At Children's services I sometimes like to present my sermon in story form, from one of the characters at the birth of Jesus. This year it is the turn of the inkeeper. Although the story itself is made up, it is based on research about what it was really like to live in bible times in that place (now in the West Bank) that we call Bethlehem. It’s a real place that you might like to visit yourself one day. So here is the innkeepers tale...
Some of you may call me one of the bad characters of the Christmas story, not as bad as our awful king Herod though.
I am the person some people call the innkeeper. Miriam by name, and Joseph the carpenter’s second cousin. But actually calling me an innkeeper is a bit of an exaggeration. I didn’t own a hotel, or even a Travelodge, it was a bit more like your Air B and B. I have a simple house with one guestroom, and in my basement I have a little cave where I bring the animals to be safe after dark. Jeremiah the donkey, Jezebel the goat, and my little brown ox with a white spot on his back who I called Noah because he doesn’t like the rain. Everyone around here has a little guestroom in their house and somewhere downstairs to keep the animals. Bethlehem is a village on a hillside riddled with caves. The caves are safe and warm and really quite a nice, private place to be.
And so you can probably guess what happened next. Joseph and Mary turned up on my doorstep because they had to take part in this horrible people-count which sent them back to Bethlehem because that is where King David, our great great great great great (X24) grandfather once lived. My brother Jacob and his wife Ruth had already turned up with their brothers and sisters and they had all piled into the guestroom filling it up to bursting.
Poor Mary looked so cold and shivery after her long journey - as it can get very cold up here in Bethlehem. It’s cold because it is built on top of a really really tall hill, so tall that the weather is different from toasty hot Jericho which is only down the road. It really looked like Mary needed somewhere private because she was about to have her baby. But where could I put her?
Our grandfather old Levi was sleeping in the corner of our family room, Zeb and John were playing bat and ball and making a right racket, my own little girl was crying VERY LOUDLY because she had lost her dolly - and everything was getting very cramped. Maybe your Christmases get to be a bit of a squash too if you have lots of people staying. Mary needed some privacy, and, as I mentioned, the “Kataluma” which is what we call our guest room, was full.
So then I thought for a bit, and then I prayed for a bit, and then I had a really good idea. I took Mary downstairs to the stable area where the animals lived and made her and Joseph a little bed down there. It was warm, it was quiet apart from the snuffling of the animals, but if she needed some help, or some food, or some water we were really close by and she only had to call.
That night Mary had her baby, and I got to help her, washing his little tiny body to make it all clean and shiny and wrapping him up in little bandages to keep him warm. She called him Jesus, because it meant “Someone from God who rescues you when you are in trouble” and she said that was what Jesus was going to do for us, because most people were sad and a-bit-mean-to-each -other, and he was going to help us to be happy and good.
But then something really strange happened. Some shepherds knocked on the door. They were the most excited shepherds I’d ever seen in my whole life. They said they’d seen an angel and they were looking for a baby. They said that they’d know which baby it was because it would be lying in a manger, an animal feeding trough. I was amazed because the manger was where I put baby Jesus after I’d wrapped him all up. How did they know that? They also said the little baby was going to be a saviour: someone who could rescue us when we were in trouble, and I was amazed because “Someone from God who rescues you when you are in trouble” was the name Mary had called him.
So you see, I wasn’t really a baddie after all. But if you ever get stuck for an idea; if you want to help someone but you aren’t sure what to do, pray a prayer, tell God about the problem in your own words; then wait and see what happens and maybe God will put a good idea into your head too.
