Mary & Joseph from Alabama

Two people came to the church this afternoon. Michelle and Andrew. They were looking for help with gas, to get them back home to Alabama. Or maybe some help having a new tire put on their truck. Another church they stopped at had purchased the tire for them. This seemed to be the way they were hoping to get home. Moving from one church to another.

They had moved in the spring from Alabama to Maine. They didn’t offer a reason and I didn’t ask. It’s New England, after all. Michelle thought it would be a good idea. But Andrew admitted that they hadn’t really thought it out too much. She had cancer. The move hadn’t worked out to well. He hadn’t prepared really well. He repeated that twice, more for his own benefit than for mine, perhaps.

Andrew kept talking about how cold it was in Maine. This was December, I said. And Connecticut. You should be here in January or February. He kept going back to the cold, two or three times; but by the second it was clear he wasn’t talking about the temperature. It was another kind of coldness that had him stuck; one that seemed to have crept into the world while he wasn’t looking.

And for the brief time we visited, in the Church Parlor, designed for brides in the old days when the wedding chapel was still in use. So I couldn’t help but think of Mary and Joseph at the Inn. Which was not really an inn, probably; at least not in the sense we think of it. But it doesn’t matter, of course. Inn or house or stable. It was cold. They were exhausted. She was pregnant; not really the same as cancer, but in those days childbirth carried pretty much the same risk.

And Andrew and Michelle were just beat up enough and worn out enough and wanting so much to be home, in the warmth of the Gulf Coast sun. And they hoped that someone could get them a little closer to the sun, to the warmth, to home.

And so I got them some gas. It was all over in 15 or 20 minutes.

And then they were gone. And almost the moment after they left, I thought, ‘you should have visited longer with them. Kept them there in the Parlor and listened a little more; offered them coffee, hot chocolate, something; given them a chance to sit and get warm before going out for the gas.’

But there was a phone call to make. A family with COVID. And a note to finish: thank you for your pledge this year, or worshipping with us this past Sunday. And emails. And this and that. So just get them some gas and wish them well on their journey home.

And send them on their way.

And then I thought about the Innkeeper. Not a biblical figure, of course; a necessary fiction to fill out the cast of the Pageant. And not the plumb role, either. Sometimes the shy child, the one comfortable enough to emerge briefly from behind the curtain, give a quick jerk of the thumb to indicate something out back before retreating quickly to safety.

Still, it was the Innkeeper who gave them a place to stay, Mary and Joseph, who wandered into Bethlehem from the provinces, weary and looking for a room, for warmth. Bethlehem, Bet Lehem in Aramaic, ‘House of Bread’, apparently; sparking some connection to hospitality. And it was the Innkeeper, in our minds and memory, who gives Jesus a place to be born. Even if it is with the animals.

So that’s something. Right?

But I wonder if he or she could’ve done more. If only he wasn’t so quick to retreat behind the curtain, so quick to get back to work, so quick to worry about distractions, then maybe he would’ve seen something behind the grime and exhaustion, something that transcended the presumed order of things, something that would have reminded him that there was something here for him as well, a reminder of what it meant to human without distraction. I wonder now, if at some point in the night or the next day, he or she stopped and thought, “I wonder what I missed.”

There was something there, after all, in the lament over the cold, something yearning and hopeful for welcome. Something that while grateful for the gas, for the passing kindness, was looking for something more. For something humans can be for one another. For warmth.