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The scripture reading of the morning is from the Gospel according to Luke, the second chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered one. "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment when Quirinius was governor of Syria, and all

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went to be enrolled each to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee from the city of Nazareth to Judea to the city of David which is called Bethlehem because he was of the house and the lineage of David to be enrolled with Mary his betrothed who was with child. And while they were there the time came

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for her to be delivered and she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. I was conducting a retreat for 135 collegians at a campground north of here. On Saturday evening I had presented a message aimed at decision, calling them to confront Jesus Christ and to accept him as Lord and Savior. After that we

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were to have a question and answer period. Before the question and answers could begin, however, one student came up to me and said, "I've got to talk to you right away." Well I said, "There's to be a question and answer period now. I'll be happy to talk to you after that." "No, I've got to talk to you right now. It's urgent."

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Now I spent ten years ministering on a college campus and in that ten years I don't think I ever talked to any collegian about anything which they didn't describe as urgent. Everything was urgent. Well I said, "We have this question and answer period scheduled and as soon as it's done I'll be happy to meet with

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you." So we started and he went to the back of the room and he paced back and forth through all the question and answer time and looked at me pleadingly, imploring eyes, till finally I couldn't stand it anymore and I stopped the question and answer time. He came up and said, "We've got to go someplace else to

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talk." We went to a nearby cabin. I remember there were no chairs there so we sat on the floor. "Now what can I do for you?" I said. He replied, "I'm ready to give myself to Jesus to become his disciple." I said, "That's wonderful. Let's do that right now." And he confessed his sins and he made his act of repentance

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and he prayed for Christ to come into his heart and the Lord Jesus did. You could tell by the radiance and the tears and the hug. When that was over I said to him, "Why were you so urgent about this? Why couldn't you wait even for the question and answer period to be over?" And he replied, "Well I knew I was ready

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and I was scared that it would pass quickly. I didn't want to miss my chance. The moment for me was now and who knows if there would ever be another." That's a very good question. Who knows if there will ever be another? Many people you know miss the marvelous moments that come into their lives. The innkeeper, for

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example, has been discussed for more than 2,000 years and why? Because he missed his moment when it came. Now granted it was a very busy time in Bethlehem when this event occurred. His inn was like a hive at swarming time and it was evening at last and the customers and the animals were bedded down. And then there

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was that knocking at the gate, perhaps the hundredth time that day, and he went. But he didn't realize that what was going to happen at that gate was in very truth the most important thing that would happen to him in all of his life. You know time is best measured not by its duration but by its content. One can

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live more in an hour than in a week. Sometimes whole centuries are defined on the basis of what occurs in a single day. When a moment comes, we can exalt that moment or debase that moment by what we do with it. And a lot is won or lost on the basis of our taking the moment when it is ours. So he went to the gate and I

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imagine since the inn was full he was hoping that it would be some arrogant Roman so that he could say to him, "Sorry, I have no room for you." Or maybe he was hoping it would be some quizzling tax collector so that he could say to that one, "I'll never have room in my inn for somebody like you." But when he got there

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there were just the two of them with no baggage. Now there's no evidence that he was heartless in what he said to them. As a matter of fact, I'm convinced that across the years preachers have been much too hard on this innkeeper. His inn was full and so he did the only thing he could do. He sent them away. Now forget

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about the legend. I know the legend goes that because there was no room in the inn he took them and put him in his stable. But you see in the first century an inn was little more than a stable. It was simply a square yard in which the animals were bedded down and little cells about the outside where those who

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owned the animals would be staying. An inn was little more than a stable then and when the innkeeper said there was no room that's exactly what he meant. There is no testimony in Scripture to his taking them to some other place. And so they turned and they left and maybe it was just a hundred yards away that the

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miracle of Bethlehem occurred. But wherever the innkeeper had missed his moment because he didn't know. Now of course we do know. We know who those people are who come knocking at the gate. Yet there are still many people in our own time who are quick to say sorry no vacancy. Some say it because their lives

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are simply too loaded. They're caught up with commerce and convention and custom. They're interested in people and in profits. It's not that they're hostile. It's not that they're violently opposed to the things of faith. These people are not blasphemous when it comes to the things of God. It's just that they have

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some things in their lives which they consider to be of greater importance. We see this writ so large at a time of year like this. You know back in the year 1247 they established a hospital in London called St. Mary of Bethlehem. 200 years later in 1647 that hospital was made into an institution for the insane. And

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at that time they changed its name from Bethlehem to Bedlam. Well there are a lot of people today who turned Bethlehem into Bedlam. That's quite a contrast to the way in Jesus entered this world. You remember how the carol goes, "How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given." But these people crowd their

