Anybody here old enough to remember the decade of the 60s? It was the decade of protests and demonstrations. Let me tell you about one very unusual demonstration that took place in the mid-sixties. It happened in December of 1965.

It was Christmas Eve in 1965 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The innkeeper at the local Holiday Inn had had a busy day. It was late now… and he was at the main desk alone. Although the inn was filled up with Christmas travelers, he had graciously sent most of the workers home to be with their families for Christmas Eve... and the lobby was relatively quiet now.

But then as he was finishing up some paper work at the front desk, he suddenly heard a noise, and he looked up. He couldn’t believe his eyes! Walking in the main door of the Holiday Inn on this Christmas Eve in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was a young man dressed in a Biblical costume. Actually it was an old tattered bathrobe. The young man was pulling a donkey. On the donkey was a young woman who looked to be quite expectant. As they approached the desk, the young man announced loudly for all to hear, "My name is Joseph... and this is Mary... and as you can see, she is about to have a baby. We need a room for the night."

Now, before telling you the rest of the story... let me digress to share with you what was really happening that Christmas Eve in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1965. The young man’s name was not Joseph and the young woman was not really named Mary... and she was not really expecting a baby. This true incident was designed to be a kind of "political demonstration" against the commercialization of Christmas.

Since there had been a "No Vacancy" sign up for several hours, this modern-day Mary and Joseph fully expected to be turned away. In fact, they wanted to be turned away. They were certain that they would be told there was "no room in the inn" for them. Then their plan was to go to the media with the story of their rejection.

But the innkeeper dealt the demonstrators a big surprise that night. Warmly, the innkeeper rushed around the desk, and he welcomed them graciously. "Mary and Joseph, how great it is to have you with us! You honor us by coming here tonight. What a privilege to have you under our roof! It’s true that all our regular rooms are taken, but we would be so pleased if you would occupy the bridal suite... and of course, since it’s Christmas Eve, there will be no charge. You will be our special guests of honor!"

Now, that’s what you call "rising to the occasion." That innkeeper proved to be very wise, didn’t he? He knew the Christmas story, and he had something of the spirit of Christmas within him. He was also very shrewd because he knew how harshly history can deal with an unsuspecting innkeeper.

Now, that creative innkeeper in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has haunted me ever since I first read that story some months ago. He jolted my conscience and made me look in a fresh, new way at the innkeeper in the original Christmas story. He smashed the windowpanes on my stereotyped image of the innkeeper and let new winds blow into my mind. He enabled me to see the innkeeper from a different perspective, and sent me scrambling for my Bible and my commentaries, my dictionaries and resource books in search of a new understanding of this original innkeeper who has become such a prominent figure in our Christmas pageants. When we look at him with an open mind important and universal truths about life stand up and stare us in the face, significant lessons leap out at us. Here are discovered some helpful lessons we can learn from an innkeeper.

I. FIRST, THERE IS A LESSON HERE ABOUT PREJUDICE

...about the danger of judging people and events without all the facts, the danger of letting our imaginations run wild.

When we judge other people or assess events without the whole truth the results can be destructive, dangerous, damaging, and unfair. You see, I rather suspect that we have treated the innkeeper unfairly. History has dealt with him harshly. We have sternly painted him up and written him off as a bad character, when the truth is we know virtually nothing about him.

How fascinated we have been with this innkeeper. He has captured the imagination of pets and playwrights, preachers and songwriters, artists and storytellers. We have pictured him as a harsh, irritable, insensitive character, who was too caught up in his own self-centered world to be bothered by the problems of others, too cold and calculating to be bothered even by a young couple who were obviously expecting a baby at any moment.

We picture him with a loud booming voice, arrogant, impatient, and with big burly arms pushing the young couple out into the cold streets. "Get out! We’re full up! No room here. I can’t be bothered with you and your problems. I have problems enough of my own."

It is fascinating how we have pictured him so vividly. In fact, it’s rather amazing, because... do you know what? He is not even mentioned in the Biblical accounts of the Christmas story. All of these negative, demeaning characteristics have been gathered around and attached to the innkeeper because of an implication in one portion of one verse of scripture in Luke’s gospel "No room in the inn."

Luke 2:7 – "And Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn."

That’s all it says – "no room in the inn" and out of those five words we have over the years performed a character assassination on an innkeeper, on a man, on a person, on a child of God we know nothing about.

Now, there’s a sermon there somewhere, a valuable lesson we all need to learn and I think it is this: It is dangerous and destructive to judge people and events when we don’t really know the situation or circumstances or facts. It is dangerous to let our imaginations run wild. When we judge others without the whole truth we can cause a lot of confusion and heartache. Let me illustrate that further.

