Last year Monica and I traveled to my hometown of Estes Park Colorado for the Holidays. It’s known for being the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. A lot of people visit there in the summer, but only about 10,000 live there year-round. Many who grow up there leave when they graduate high school. Estes doesn’t have corporate jobs. It doesn’t have a great school district. It has lots of elk and lots of tourists, nothing special ever seems to happen there.
That first night we were there, we were eating dinner with my family when we heard a knock on the door. I went and answered it and it was my childhood friend Jake with his new wife Maggie, who looked very pregnant and very tired. I invited them inside and they sat down on our couch exhausted. Now I hadn’t hung out with Jake in years, but I’d recently Facebook stalked him because he’d just married Maggie, who he met up north where he worked as a carpenter building houses.
As Jake sat there, I asked him what was going on. He explained the Governor of their state had passed a new bill requiring workers to demonstrate proof of citizenship. Of course it was being challenged in the courts, but he’d contacted the hospital in Estes anyways to send him a copy of his birth certificate. Due to a clerical error, they lost his paperwork, so they had to travel home to get his registration figured out. I said I was sorry for them, especially during the Holidays, but asked why he’d come to us.
He told me that none of his family lived in town anymore, and every hotel, inn, and Airbnb was full, and of all his old friends in town, he knew that my parents rented out our home as a vacation rental, so would they have an extra room they could spare for the night? I said, “normally, yes, but there’s no room in our vacation rental. My mom and dad are hosting my three older brothers, their wives, and my combined ten nieces and nephews, so our house is packed.”
Maggie burst into tears and said, “We just need someplace to stay. I don’t want my unborn baby to sleep in the cold. He’s special… An angel told me he is going to be the King of Kings and will change the world.”
I thought, well that’s kind of weird…
I think she saw the look on my face because she said, “The angel really told me the Holy Spirit would give me a baby and that I should name him Joshua because he will save his people from their sins. People are going to call him the Son of the Most High, the Son of God.” (Luke 1:26-38)
What could I say to that? I was pretty sure from their wedding photos that their wedding was a shotgun wedding, since she was already pregnant. I thought she was crazy. Of course Jake was the father. I didn’t believe her. I thought she was making it up. I didn’t even stop to consider if there were some truth in what she was saying. Maybe this baby would change the world, but he definitely wasn’t the Son of God.
“Are you sure you don’t have a place we could stay?” Jake asked.
That’s when I remembered that my parents were building a tiny house to live in the next summer as they rented out their home, but that although it wasn’t quite done, it did have insulation in the walls and a wood burning stove. We were housing our bunnies out there, so it did smell like bunnies, but they didn’t care. I moved our bunnies to the garage, took Jake and Maggie out to the tiny house, got a fire started, and left.
But five minutes later Jake banged on my door, his face white as a sheet. He said, “Maggie is having her baby!” So I said, “So take her to the hospital!” But he said, “We don’t have insurance.” I said, “Bring her inside!” But he said, “It’s too late, we can’t move her. We’re having the baby tonight in the tiny house!”
So I ran and got my sister-in-law who gave birth at home. And for the next couple hours we all sweated it out as Maggie screamed and yelled and Jake ran back and forth getting hot water and towels and looking terrified. Then the cries of pain stopped, and the cries of a baby filled the night air. And a few minutes later, the newborn baby stopped crying, swaddled by his mother, and it became a silent night, a holy night.
By this time it was late. We thought about going out to meet the new baby, but newborn babies are gross and none of us were family, so slowly we made our way to bed. But I stayed up thinking about what Maggie had said—that they would name this child Joshua, that he would save his people from their sins, and that he would be called the Son of God. I googled on my phone what “Joshua” means. I found out that Joshua is a Hebrew name that means “the Lord saves” or “Yahweh saves.” Yahweh is the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. This child’s name was special, if nothing else.
That’s when I heard another knock on the door. It was different than the first two times, faster, more impatient. I ran over to the door, expecting Maggie was having some sort of post-delivery complication, but to my surprise someone else was at the door.
It wasn’t just one person, but a whole family. I knew them instantly. It was Tom and Linda Shepherd and their five kids. They lived outside of town in the mountains and didn’t usually come into town. They were known around town for being a little offbeat. The dad and mom loved animals, and had given their love of animals to each of their five kids. The Shepherds family had horses, goats, four dogs, an actual herd of sheep, and the whole family smelled like they slept in the barn with those animals. Honestly, they were social outcasts who kept to themselves, but tonight they were at my doorstep.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
Tom said, “We were out by the pasture watching our flock of sheep tonight when an angel appeared in the sky!!!”
Oh no, not more of this… But he kept going. He said, “God’s glory shown all around us. The whole sky lit up! It looked like the trees and the hills and everything was on fire. They were glowing with heavenly light.”
I interrupted him and said, “That’s impossible! You must have seen a shooting star.”
His oldest son said, “Look, I posted a picture on Snapchat!” He showed me a picture on his phone but I couldn’t make anything out, it just looked like a bright light, like he’d taken a picture of the sun, or a lamp, or lightning. What caught my attention was not the photo but the look in his eyes. I could tell he believed it was true even if I didn’t. They all had that look.
