On Innkeepers and Donkey Owners

Driving the other day, I heard part of a radio sermon about the innkeeper at Bethlehem.  The pastor was talking about the guy’s decision not to make room for Joseph and a young, very pregnant Mary to stay indoors.  Honestly, I’m not sure what point he may have ended up making, as I was thinking that the innkeeper has less to do with the story than this teacher was giving him credit for; if God had wanted His Son to be born inside an inn, He would have been.  Remember the donkey’s colt that Jesus had His disciples fetch in Mark 11:1-7? They only needed to tell the owner, “The Lord hath need of it,” and it was granted.  ("Would I so easily surrender my donkey?" I wonder, but I digress.)

 

I continued debating the radio pastor as I drove, asking, “How can we believe in God’s infinite power to perfect His will and work everything to His plan, and then think He had little control over where Jesus was born?  Surely the innkeeper was meant to send them to the stable.”  

 

I’ve written about touring Marie Antoinette’s lavish, golden bedroom, with the viewing gallery flanking the bed for nobles and clergy to witness the births of her children, to assure their royal lineage.  This is man’s way, not God’s.  I’ve written about the scribes and Pharisees who told Herod and the star-following magi where the Messiah would be born, yet they didn’t go see for themselves whether Biblical prophesies were fulfilled.  Would it have mattered to these priestly nobles whether God’s Son were born in an inn or a stable?  Nope; they were not interested.  But who did it matter to?  To whom did God send birth announcements of His only begotten Son?  He told the lowest rung of society: the shepherds.   I drove down the highway asking, “Would the shepherds have been allowed inside the inn to see this ‘Lamb that takes away the sin of the world’?  No.”   Baby Jesus would have been inaccessible to the meekest and lowliest of society.

 

God likes to turn things upside down.  Moses, son of oppressed Hebrew laborers, was raised as a prince, while Jesus, the Lord of all creation, God in the flesh, was born and raised a poor Hebrew.  This is God's way. Jesus, born to simple people, in the humblest of places, His birth proclaimed to the bottommost of social status, was raised in the lowly town of Nazareth and worked as a carpenter.  Jesus, who touched lepers and ate with tax collectors and sinners, rode into Jerusalem not on a blazing horse or a procession of camels, but on the humblest of rides, as Zech 9:9 said He would).  Like the owner of the young donkey, the innkeeper may have had a choice, but God already knew it and worked into His plan.