Prior’s Note: The stories for this Holy Week represent a unique view of Christ’s resurrection, beginning with the lowly manger. There are five interwoven narratives told from the vantage point of four Biblical witnesses – people of whom there are no additional historical renderings, either in scripture or in any other historical documentation.
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O Holy Night
Year 0 – 0 Hour
Four sons of Timaeus huddled together around a small campfire on the Judean hillside, gathered before the ever-changing cone of the flickering fire’s constantly altering, imperfect warmth. They were doing their best to keep from shivering in the light, but very cool Mediterranean night breeze wafting toward the eastern wilderness from the sea.
The air slipped across the flat, graze-worthy plain due south of Bethlehem, hosting verdant new grass emerging from soil still damp from recent spring rains. Their relative closeness to Jerusalem made them a reliable source for the Temple’s required daily sacrificial sheep, and the most perfect yearling lamb might become the Passover sacrifice.
Surrounding the shepherds stood a flock of sheep with a thick layer of winter wool covering their meaty frames. The beasts’ entire sphere of interest lay in the one-foot circle beneath their forefeet as they imperceptibly moved in random steps across the fields, persistently chewing the lush offering.
Whether concentrating on their grazing or settling down to sleep, the flock was oblivious to the star-speckled canopy that arced from horizon to horizon.
“I’m freezing,” the youngest shepherd complained, inching even closer to the flames.
“Keep getting closer, Bartimaeus, and you’re going to burn your eyelashes completely off, just like you did last winter,” laughed 19-year-old Ethan to his 14-year-old sibling, the youngest of the shepherd brothers, followed by much amusement from the others.
“Mother will strap you good if you burn more holes in your robe,” 16-year-old Johanan warned. “She will, and you know she will!” he piled on for good measure.
The oldest among the brothers, 21-year-old Azriel ben Timaeus, stepped in to prevent the inevitable argument with his strongly worded reproof. “Bartimaeus, back away from the fire a bit. And the rest of you, mind your own affairs and leave him to find his own way to stay warm. For Elijah’s sake, you sound like a bunch of old women bickering around a cooking pot!”
That expression garnered a howling laugh from Ethan, who shoved his little brother backward while ordering, “He said to get back, fool….”
Prepared for that very eventuality, Azriel expertly produced a small stone and sent it sailing across the flames toward Ethan’s mid-chest, where it contacted his body with a bruising thump.
“Owwwwww!” Ethan moaned, instantly losing his smile as his hand flew to his injured chest. “What are you going to do to him?” he demanded of his elder, pointing to Bartimaeus.
Azriel was about to reply when his world suddenly changed forever.
Simultaneously, the world of his brothers, the world of all who had ever lived, and the world of all those who would ever live, transformed in less than an instant. Nothing from the past or in the future would ever be the same.
The Creator and Sustainer of all would never permit this extraordinary new second to slip away without a formal announcement and celebration! In His Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Sovereign Perfection, He carefully selected four special guests before whom His most extraordinary announcement was to be made. Out of all the people who were ever created in all of time, of all people alive at this moment on Earth, Jehovah God invited the four humble shepherd sons of Timaeus – Azriel, Ethan, Johanan, and Bartimaeus – to receive the greatest announcement in all of cosmic history.
—
A pure and perfect sound resonated out of the stary sky as a precise, quiet tone – a soft, melodic, solitary, standalone voice singing in but a single note. It seized their attention as all eyes turned to the zenith of the cold night sky. The stars seemed to have ceased their twinkling and became more intense.
Then the single voice separated into two – the second of which gently drifted off the root cord to its second minor fall where it held, fixing the melody in absolute flawlessness. Two more independent voices immediately entered the strain, creating a sweeping audio archipelago of lifting sound and volume.
The music began to expand and deepen, the tenor voices now joined by countless deep basses offset by high sopranos and complementing altos. Tens of voices smoothly morphed into hundreds until the ground itself began to respond with a gentle trembling, reflecting the rhythm of the heavenly melody. The perfect musical wave rose to a powerful crescendo of audible purity unmatched in all of creation.
Gently at first, soft, transparent color sheets wafted across the canopy of night. Their motions moved with the slow, streaming beat of the ethereal choir. It was as though a rainbow encompassed them.
Azriel, Ethan, Johanan, and Bartimaeus all stared upward, each of them open-mouthed in absolute, rapt astonishment.
