.

Do you think that young women in our country should refrain from getting an education, so that the Taliban can see there is no link between Western excesses, and women being educated?

And if you do not think this, somebody tell me what the difference is?

Reply
Jimmy

07/04/2014

I’ve just listened to the radio phone in.
And I think what he said was an honest opinion that what the church in England does can have an effect on Christians around the world.
It is one of the reasons in his -no- box, but it is not a tenable reason.

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Fr Steve

07/04/2014

Well said Kelvin.
As for Peter Ould’s latter comment
“When you write stuff like this, all you’re arguing is that you don’t want to listen to other people’s experiences and stories.”
(please note that I am using quotation marks…and making this observation in parentheses!)
Then I think we have all seen who does and does not listen to ‘other people’s experiences and stories’. And it is not the Very Rev’d Dean of Glasgow!

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Richard

07/04/2014

Well said, Fr Steve. Following on the theme of not listening to others, JCF is absolutely right, of course.
It’s the absence of reason which leads to the not truly listening part of a discussion, however long the debate lasts. I sent a message over on Twitter yesterday to Mr O. asking him what he thought God thinks of bishops who wear mitres in church, covering the same point made by JCF. Still no reply.

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Kelvin Holdsworth

07/04/2014

Many thanks to all those commenting above.

No further comments about the nature of homosexuality and no further comments about the nature of Peter Ould, please. There are other, better places online for that.

And please, no further comments where one single bible verse is thrown about without context as though it proves a point. That applies to those lobbing them in any direction.

The topic is, what the Archbishop said on LBC and what the implications of that conversation are.

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Erika Baker

07/04/2014

If we’re talking about potential links I would also like to point out another possibility.
Lgbt people in Africa have told us that their churches have used the Archbishop’s stance in support for their own. “Look, even the Archbishop in a much more liberal church is not treating gay people as equals. He knows they’re morally inferior”.

Changing Attitude in Nigeria have begged the CoE for years to speak out clearly against homophobia and violence. They have been met with a deafening silence.

If my Nigerian friends are to be believed the terrible laws might not have been implemented if the CoE had been much firmer in condemning anti gay violence and legislation years and years ago, if it hadn’t tried to appease Archbishop Akinola by refusing to invite Gene Robinson to Lambeth etc. Instead, they have given him an air of respectability which he should never have had and which he used very cleverly at home to lay the foundations for the current situation.
Now it’s too late to do anything about it.

There is a very genuine possibility that appeasing violent behaviour will only ever result in more violence.

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Richard

07/04/2014

Absolutely, Erica. That’s what I was referring to earlier, about history having a tendency to repeats its errors. It will, however, be difficult to assess the extent of the negative impact of Justin Welby’s comments both here and abroad.

On the issue of ABC’s comments, in case you haven’t seen this, here is a link to a California bishop in which he draws out some of the negativity and errors of ABC’s comments as he sees parallels between colonialism in USA and UK.

http://t.co/FXUPB0CuX8

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Bernhard

07/04/2014

You are very generous with other people’s lives.

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1. Kelvin
  
  07/04/2014
  
  I stand against murder and violence. I stand against murder and violence meted our in places of conflict in Africa, in places where kids get killed for being gay, in places where people are killed for their faith. I encourage my congregation to pray for peace and work to eliminate violence.
  
  I also know what it is like to enter a church next to someone against whom recent credible death threats have been made.
  
  I value life very highly.
  
  Reply