Christmas Day.
JN 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.
JN 1:3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
The neighbours from heaven.
I guess 2001 years ago there was the type of person around like the star of Dumb and Dumber or Englands Mr Bean just as there is today.
One of the things that most of us are sure of is, that although we like to laugh at these kind of comedians - none of us would like to think we look even remotely like them - to anyone.
Yet as we consider how God sees our lives it may well be that is just how we look to him given our response to Jesus - to the Cross and of course to Christmas.
Step with me will you down through the ages and dare for a moment to consider a Bean or Dumb and Dumber type character right there on the edge of the Bethlehem story.
As you consider this man’s response - consider also your response to Christmas.
Remember that all of us without Christ look to God like one of these men..
Just ask the question who do I look like this Christmas - A wiseman? A shepherd? or a Zacharias?
Just imagine for a moment the star of a first century sitcom -
Mr Zacharias - He’s back in Jerusalem for the census - it’s sad that his Mother said she didn’t have room for him in the family home.
When he visited her there was a donkey living in his room - his Mother had said she couldn’t possibly move the donkey out.
Then he didn’t mean to break her vase. The one that had been in the family since the families return from exile - His, more greats than you’d care to remember, Grandfather Silas had bought it back with him - it had been treasured for generations and Mr Zacharias had backed over it and broken it.
He could still feel the pain in his backside from his Mother’s broom and his Father’s boot both striking at the same time.
Talk about co-ordination!!!
Mr Zacharias had had a lot of bad luck in his life.
Like the time he’d accidently wandered into the temple and had walked into an area that - seemingly - only Priests were allowed to go - Holy of holies they called it - anyway they were going to do terrible things to him but he’d run away - it was about then that he’d grown a beard and shaved his head.
However today was a new day. More than that it was census day!! Mr Zacharias had rushed off to the census booth and wouldn’t you know it there was a queue about a mile long!!
Then he had a cunning plan.
He was good at cunning plans.
He threw a stone at some chickens at the nearby bazaar and when the chickens squawked and flew distracting everyone he’d sneaked in in front of a young man and his wife. The young man saw what had happenned but Mr Zacharias had given him his mean and nasty look and rippled his muscles under his tunic and well the young man didn’t want to start anything - He knew better!!
Well, he got to the census booth and it seemed there was some misunderstanding.
It was to do with his family who had tried to have his name taken off the list - something to do with a scandel over stampeding camels and a smothering or something.
He did seem to remember something. His family had disowned him!! In the end they agreed to count him even though his family had got, well, confused.
That finished, Mr Zacharias set off to arrange his accomodation - He’d heard the young man behind him in the Queue saying that accomodation wasn’t that easy to get in Bethlehem but had mentioned a certain hotel in a certain street where there might be perhaps one room left.
The young man had got a head start on him because of the misunderstanding about his family but if there is one thing that Mr Zacharias could do it was run!!!!!!!!!!
So run he did!!!
Run Mr Zacharias run!!!!
Down crowded alleys and streets - Past cluttered stalls selling everything from pottery to hens and livestock and slaves - he ran like the wind - he’d crashed into a Roman sentry who had drawn his sword. But Mr Zacharias had run on and finally had come to his destination . -As he looked around the corner to the street he could see the young man and the woman on
her donkey - Zacharias had ran that fast down the side streets that he had managed to pass the young man and had made it to the inn ahead of him.
A smug grin spread across his face.
The innkeeper a fat jolly man with a handlebar moustache had told the out - of - breath Mr Zacharias that there was just one room left - he was just in time - it was a case of first in first served.
AS Zacharias paid for his room the door opened and in walked the young man - Joseph -
It was just then that Zacharias felt that funny feeling that he’d felt a number of times in the past -
Why did he feel so guilty when he heard the innkeeper tell the man Joseph and his wife Mary that he could only offer them a room out the back - in the stable!!!!!!!
This was the worst he’d ever had that feeling - except perhaps for the time when he’d been rolling some stones down a hll outside Bethlehem and it had started an avalanche and had buried two houses - funny how he’d felt guilty then because it had been a festival and no-one was at home.
Mr Zacharias went to his room and looked around it - he jumped on his bed - he bounced on the bed until the bed creaked. Perfect!!He lay on his bed and ate the dates he had sneaked - Sneaked sounded better than stolen, from his Mother’s pantry -
This was the life he thought - the room is perfect - fit for a King.
As he lay there his guilt returned and he drank a little wine to try and make it go away. Only it didn’t -
it was night now and his guilt returned -
His thoughts kept returning to the man Joseph and the pregnant Mary - they’re not my problem he thought.It’s dog eat dog in this world he thought echoing something he’d heard from his Uncle. - Then he thought of how he had once eaten dog with some Arab traders who had captured him as a slave but he’d accidently set fire to all their tents and they’d let him go. The first time a slave had been let go - No-one had ever heard of that before.
