Witnesses At the Manger Part I – The Innkeeper

 

Rev. Moira Finley

Trinity United Church of Christ and St. John’s United Church of Christ

28 November 2004

First Sunday of Advent

 

 

From the first moment I heard about it, I knew it was going to be trouble.  I was down at the carpenter’s shop discussing an order for new tables for our dining room when the messenger came in.  He said he’d come all the way from Rome bearing a message from the Emperor himself.  The carpenter and I stopped what we were doing and gave him all our attention.  But he took his time, that messenger.  He opened his sack so slowly and carefully took out a scroll.  Then he looked at the scroll for a long time, as if he’d never seen it before.  Minutes passed, it felt like hours.

 

The carpenter and I were beginning to get frustrated.  Whatever message was coming all the way from Rome, we wanted to hear it now, we didn’t want to wait for this man to go through all this ceremony.  Eventually, he managed to tell us.  The Emperor had ordered a census.  Everyone would be registered, accounting for their family members and their livestock, so that in the next year the taxes would be more properly calculated.  That wasn’t the worst of the message.  It said that everyone had to travel to their home town, to the town where their father’s, father’s father was from for the registration.

 

The carpenter and I just looked at each other.  We knew what that meant.  Bethlehem would be busy.  You see Bethlehem, that’s where we live, is the hometown of anyone who claims ancestry back to King David.  That meant, when the census started in a month’s time, the town would be full of travelers, people coming in from all over the empire to be registered.

 

In a way, it was a good thing.  I run one of the inns in town and all those travelers would certainly need a place to stay.  But it also meant that our town would be overrun with strangers, with people eating where we’re used to eating, filling the shops and stores, making it hard for us to go about our daily lives.  In the end, the carpenter and I knew that there wasn’t much we could do about it.  If the Emperor had ordered a census, no innkeeper from a little place like Bethlehem was going to stop it.

 

A month later, the new tables from the carpenter’s shop, freshly installed in the dining room the people started coming.  Some of them, mostly the rich ones, had sent letters ahead reserving a place in the inn.  Other folks just arrived and took their chances.  There are six inns in Bethlehem.  Every night we were all full, even the not so nice place way out on the other side of town.  People just seemed to be pouring into town, ready to be catalogued and counted.

 

My family and I hardly saw each other we were so busy.  When there weren’t guests who needed meals, we were cleaning out rooms and getting them ready for the next set of guests.  When that wasn’t happening we had the rest of our lives to take care of, animals to be fed, a barn to be cleaned, children to be taken to school, prayers to be said, roofs to be repaired.

 

It was a strange and busy month.  We met all sorts of people.  Rich folks from far away in Jerusalem who got to pray at the temple of our God every day.  Poor folks from out in the countryside who were doing really well if they could make put food on the table every day.  And a lot of people somewhere in the middle.  The whole month the skies were clear, which was surprising for that time of year.  It was kind of cold, but you could see for miles and miles around.  And the whole time there was this star, bright as the sun it seemed, shining over the town.  It was kind of a like a sign, directing people to Bethlehem, making sure that they knew where they were going.

 

Then, in the third week of the census, it all happened.  Late at night there was a knock at the door.  I went down with a heavy heart.  We didn’t have any more room and no one was leaving for several days.  There was a man and a woman standing there.  She was very pregnant, I wondered that they had traveled at all.  They looked tired, but there was also something different about them.  They had this curious sense of peace about them.  It was as if, even though they were far from home and in an unfamiliar place, they knew everything would work out.

 

He said his name was Joseph, and that this was his wife, Mary.  Then he asked for a room.  I had to turn them down.  There just wasn’t anywhere they could stay in our inn.  He was insistent.  He pointed out his wife’s belly, making sure I knew just how pregnant she was, just how close to delivering.  I apologized, but there wasn’t a space for them.  He tried a third time, just a little room, anywhere would do.  Again, I said that I didn’t have space, but then I had an idea.  It wasn’t wonderful and I certainly wouldn’t have suggested it if she hadn’t been expecting.

