The following sermon was presented by the Rev. John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on Christmas Eve, 1984. The title is The Emperor and the Innkeeper, and the scripture reference is Luke, Chapter 2, Verses 1-7. 

This is my eighth Christmas in Fairfax. And as I looked back over my notes of the last several sermons that I've given on Christmas Eves and Christmas Days and sermons for lessons and carols and the Advent season, all those all those various occasions when we paused to try to think together about this most holy of all nights. I had to ask myself, what more is there to be said?

I recognize some of you haven't heard all those sermons, but I have. And I realized I've talked about shepherds tending their flocks by night. and we've thought together about wise men bringing their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh and in a strange way in a supernatural way kind of anticipating Jesus' kingship and his priesthood and his sacrifice of himself remarkable gifts we've thought about the various figures that surround the nativity Mary, of course, and Joseph, and then Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the baptizer, who was Jesus' older cousin, about a half a year older than he.

And Simeon and Anna, who were waiting in the temple, having been promised by God that they'd see the Messiah before they died. At least Simeon, that was the case for him. And they brought the baby Jesus in at eight days of age, and he said, This is the one.

We thought about the angel Gabriel. What an extraordinary role he was given. And Herod.

And the scribes at the temple. All the various characters that would fill up this nativity story. And I looked at all those notes and I said, what more is there to be said?

Who has been left out? And suddenly it struck me that right here in the first paragraph that Neil just read to us a moment ago, we run into two characters whose roles are absolutely critical to this story. And I've hardly mentioned them at all.

Maybe you've thought about them, but I haven't stopped to think very much about them. And the more I began to think about them, the more it seemed to me that in a very real way, They represent two absolutely opposite attitudes toward God, toward life, toward the gospel, toward Christmas. One of them we know a fair amount about, the other almost nothing.

In fact, he's not really mentioned, he's only implied in the story as we find it here in Luke's gospel. But I just wonder if we think about these two figures for just a couple of moments tonight, if you might find yourself identifying with one or the other. The first is the emperor, the Roman emperor.

A decree went out from Caesar Augustus. At that point in history, he was the most powerful man the world had ever known. he was born in 63 BC he was named Gaius Octavius he was the great nephew of Julius Caesar and you may remember this from history that when Julius Caesar was assassinated there was a tremendous power struggle various people sought to take over his leadership Mark Antony looked as if for a moment he might win that struggle and finally it was Augustus who won it.

And he enlarged a dominion that already extended from as far west as Britain and well into Asia in the east. It encompassed the whole of the Mediterranean world and all of Europe. It's Augustus who was principally responsible for the building of the Roman roads that are so famous, the roads that linked together the whole of the Roman Empire.

And concerning Rome itself, it was said of him that he inherited it in brick and he left it in marble. He received it in brick and he left it in marble. He was a tremendously powerful figure, tremendously powerful military figure and a shrewd manager of the greatest empire the world had ever known.

And so the Roman Senate gave him a name. It wasn't his own name. It was a title.

Augustus. The Great One. The awe-inspiring One.

His very name meant wealth, power, authority, majesty, might, dominion. Augustus Caesar. And one day he decided to take a little census.

Now the reason for that was to tighten an already very grievous network of taxation. He didn't want anybody to slip through it. And so he devised a plan that every man in the empire should return to his family's hometown, to his place of family origin.

to be enrolled. Very simple reason. That was the easiest way to keep track of people.

From the government's point of view, it didn't matter what that did to the citizen. The government ordered it. That's the way it was.

It didn't matter if you were young or old. It didn't matter if you were able-bodied or ill. It didn't matter if you could afford it or not.

I wonder if you can imagine the dislocation, the disruption, the inconvenience, the expense for people to travel tremendous distances in that day and age with no modern facility of transportation, tremendous difficulty to live out that edict. It didn't matter if you had other pressing business or responsibilities at home. It didn't matter if your job was at stake.

You had to take off for weeks or months in order to make such a journey. It didn't matter if you had to take your family with you because you couldn't leave them behind. It didn't matter if your wife was eight months pregnant and had to travel the whole distance on the back of a donkey.

or more likely had to walk. That didn't matter. Augustus said, go, and you went.