He was special.
Zacharias ate some more dates but then his stomach ached as too many dates and his guilty feelings got all mixed up.
He just began to get to sleep when there was a light in his room and he blinked into consciousness.
"What now!!" - he muttered, marching angrily over to the hole in the wall that was a window -
He peeked out to find the source of the light and there was a star overhead shining light uncharacteristically onto the stable next door.
"How do they do that?" thought Zacharias - He held his hand up and made a rabbit shadow with his hands and fingers just like his mother had taught him when he was young.
Suddenly three men arrived. They certainly were not stable men.
They wore the finest clothes he’d ever seen. Long crimson robes - with a dignity that only comes from greatness. They carried beautiful looking articles that looked like very rich gifts.
As they approached the stable where Mary and Joseph had gone - they bowed their heads more like worshippers entering a temple than like dignitaries visiting a stable.
Zacharias was curious now - what was going on?
There was something going on in that stable - there was more than meets the eye here.
Perhaps it was a smuggling ring - perhaps - perhaps ?-
But what about that star? - He’d looked out in the sky beyond Bethlehem and thought he’d seen something in the sky a beautiful light and the sound of singing -
something was happening and he Mr Zacharias was going to take a look -
As he pulled off his night shirt he heard a clattering and banging out in the courtyard. When he looked cunningly placing himself between a palm tree and the stable he saw rough - tough shepherds clattering their way towards the stable.
They disappeared inside and vanished for some time.
When they eventually emerged they were different men.
There was a look on their faces of reverence and holieness that is simply not seen on the face of season hardened shepherds to Mr Zacharias that was beyond belief -
Perhaps they were not smugglers or maybe they were. -
Again the guilt of taking the room creeped over Mr Zacharias -
He’d have to deal with that - there was a sense in
which he felt guilty and a sense in which
he wondered if they were smugglers - perhaps he could be
part of it - make some money - with these mixed thoughts and emotions he
tiptoed out into the courtyard -
When he rounded the corner the Shepherds who had been standing gzing at the stable were leaving. They were happy yetthoughtful - They looked like men who had been in touch with something beyond them - something Holy.
Mr Zecharias had seen that look once before - not in the face of rough shepherds but in the temple in Jerusalem in a man called Zechariah a name not disimilar to his - he’d just come from the temple and couldn’t speak - People said he’d had a visit from God - Zecharias saw a similar look on the face of these shepherds - and now half in guilt - half in fear of having taken the last room and half in greed at making some gain - that is if you can have three halves in one whole, he tiptoed towards the stable door -
As he gazed upon that simple scene he only saw the man and the woman trying to sleep. But sleep eluded them for they were too wide awake to even try - they gazed almost unbelievingly down on the old feed trough in front of them. For it was the contents and wonder of the baby in the trough that mesmerised them as well as the events of this night of all nights.
Zacharias took in the stable scene of straw and wood, of a baby born in shocking conditions, - of beautiful gifts strewn in front of him and that invisible but perfectly understandable sense that told him that God was here.
He felt that he was gazing on something so important that he felt he didn’t belong here.
Suddenly - the silent - invisible witness to all of this was struck by the dirtiness of his life - it’s pettiness and pitiful events - suddenly in face of what he saw - his life felt like beautiful white snow that had been scarred with mud - never to get back that pristine purity that was now only a distant memory.
Under the stars glow he wondered what his life might have been if things had not been what they now were - what possibilities might have been realised in his wretched life and then in the depth of his misery he gazed again upon the stable scene and a warm glow seemed to come from the manger and touch him with such an incredible love and warmth and dare he believe it - forgiveness that he dared to hope.
He dared to dream again that his life could amount to something - that God’s forgiveness was possible
that - that - that!!!!!!
He, Mr Zacharias could be a man that his Mother and Father and brothers and sister could be proud of that he could amount to something. Yes!! and in that moment -
that somehow wrapped up in this nights events - even
God’s forgiveness and a fresh way ahead might be possible
for the first time.
That night for the first time in many years - Mr Zacharias - in room number 4 in the Bethlehem inn slept a peaceful sleep.
The story of Mr Zacharias is fiction
The events of Jesus’ birth are poignantly true.
Your story is true - who are you going to look like this Christmas?
The incongorous Zacharias - Wiseman or shepherd
God gives us a choice. The effect of our choice has eternal significance.
Today as we too gaze into the stable down through the glasses of two thousand years of world history we can see that Jesus gives us the hope and the possibility of a new life.
Grasp this gift in it’s fullness - stand in awe at the stable door - receive what the child anticipates in the cross - walk in it and you will have an awesome year in 2003 as you walk transformed by the sheer power of love that God manifested in Bethlehem.