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days with the cards and the tinsel and the smoky office parties and they have no room. Now the innkeeper didn't know. These people do know but they're all living in the thick of very thin things. They have even at this time of the year very little time for prayer or meditation. It never enters into them to

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do let alone to follow through and then to act upon the thought some generous gift to the extension of God's kingdom. They forget about sending in their pledge card. They put aside once more that question of should we join the church, that same question they've been thinking about for four or five years

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previously. They know who this is who comes knocking but their lives are just too busy with other things. Other people say no vacancy because, well to them the obligation of having Christ in the heart is too onerous. You see when Christ does enter in, he expects some changes to be made. His is a disturbing presence and

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this is the kind of person who just doesn't want to be disturbed. You remember in Dickens' Christmas Carol, the first person who visits Scrooge is the ghost of Jacob Marley, his business partner who had died seven years before. And Marley is sent ahead to break up the stony soil of Scrooge's heart. And you

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remember he appears with all kinds of chains and locks upon him and Scrooge asks him about this and he says, "I forged these chains myself. Every link, every yard, I girded myself with them all of my own free will." Well you see when Christ enters into a heart, he wants some chains broken. He wants those things to bind us

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to the ugly and the selfish and the altogether unworthy of him. He wants those things to be broken, to be snapped, to be thrown away. He brings a new kind of freedom but it's a painful freedom to achieve. Scrooge says to Marley, "But you were a very good businessman." And Marley replies, "My business was mankind. My

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business was the common welfare. My business was charity and mercy and benevolence." But you see a lot of people don't want to hear that kind of thing. And so when Jesus comes knocking, they say, "No room." And remember, unlike the innkeeper, they know who he is. And then there are some who won't open the

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door because they know the response of Jesus in their lives is going to be too revolutionary. Do you remember that story by Bret Hart called "The Luck of Roaring Camp"? Roaring Camp was a mining town and a very rough and tough one. And in the whole town there were all men and one woman. Her name was Cherokee Sal. And she

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has a baby and then she dies. So here are all these men with this little baby. And the baby is in a crude wooden box. And the men decide that such a beautiful little girl should not be in such a box. So they send one of their number off to Sacramento to buy her a crib. And he comes back with a beautiful rosewood

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crib. And they put her in the crib. And they notice that the rag she is wearing don't look at all appropriate for that crib. So they send another of their number away to come back with some lacy and frilly clothes. And he comes back as quickly as he can make the journey and they put the child in those clothes in

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the crib. And then looking down at it, one of the men says, "Do you ever notice how dirty this floor is?" So they got down on their hands and knees and they scrubbed the floor. And of course when they'd finished the floor, that just made the walls and the ceiling look worse. So they cleaned those and whitewashed them too.

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And of course the holes in the windows had to be patched and there had to be curtains there. And because the little child needed time to sleep, it was necessary for the men to restrain themselves and not be so noisy and so raucous all the time. And periodically they would take the little child out for

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what they called an airing. And of course they couldn't have the mines look as ugly as they had, so they cleaned up the area about the mine openings and they planted flowers there. And they also refrained from using the rough speech, the kind of language which had been there, because it wasn't appropriate for

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youngsters' ears. Roaring Camp was transformed because of the coming of this little baby, which is of course an allegory of Christmas. It's at this season when Jesus comes knocking to enter in. But when he enters in, he changes lives. He seeks repentance. He seeks reversal. We can fool ourselves

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some of the time, and we can fool other people a lot of the time, but we cannot fool him for even a moment. He comes with the searchlight of his purity into our experience, and he's ready to work the same miracles in a heart that he worked in Bethlehem and in the other lands about it so long ago. He is ready to take

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blindness away and give sensitivity and sight. He is ready to make mute lips sing a song of praise. He is ready to take deafness away so that the cries of the need of the world can be heard. He is ready to take away all the leprosy of sin and to take death and to transform it so that it begins to tremble into

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life. He is ready and willing and wants to do these things, but a lot of people don't want these things done, and so they say, "No room." Now the innkeeper had some excuse. I mean, were inns to welcome stragglers all the way from Dan to Beersheba? And he didn't have the time to go looking out of the window to see any

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star, and if angels sang out on the hillsides, well, the sound of their voices would have never penetrated the cacophony of a first century inn. He didn't know, but we today do. We often say, "What you don't know can hurt you," and that's true, because ignorance can lead to pain, to great suffering, and to death

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itself. But today we notice the reversal of that. What you do know can hurt you. We are left, you see, without any excuse. We cannot plead other priorities. We cannot plead adequately that we seek other freedoms. It is folly for us to simply be indifferent to him. That's the unkindest cut of all, you know, to be indifferent, to