See, the Romans had come to believe that Augustus Caesar was a god. And as you read the history, you suspect at least that he also had come to believe that about himself. A man who had become God.

and the whole world was his to do with as he saw fit his personal possession his oyster he could snap his finger and every man in the empire and in most cases his wife and his children had to move at Caesar's command only a funny thing happened as a result of that decree it forced one young couple that was making its home in Nazareth which is up in the northern part of Palestine up in the Galilee area it forced that couple like so many others to take a fairly difficult trek up to Bethlehem we say up because Jerusalem is up everything is up to Jerusalem and Bethlehem was about six miles outside of Jerusalem in the southern part of Palestine. That was no easy journey for them. But they had to make that journey just as everybody else did.

Augustus Caesar didn't realize it. In fact, I suspect he would have laughed at the thought, but his decree forced that couple to arrive in Bethlehem just in the nick of time to fulfill Scripture. And as powerful as He was, as mighty as He was, as important as He was, He was putty in the hands of a God far greater than Himself.

Did it ever strike you? I wonder if you ever thought about the fact that the Old Testament says that Messiah will be born in Bethlehem and yet he'll be called a Nazarene. Did you ever notice that?

He'll be born in Bethlehem and yet he'll be called a Nazarene. Why not a Bethlehemite? The only way that both of those statements could be true is if you were born in one place but your home was another.

You were born in one place and your home was another. and that's exactly what happened you remember of course that when the wise men came to Jerusalem they thought if the king of the Jews is to be born surely it will be in Jerusalem came to Jerusalem they went to Herod checked it out with him he didn't have a clue so he called in some of the scribes from the temple and they knew exactly where the king of the Jews was to be born why did they know because the scripture said so they turned to Micah chapter 5 verse 2 and it said this but you O Bethlehem Ephrathah did you know there were two Bethlehems one down in Judea the other up in Naphtali and scripture designated which of the two the little Bethlehem the one down in Judea You, O Bethlehem, Ephrathah, who are little among the clans of Judah, from You shall come forth One who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem.

Scripture says so. But He's to be called a Nazarene. actually not quite you search through the Old Testament you'll nowhere find that phrase it doesn't say that but what it does say over and over and over again is that Messiah will be called the branch what a funny name the branch listen Jeremiah 23 behold the days are coming says the Lord when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

A branch. A righteous branch. Jeremiah 33.

In those days I will cause a righteous branch to spring forth for David. Isaiah 11. You probably know this one.

We usually incorporate it into our lessons and carol service. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse. Jesse was David's father.

Jesse's line has been cut off. Nobody's going to be born from this family tree of any significance anymore. It's just a stump.

No, it isn't. No, there's going to be a shoot growing out of that stump. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. Zechariah 6, Behold, the man whose name is the branch shall grow up in his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord.

The man whose name is the branch. Do you know what the meaning of the word Nazareth is? The branch.

Some of you know that. Do you realize that every time anybody referred to Jesus as Jesus of Nazareth, They were saying, Jesus, the one whose name is the branch. See, it was a fairly common name, Jesus.

It was a popular name. Joshua, Yeshua, they're all variants of the same thing. What it literally means is, the Lord is our salvation.

That's a great name to have. But because it was a fairly common name, they distinguished this one by calling him Yeshua, the branch. The Lord is our salvation and this one is the man whose name is the branch.

Do you get it? But he had to be born in Bethlehem in order to fulfill Scripture. And so this mightiest tyrant, this mightiest dictator, this mightiest emperor in the history of the world to date, acting on nothing but the basest of motives, greed, egotism, lust for power.

He moves around a whole empire of people, every man and most women and children, in order to get one pregnant teenager to Bethlehem just in time for her firstborn son to arrive there to fulfill Scripture. And some of you were worried that Konstantin Chernyenko was getting too powerful. God holds the rulers of this world in the palm of his hand.

And nothing, nothing will thwart his purposes. You know what Psalm 2 says? He who sits in the heavens laughs.

