...right from the beginning

(Joseph)
God save you, Hostess, kindly! I pray you, house my wife,
Who bears beside me blindly the burden of her life.
(Hostess)
My guests are rich men's daughters and sons, I'd have you know!
Seek out the poorer quarters where ragged people go.
---15th cent French, tr. Eleanor Farjeon

This extra-Biblical, but traditional exchange between Joseph and the innkeeper has captivated writers of
Nativity plays from medieval times right up until this week's kindergarten Sunday School presentations. We somehow turn a single line of Scripture --- "because there was no room for them in the inn" --- into a brusque brush-off by an over-worked Holiday Inn owner in a town packed to the gills with travelers on government business. But nowhere in the Bible will we find an innkeeper, or the even better caricature, an innkeeper's wife.

The feeling I do have from reading the spare Nativity accounts we are left in two Gospels is that nothing is there by accident or general neglect. And so I believe that, from the start, the point is made purposefully by the Gospel writers that this Jesus, even in infancy, was no regular royal, no privileged prince. From the beginning, Jesus' place was in the 'poorer quarters'. From the beginning, Jesus' people were the 'ragged'. The living of Jesus' life confirmed the beginning of it.

If we ever wonder where our place is, as Jesus' people, we should seek out the places Jesus stayed. If we ever wonder with whom we should stand, as Jesus' people, we should seek out the people beside whom Jesus stood.

Right from the beginning.

No King, But a Prince

His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor...

Prince of Peace.

When my son Sam was a child, he asked me a question during the Christmas season: "Why is Jesus called Prince of Peace? Who is the King of Peace?" I was stopped short in my tracks. Having grown up in choirs, singing 'For Unto Us a Son Is Born' from Handel's Messiah, I had never given a second thought to the moniker 'Prince of Peace.' But, Sam is right --- why not a king? I have since reflected on this (after, I'm sure, stumbling on my initial response), and feel some stirrings of what might be understanding.

In my mind's eye, a king, regal and powerful, rules (either well or poorly) over subjects. A king would use power to rule. A king speaks, and it is so. A king is indisputably the most important being in any room, sphere, or realm. A king is "the man", no ifs, and or buts.

A prince? Well now, a prince is a different sort of ruler altogether. The prince must win the hearts of the people, must take a place in the hierarchy as one without absolute power. The prince might lead with gentleness, with good humor. 

A Prince? A Prince might just wage not war, but peace. The image is of an incomprehensible reign of peace, maybe even the peace that passes understanding.

Prince of Peace.