Remember the time two men met on the street. One said to the other, "Hey, I know you. You’re the man from the state of Maine who made $1,000,000 in growing potatoes." "Yes, but your facts are a little distorted. It wasn’t Maine, it was Georgia; it wasn’t potatoes, it was cotton; it wasn’t made $1,000,000, it was lost $1,000,000, and it wasn’t me, it was my brother! Other than that, you got it just right." We can get confused and we can get our facts mixed up.

The London Daily Telegraph a few years ago carried a letter sent by an eleven-year-old boy to his mother while he was on vacation in Switzerland. Here’s what he wrote:

"Dear Mom,

Yesterday the instructor took 8 of us to the slopes to teach us to ski. I was not very good at it, so I broke a leg. Thank goodness, it wasn’t mine!

Love, Billy"

What in the world does that mean? From that information, we are not sure what happened on the ski slopes of Switzerland or how to assess it. That is an oft-repeated dimension of life. It is dangerous to judge when the facts are confused or before the facts are in.

Well, that’s the first lesson I put down from my new look at the innkeeper: the danger of prejudice. It’s destructive and hurtful to judge people, or to look down our noses at them, when we don’t have all the facts and when we don’t know the whole truth. So, we need to beware of prejudice.

II. LESSON #2 IS: A LESSON ABOUT CHOICES.

So often our choices are not so much between right and wrong, or good and bad, as between the lesser of two bad things. The innkeeper really didn’t have a good choice that night. Remember the setting. The sleepy little town of Bethlehem was suddenly packed with people. Caesar had sent out the order for a new enrollment of the people for tax purposes. Everyone had to return to his or her hometown for the census. Bethlehem was bursting at the seams with people.

In those days hotels operated on a first come-first served basis, and every available room was taken. When Joseph and Mary came to his door that night, the innkeeper had to make a decision. Would he send away those already settled in to make room for the latecomers? It was not an easy choice to make. What would you have done if you had been in his place?

William Barclay suggests that the innkeeper may have been the only friend Mary and Joseph had that night in Bethlehem. Tradition suggests that he sent them to a cave near the inn to spend the night. There were some good reasons for that decision. Hotels in those days were hardly luxury editions. Most of them were two-story buildings. The upper floor was used for the guests, with not much privacy, and the first floor was set aside for the animals upon which the people traveled. Hotels back then were cold, smelly places; and that night they were crowded and noisy, hardly a place for the birth of a baby.

But Bethlehem afforded another possibility. Built on a ridge of limestone, the town had numerous caves. Some of these caves were used as stables. They were not much better for an expectant mother, but at least there was warmth and quiet and some privacy. If this is what happened on that night long ago, then our whole image of the innkeeper changes dramatically – we view him not with contempt, but with kindness. He may well have made a wise, loving choice.

Just a quick footnote here: The real key in whatever we choose and in whatever we do is in our attitude. Jesus talked about that a lot… the importance of attitudes and motivations. He was supremely interested in that – our inner attitudes and motives. Think about the innkeeper. If, on the one hand, he said to Mary and Joseph, "Get out of here. I’m full up. I don’t have time to be bothered with the likes of you," then that’s one thing. But, on the other hand, if he said to Mary and Joseph, "Look, my friends, all my spaces here in the hotel are taken, but I know a place" Then that’s a different story and the difference is in the attitude.

So, we prayerfully make the best choices we know based on the best information we have, with a Christian attitude, and then go forward trusting God to bring it out right. This brings us to lesson number three.

III. LESSON III IS A LESSON ABOUT GOD.

The innkeeper story underscores one of the greatest truths and promises of the scriptures and our faith, namely that God can turn defeats into victories. He can take bad things and redeem them and make the good.

You see, there were other hands at work that night in Bethlehem. God took the innkeeper’s decision and let his son Jesus be born in a stable. He then took the stable and hallowed it so that it has become one of the most important and beautiful symbols in all the world. The lowliness of Christ’s birth became an asset in the hands of God, and not a liability. God takes our actions and judgments and redeems them and makes good come from them. A little more than 30 years later, He did the same thing again with a cross.

God has a way of doing that. Dick Van Dyke tells about a child who was called away from watching the 6:00 news on television to say the blessing at the evening meal. The child, with his mind still on the calamities of the newscast, said the grace and then added a personal note. "Dear God, please take care of Mommy and Daddy and my little sister and Gramma and all the people in the world and please God, take good care of yourself because if anything happens to you, we are all sunk."

There is something of my own faith in that prayer. I realize that I have neither the wisdom nor the intelligence to always make the right decisions. Sometimes my guesses may be good; at other times, too many times, they are wrong. But, you know, I’m glad God has not left us alone. He is with us in this. So, in spite of our blunders and mistakes and poor judgments and tough choices and clay feet, God carries on His work. He works through us and sometimes despite our weaknesses. That’s the good news of Christmas – God is with us and He is working for us.