(Sing) ‘Welcome everybody, it’s good to see you here.’ Let me say I hope you feel a warm welcome this morning. It is very true today that it’s good to see you here. I wonder if you’ve welcomed anyone recently? Perhaps someone to your home to visit in the last few days, perhaps someone new at work or at school in the last few months, perhaps you have welcomed someone to Belle Vue, perhaps even this morning. I wonder what you said and what you did to make the person feel welcome.
The word welcome means ‘desired guest’? It’s made up of two Old English words — wella meaning desire and cuma meaning guest. I’m talking about welcome because I want to suggest that it is a good way to look at the Christmas story. At the heart of this story is welcome.
At the beginning of the Nativity story, there is the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary. Gabriel brings news of great joy — of blessing, salvation, of conception. The news though is dependent upon Mary’s welcome: is the son announced, one that she can welcome as a desired guest? It is not altogether clear that the angel’s words are welcome ones. She is young, betrothed, but not yet married, she is a virgin. To accept the angel’s words will have consequences and quite possibly dangerous ones. There is also no sign that Mary is longing for a child, at least at this moment, there is no sign that Mary is ready for a child, if one can ever be ready. And yet Mary determines to be one who welcomes, who welcomes God into her very life, to give her body over as a host of the divine, and carry God within her womb. (Sing) How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given, and welcomed. Mary’s welcome is joined with her relative’s Elizabeth’s welcome: Blessed are you, she says to Mary and blessed is your child. This child Mary carries is a desired guest.
Every year Bethlehem gets bad report. We create a story of innkeepers saying there is no room. We create a story of unwelcome. ‘Because there was no room for them in the inn’ is the way these words have often been translated, but the better wording is ‘because there was no room for them in the guest room.’ Joseph and Mary were travelling to Bethlehem because Joseph was from the house of David, He was returning to family — how often would Joseph have travelled to Bethlehem, whenever he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem? There was no room in the family guest room, because Joseph wasn’t the only one coming to Bethlehem. The whole of Bethlehem was 'surg[ing] with the influx of relatives coming to register, and every corner of every house hosted someone.' The whole town worked to make room for everyone. Luke describes a full house — all the rooms have someone staying in them and the only space left by the time Mary and Joseph arrive is the open stall area among the livestock, where a manger stood. The house was 'bursting at the seams', but Joseph and Mary would have been there for meals around the table, part of the family, welcomed as desired guests. When Mary’s labour began, she would not have been alone, but the other women in the home would have been on hands to help, to be with her as she welcomed her child into the world.* The arrival of Jesus, is welcomed by Mary, by Joseph, by those they were staying with, by all of Bethlehem in the form of shepherds, by all of heaven in the form of angels. Jesus is the desired guest who arrives. He is welcomed as a royal guest, He is welcomed as a promised saviour.
We have explored how Jesus was welcomed, but I want to step back and turn the welcome around, for Christmas is not first how we welcome God, but instead it is the story of God’s welcome of us. God taking human flesh, God being born a baby is the desire of God to welcome us, to see us as a desired guest in creation, in heaven and earth, in the life of God. What we celebrate at Christmas is God reaching out to welcome us. We live in God’s world, we live in God’s story, and the gift of Christmas, the incarnation of Jesus, is to announce God’s welcome: Jesus is God’s welcome in flesh and blood.
Christmas is a lesson in welcome: may we learn from Mary and Bethlehem what it means to welcome God and to welcome one another into our lives. But its more than a lesson it a message to broadcast everywhere: that God welcomes us, welcome is part of the very nature of God and God calls, summons, invites, longs, for us to welcome him. ‘Come and let me be born in you’, Jesus says to each one of you. ‘Come and let me be born among you’, Jesus says to this community.
(Sing) O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin, and enter in; be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Immanuel.
* This section has borrowed from Kelly Nikondeha, The First Advent in Palestine (Broadleaf, 2022), 83-85.
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