No Room in the Inn – A Brief Reflection

A few years ago, this icon by Kelly Latimer caught my eye and my heart and we bought it. It hangs in our study where we can remember the truth of this holy season.

One Christmas Eve (approximately the year 2000) in Las Vegas where I was stationed with the Air Force my family and I attended a service at one of the local Presbyterian Churches (USA) congregations. Before the beginning of worship a man came into the sanctuary and went up and laid down by the Nativity. He lived on the streets and evidently didn’t “fit in” with the congregation (he would have been welcomed by the members and the pastor of Central Presbyterian in Mobile, AL where we worship and serve the unhoused community and others in need today). Anyhow, back to the Las Vegas church… an usher went up to the front of the sanctuary where the man was and escorted him out of the church. I looked at my wife and son and said, we’re leaving, how could we worship in a sanctuary where Jesus wouldn’t have been welcomed?

Sadly, in 2025 the act of kicking Jesus out of the sanctuary is even more relevant. I see his face in the faces of the victims of the immoral actions of this administration. According to some who claim to follow Jesus, these actions are sanctioned and supported.

So once again, as I did last Christmas, I share Merton’s piece as both a reminder and a warning.

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited.  But because he cannot be at home in it — because he is out of place in it, and yet must be in it — his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected because they are regarded as weak; and with those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, and are tortured, exterminated.  With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.  He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst. — Raids On the Unspeakable, p. 72-73 and A Thomas Merton Reader, p. 365

Who will you welcome to the Lord’s table? In whose eyes will you see Jesus? Are we, dear reader, willing to do the work of Jesus and the prophet Micah? He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)