He holds the rulers of this world in derision. Do you see mighty Augustus Caesar saying, I'll snap my fingers and the world will move? And God says, thank you very much, I needed to get them to Bethlehem.

Well, that's the attitude of one of the two people on that first Christmas Eve. I snap my fingers and the whole world jumps. The other man I want to look at tonight, as I said, he's just implied.

He's not even mentioned in the story, but he had to be there. And that's the innkeeper in Bethlehem. We don't really know very much about him.

Don't even know his name. As a matter of fact, we're not even sure it was a man. It might have been a woman.

It might just as well have been a woman. usually the innkeeper gets pretty short shrift on Christmas Eve. We say, can you imagine the Son of God coming to earth, designating Bethlehem as His birthplace, and you're in.

And you put Him out in some filthy stable out in back. You wretched innkeeper, you. Well, first of all, who says it was filthy?

Maybe it was. I've been in some dirty stables, some smelly stables. Maybe you have too.

But you know, I've also been in some that were wonderfully well kept, clean, dry, swept out, full of sweet, fresh, sweet-smelling hay. Mightn't it have been that sort of stable? It might have been.

And I wonder about the implicit suggestion that the innkeeper, whose rooms were all booked, mind you, all sorts of people were coming to Bethlehem. That was the problem. Should he have thrown somebody out in order to make room for this family?

Even if he'd been willing to do so, do you think that the God who was willing to lay aside his glory in order to be born in the most humble of circumstances, do you think he would have accepted that? Would he have accepted preferential treatment at the expense of somebody else? I would have.

Maybe you would have. But I don't think this God would have. see that's the point of the story Philippians 2 says that Jesus though he was in the form of God didn't count equality with God a thing to be grasped but he emptied himself taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men he emptied himself he emptied himself of all splendor and glory and prerogative.

Do you think he would have turned somebody out so that he could have had their bedroom that night? I very much doubt it. I very much doubt it.

Could I suggest to you that just maybe, rather than being some insensitive, irascible, uncharitable scrooge, this little unnamed innkeeper offered to Mary and Joseph the best that he had. It wasn't much. Just a little stable out back, but it's clean.

It's dry. I put fresh straw in it. It's not much, but it's all I've got.

Could you take this and at least it will afford you some protection from the weather? isn't it possible that that that little innkeeper that night scurried about to find some soup and some blankets and then maybe in the middle of the night when he realized what was happening he went and got some hot water and some towels and some swaddling cloths can't you imagine his wife coming to help Mary in childbirth Martin Luther in a sort of a whimsical question in one of his children's sermons, he said, you know, with all the angels and archangels praising God, I wonder why he didn't send one to help Mary. Maybe it's because he reserved that honor, that privilege for an anonymous innkeeper and his wife to be in attendance at the birth of the King of Kings.

Maybe they who gave all they had, as inadequate as it seemed, just a cow barn, all they had, but they gave it, Maybe they were privileged in a way that nobody else has ever been or ever could be to see that cow barn turned into the throne room of the Most High God. And so I give you these two men on Christmas Eve. The first, the real Christmas Eve, an emperor and an innkeeper.

One thought that he had become God. and he could move the world at the snap of his fingers and the other witnessed the miracle of God becoming man. A God who was himself moved at a world that had snapped.

And I wonder where you find yourself in that story. I'd bid you to open your own heart this night. Maybe you've done that.

Maybe you need to do that. Maybe you need to do it in a new way. maybe it seems to you that you don't have that much to offer to this Lord Jesus maybe your heart, maybe your life is just a stable just a cow barn not much but you know if you open it up to him he'll come and he'll transform it by filling it with himself and it'll become the throne room of the Most High God he'll take the least that we have to give and he'll transform it into his own palace that's the message of Christmas I hope yours is a very special one don't miss it in all the tinsel and the presents under the tree Christmas is about opening up our stable and the King of Kings coming in to transform it into a palace O holy child of Bethlehem descend to us we pray cast out our sin and enter in be born in us today very Merry Christmas to you