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say about Christmas, not "Baw humbug," but "Ho hum." There are those, you know, who try to simply ignore him. When he was amongst us in person, there were some who betrayed him, there were some who scourged him, there were some who crucified him and did him to death. Either one of these, all of

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these together, were at least reacting to him. There was some notice and some response, but to ignore him, to pay no attention to him whatever. When he enters into a heart, we're told that choirs of angels break into singing. If you even just come out onto the threshold of your soul and stand there and argue with him,

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in that there's some kind of attention. But not to care at all. Love, of course, permits that. The love of God, the purest of all loves, comes in a way that's very easy to reject. Why, we can crush the skull of a little child like it was an egg, or we can nail him to a cross if we get tired of him. When God comes to

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us in the person of some hungry man, we can very easily turn away. When God comes to us in the person of lonely women, we can ignore them as if they were not there. It is interesting, isn't it, how every way that he chooses to come to us, we are always free to simply turn our backs and look another direction. He

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never forces himself upon us. I read in the newspapers last year at this time, it was from a New England paper, that someone had stolen the statue of the baby Jesus from the town manger scene, and they'd left in its place a note which read, "The baby Jesus will be returned for five cases of beer." Well, for

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some people, it's five cases of beer. For other people, they prefer bedlam. For other people, they prefer the chains which they have bound about themselves. For others, it is the impurity which they've come to love, even as they wallow in it. For others, it is ho-hum, just a cruel indifference. But for all, it's no

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room. And mind you, they know to whom they're saying it. So now, this morning, we come to this table. And it is not spread with champagne and caviar, because this is not an act of victory. We're not coming here because of some dazzling performance on our behalf. We're coming here for what our fathers in the faith

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called "the medicine of immortality." We come here as patients who need to be healed. We have not earned the right to come to this table. We come here as hungry persons who want to be fed. We come here as those who are in profound need. There are some, you see, in this room who have never let Christ Jesus in. No

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vacancy. There are others in this room who have let him in, but who keep secret and silent chambers. They hope aside places they do not want him to see. We know what is right, and yet we do what is wrong. And who will deliver us from this body of death? The Scriptures say, "Christ Jesus, behold, he stands at the door and

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knocks. If anyone open to him, he will come in, and he will be received, and he will sup with those who receive him." The problem is, you see, if we have no room for him, then in the end he will have no room for us. Which brings me to Wally Perling. Wally Perling is nine years old, and he lives in Georgia, not far from

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Atlanta. He's a bit handicapped. He's not as quick as the other youngsters. Oh, they love him because he's known for his gentleness and his love. Everybody likes Wally Perling, but he can't quite keep up with the other students. The big event in the town every year is the Christmas pageant. So last year, everyone looking

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forward to it as always, Wally Perling was anxious to be one of the shepherds. But in the particular setting of the pageant they were doing that year, the shepherds had much to say, and Wally couldn't remember lines very well. So they made him the innkeeper instead. He had only a few lines, and he practiced

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them again and again, and the teacher said, "Now Wally, when you say your lines, be very stern and tough and strong," and he practiced that. So it came to the night of the pageant, and the moment came when Joseph and Mary stood at the door to the inn, and they knocked. And Wally came out walking as tough as he knew how, and he

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said, "What do you want?" "We're seeking some place to stay." "You must seek it elsewhere. There is no room in the inn." "But sir, we have been to so many other places. Isn't there at least a spot? There is no room in my inn for you." And he was being as tough and as strong as he knew how. "But," Joseph said, "my beloved Mary,

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is very much with child, and she thus needs a place to rest a while." And Wally looked at Mary, and there was one of those long pauses like sometimes happen in children's Christmas pageants, and a voice was heard offstage saying, "Wally, no, be gone. No, be gone." And so he got a frown on his face, and he said, "No, be

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gone." And they turned, and they started to walk away, and everyone was watching them go, so involved in watching them that they didn't see Wally. Wally had begun to weep, and he cried out, "Don't go, Joseph. Don't go. Bring Mary back. You can have my room for the baby."

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And a little child shall lead them. Let us pray. Oh God, forgive us for Bedlam. Draw us instead to Bethlehem. Open us up, even when we don't want to be opened. Pry us loose from all the things we've forged to bind ourselves. Take over where there is no vacancy, and change us, and

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revolutionize us, and obligate us, and do to and for us whatever needs to be done so that Christ might be in us, and that we might be in him for Christmas, for New Years, and for always. We pray it in his name, amen.

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