Tom continued, “The angel must have saw how terrified we were because he said, ‘Don’t be afraid! I’m here to give you good news that can make you and all people really happy.”
Alright, I like good news.
“‘Today in town a Savior is born, a Savior who is the Messiah, God’s only chosen King, the Lord! Go look for a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a feeding trough, a manger.’ And then immediately a whole angelic choir appeared and began to sing God’s praises. They sang:
Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.
And then they disappeared. All the angels went back to heaven.”
“What do you think it means?” I asked him.
“It means the savior of sinners is here!” Tom practically shouted back at me. “It means that nothing will ever be the same! It means God has finally given peace to his people.”
“Peace,” I thought. “We need peace in this world. There’s no peace, just wars and politicians and greed and bullies and injustice. I don’t even know what true peace is. It’s not out there and it’s not in me. I feel guilt and shame all the time. I feel sinful and condemned because of the things I’ve done. I need peace.”
Tom interrupted my thoughts, “Once the angel left, your name came to mind as someone I should find. Do you know where the baby in the manger is?”
I said, “Well, no, but Jake and Maggie just had their baby in our tiny house. Do you mean them?” With that, I led him and his family out back. I knocked on the door and Jake opened it. As he opened the door I felt the warmth of the stove and the smell of bunnies pour over me. I saw the light flickering on Maggie’s face and her baby’s face as she stroked him. She’d wrapped him up in a baby blanket and placed him inside a big wooden bowl used for serving bread—a feeding trough, a manger…”
The Shepherd family pushed their way past me and they fell on their knees before this baby. They didn’t say anything. They bowed their heads, closed their eyes, and praised God. They worshiped this small child as if he were God himself.”
Maggie, looked up at me. Her eyes caught mine and it felt like she asked me, “Do you believe now?”
Everything I’d witnessed here seemed unbelievable. I’d been given an opportunity to believe earlier that evening when they first arrived at the house, but I hadn’t. Then I’d been given an opportunity to believe again when the Shepherd family told me what was happening, but I hadn’t. But now I was here, seeing the baby for the first time myself, and I had to figure out what I was going to do.
Was I going to shut the door and go back inside? Or was I, like the Shepherds and Maggie, going to believe in this tiny baby boy and worship him? He looked normal, like a newborn baby, but clearly he was something special. Would he change the world? Was he the Savior? Was he God’s only chosen King?
If you haven’t caught on by now, it’s time for me to confess that this isn’t my story. This is a creative retelling of the story of Joseph and Mary and the birth of Jesus in Luke chapter 2. “Joshua” is the Hebrew form of the Greek name “Jesus.” This is me imagining myself into the story as the innkeeper who had no room in the inn. I wanted to intentionally place myself into the story because that’s how we’re supposed to read it. Now I want you to intentionally place yourself into the story and consider for a moment if it might be true. If you were in the story, how would you respond?
- Are you like one of the shepherds? A social outcast who doesn’t care what others think, and when you receive the good news of Jesus you believe? If you believe, “spread the word” just like the original shepherds. Praise God as you tell others the good news this Christmas that the story is real.
- Or maybe you’re more like Mary (aka. Maggie). It says in Luke 2 that she “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Maybe you need to mull this over, to think about it. Go home and read Luke 2 and imagine yourself in the story. Are you like her?
- Or are you like the inn keeper? We don’t know much about him but we do know he shut the door on the King of Kings. Either your heart isn’t ready to believe or you still think it’s all just a fairy tale. It wasn’t any easier for those first people who heard the story to believe than it is for you today.
You’ve probably heard the story of Jesus and his claim to be God before, and like me in our story, you probably thought it was really weird the first time you heard it. You probably thought, this is ridiculous, this can’t be true. But in so doing, I think you missed the possibility that it just might be real.
What if the story of Jesus were true? What if it really happened?
- What if Jesus really was born 2,000 years ago in the small town of Bethlehem?
- What if he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born to a virgin?
- What if angels really did fill the sky to announce Jesus’ birth to shepherds?
- What if Jesus really came to save his people from their sins?
- What if Jesus is the Son of the Most High, the Son of God, God’s only chosen King?
- What if he lived a sinless life and died an innocent death on a cross to pay the penalty for your sins?
- What if he didn’t stay dead?
- What if three days later he rose from the grave?
- What if he promised that if you confess your sins and trust in him, he will give you eternal life?
- What if eternal life is not just living forever, but having a relationship with Jesus, the Son of God?
- What if this Christmas is not like any other Christmas because this year you believe in Jesus and worship the King of Kings?
- Will you shut the door or believe?
See, you’re in the story now whether you like it or not. What will you do? Will you shut the door or believe? Will you believe like the shepherds and tell others? Will you treasure it in your heart like Mary? Or will you shut the door like the inn keeper? Don’t close your heart. For a moment consider that the original Christmas story just might be true. I promise you, that if you believe in Jesus as your Lord and King, you will never regret it. Will you shut the door or believe?
Pastor Jonathan Romig wrote and preached this message for the people of Cornerstone Congregational Church. Click here to listen to more sermons or click here to read our story.
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