"No Place for Them"
- Dr. Todd R. Wright
- Dec 24
- 4 min read
No place? For a baby? We bristle at the thought. How could there be no place?
Isaiah 9:2-7 and Luke 2:1-14
December 24, 2025
Dr. Todd R. Wright
Luke’s version of the birth narrative contains one of the most heartbreaking phrases in scripture. He reports that when Mary gave birth to her firstborn son, she “laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
No place? For a baby?
We bristle at the thought. How could there be no place?
Oh, we heard Luke when he told us that Caesar had called for all the world to be registered. And that this required that people return to their hometowns to be counted. And that this meant Joseph had to go to Bethlehem (with poor pregnant Mary in tow).
What we missed was the full extent of the upheaval: little Bethlehem inundated with a flood of folks descended from David’s children – with 19 named sons and one daughter, the number of his descendants would have added up quickly!
Ordinarily, the couple would have been taken in by family. But there is only so much space in a town scholars estimate to have had a population of between 300 – 500 people at the time.
Still, no place? Really?
Well, actually, it says “no place for them in the inn.”
Traveling in the early 70s, I can remember our family pulling into a motel parking lot after many miles, only to discover a big neon no vacancy sign! That’s not what is going on here.
Scholars say that “the Greek word translated as ‘inn’ (kataluma) is better translated as ‘upper room,’ as it is [later in Luke] where Jesus and his disciples celebrated the Last Supper.”[1]
If Luke had meant a place of public lodging, he could have used a different “Greek word – pandocheion, as he did in the story of the Good Samaritan, which even has an innkeeper (pandocheus),” but he didn’t.
So, scholars conclude, “The archaeological and textual evidence suggests that Mary and Joseph were not stuffed in a barn out behind the local Motel 6 but rather occupied the manger room on the ground floor of a relative’s house because the upper room was already occupied [by some other traveling relatives who got there first].”
The point is – there was some room for them because people made room for them.
If that involved everyone shifting and squeezing, so be it – that’s what you do for family!
Still, that mistranslation has done its work, leaving generations of listeners hot and bothered on the holy family’s behalf.
We reinforce it with every children’s pageant that casts some unlucky child as the stern inn keeper with only one line: no room!
Preachers and teachers use it to elicit sympathy. Hymnwriters, too:
A J Skilton’s begins his hymn, “No Room in the Inn”[2] with these words:
“No beautiful chamber, no soft cradle bed,
No place but a manger, nowhere for His head;
No praises of gladness, no thought of their sin,
No glory but sadness, no room in the inn.
Skilton then drives his point home with the refrain :
“No room, no room, for Jesus, O give Him welcome free,
Lest you should hear at Heaven’s gate, ‘There is no room for thee.’" Wow!
So what are we to do with this phrase, “no place for them” knowing what we know?
We could ignore the translation issues and blame the inn keeper for being hard-hearted or Caesar for his heartless tax policies. There is a certain satisfaction to pointing the finger of blame.
Or we can resolve to learn from this story and make room for those in similar situations.
For instance, years ago Bonnie Waggy led the charge to make sure there was room at Capital High for young students who were pregnant.
More recently, this congregation made room in our fellowship hall for Pay it Forward, to distribute blankets or household goods or kids’ toys to folks in need. It’s a tradition now!
In the last couple years we have gathered items for Bream Presbyterian’s SHOP ministry. They have made room in their buildings for the homeless to receive food and clothes, as well as access to showers and laundry, addiction counseling and medical treatment.
And this past October, on World Communion Sunday, we heard from Nastya and Yarik, two students from Ukraine. Sandy and Bob were willing to make room for them, making them feel welcome and helping them improve their English.
That is just a sampling … and a reminder that, as one preacher puts it, “Jesus will be born this Christmas to those for whom the world has no room, to those who have been forced to journey far from home, for those who are afraid of what is coming next and carry heavy burdens.”[3]
How will you make room for them this Christmas? Amen
[1] Here and following from https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2021/12/10/o-little-town-of-bethlehem-2/
[3] From Jill Duffield’s reflections on the text for the Presbyterian Outlook, 12/21/16
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