 

I had just that morning cleaned out the barn and put in fresh hay.  I said they could stay there.  It wasn’t much, but there was roof and it was safe and warm and dry.  I could see the disappointment in the man’s face.  He didn’t think much of my offer of the barn.  But that’s when she spoke for the first time.  She said that the barn would be perfect, that it would suit them just fine, and wouldn’t I please show it to them.  She spoke so sweetly, so gently, it took me a minute to understand what she had said.  But then I took them, and the donkey they had come with, around to the back of the inn.  I opened the door to the barn and showed them inside.

 

Mary looked around and smiled.  Joseph muttered under his breath, wondering if this would really do for the night.  But Mary, she looked at the barn, the animals, the hay and said that it was lovely.  I left them to settle in, but I stayed by the barn door to watch and to listen.  Joseph lifted the bags down from the donkey and Mary unpacked them.  Joseph asked her if she was feeling alright.  She said she was and that the time for the baby was near.

 

I didn’t realize just how close her time was.  A few hours later, after I’d gone back into the inn, I heard them in the barn and I rushed down to see what was happening.  Mary had given birth.  There she was, in the barn, with her newborn baby.  Joseph was sitting next to her.  They were looking down at the baby in Mary’s arms, smiling.  You’d never have known, to look at them, that they were in a barn.  They looked like they were sitting in the finest of the Emperor’s own palaces.

 

Mary wrapped the baby in cloth she had taken from one of their bags.  Then she put him in the manger, the same feed trough my horses usually ate from.  Then Joseph said the strangest thing.  He asked Mary if she thought that God’s promises were real, that this baby would be different, would change the world.  I didn’t think I’d heard him right.  God had made them promises about this baby?

 

I listened a little more closely.  Mary said she was sure that everything God had said would come true, that their son would deliver all people from sin, would help them know the love of God, and share that love with all the world.  Mary said, “we shall call him Jesus, and he shall be Emmanuel, God always with us.”  Joseph looked down at his newborn son and said, “here he is, be with him, protect him.”

 

I started crying.  I felt horribly embarrassed, guilty that I hadn’t been able or willing to find them a room inside the inn.  I knew, in my heart, this was a special child.  I had forced him to be born in the barn, right next to the cows and the horses and the sheep.  In my soul, I understood that this child had come from God to make all the promises of our ancestors, all the words of the prophets, real.  I was standing in the presence of the living God, and God was staring up from the manger, a helpless little baby.  God had done the unthinkable, had come to earth, had become human, had decided to live the way we live, to do the things we do, to eat and drink and sleep, to laugh and love and cry, to live and to die.  God had stepped down from heaven and become just like me.

 

I must have made some noise because I heard Mary’s voice say, “come in.”  So very slowly I opened the barn door and went inside.  Immediately I fell to my knees.  I couldn’t find the words to pray, I didn’t know what to do.  All I could think of saying was “thank you.”  So that’s what I said.  I said to God for coming to me, to blessing me with the opportunity to witness such an amazing event.  I said it to Joseph and Mary for seeing past my stubbornness and taking sanctuary in my barn.  I said it to the baby for coming into the world.

 

It was remarkable, kneeling there in front of the manger, surrounded by the dirt and the straw and the mess of the barn.  I don’t know how long I stayed there.  I didn’t say anything else.  I just looked at the baby.  I could see God in his face.  I could see all I had been, all I was, and all I might yet become.  I could see the possibility of a world that lived in peace and harmony, of people who served others with joy, and loved everyone.  I could see that I would give my life to the work this little baby would do, that I would dedicate my life to the things he said and did, to the way he lived.

 

I pray that you can have that same experience, that you can know what it’s like to be in the presence of God, to feel loved, forgiven and set free and at the same time humbled, faithful and compelled to serve.  All you have to do to experience it is come to Bethlehem and wait.  God is already there and God will be revealed to you, when the time is right, when your heart is ready.  Come to Bethlehem and wait, that you might meet Emmanuel.  Amen.