The air they breathed became sweeter. The colors that filled their vision were more perfect than any eye had ever witnessed since Adam. And they heard not just the purest sound in the universe – more so than any other human had ever imagined – but it was experienced with flawless hearing for the first time since creation.
Slowly, at the core of the ethereal display, a shape began to materialize from the flickering translucent multicolored clouds. The metamorphizing form lowered closer to them, coalescing out of the mists of the perfect kaleidoscope of color and waterfall of sound, which were quite beyond imagining, focusing into being as an angelic entity.
Their hearts pounded within them in a curious mingling of awesome fear and indescribable longing – yet not one of them wanted any of it to end. They did not want to run away from the incredible apparition but toward it, even as it unhurriedly drew near, clearly devoted to some overwhelming purpose.
Instinctively, they felt themselves drawn like moths to a flame even as the shape revealed itself to be an angelic being of awful majesty suspending itself in the sky just above them. The heavenly figure towered over them, the stars behind him bleeding through his ethereal form, the sounds of the surrounding angelic music wholly penetrating them.
Utterly overcome by the being’s grandeur, the eldest shepherd, Azriel, fell to his knees, followed immediately by his equally terrified brothers, just as the angel began to speak directly to them.
“Do not be afraid,” he announced in a voice like the sound of rushing water and in a language they had never heard and yet comprehended perfectly. His form became more distinct as he spoke, taking shape before them and revealing the glowing white uniform of a host of the Army of Heaven.
He was surrounded by a mantle of gold-lined fabric wafting gently in the eerie radiant wind, and upon his majestic head sat a tightly fitted helmet with transparent gold framing touching his perfect skin and outlining a pair of wide, clear, heroic eyes. He spoke though lips that formed a confident smile as his powerful voice continued his proclamation, his eyes focused intently on the four young shepherds kneeling before him.
“Behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, Who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
With his unwavering gaze fixed on the boys, his mesmerizing eyes sparkled with joyous excitement, and his smile increased. He gave the brothers a slight nod – whether of approval, command, or both – just as his form began to recede into the brilliant shimmering winds of Heaven.
Even as the shape and form of the angel who had greeted them wafted into mist before the young men, suddenly, the music of heaven began to build as hundreds and then thousands of additional shapes appeared out of the distant colored sky.
The shepherds gazed upward from their prostrate positions, mouths agape at the wonderous, consuming, alluring, and commanding scene morphing to life. And just as the army of the sons of God assembled before them, the heavenly host began to praise as many and yet as one. Their blended voices arose in countless pitches that reflected the melody of Heaven and came forth both as a perfect meld of singing and speech.
“Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace among men with whom He is well pleased.”
With matchless precision, myriad sub-voices echoed simultaneously, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole Earth is full of His glory! Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come!”
Again and again, the refrains of worship were lifted before them by the mighty choir of eternal beings.
“Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace among men with whom He is well pleased.”
Tears of awestruck joy streamed down the enraptured faces of the four shepherd boys as their hungry eyes and ears absorbed the glory of Heaven.
And then it was over.
The night sky returned to its blackness, the stars resumed their tiny points of light, and the only sound was the bleating of their flock. The silence and darkness of the ordinary night surrounded them like a suffocating shroud of emptiness.
In that long moment of profound and terrible silence, Azriel looked at his younger brothers, who were all staring back at him. He blinked away the tears from his eyes and shifted his gaze behind them, focusing on the barely perceptible glow of the few midnight lights of nearby Bethlehem.
Without a single word, he stood up, shifted his stunned gaze to his siblings until a look of determination filled his eyes, and then turned and ran as fast as he could toward the sleeping town, followed closely by his brothers.
“But Azriel, what about the flock?” young Bartimaeus asked as they ran.
“The angels – they will take care of them!” Azriel replied, winded but with total confidence as he sprinted even faster toward Bethlehem.
—
Finding the manger should not be all that difficult, Azriel reasoned as he ran the short distance to Bethlehem. Although many homes in this ancestral city of David had domestic stables, in his heart, he had full confidence that God was going to provide direction.
As if to answer his seed of faith, Azriel noticed a magnificent star with eight brilliant points of light emanating from its center stationed above the city. Its radiant tail cast a shimmering shaft of illumination that came to rest on a specific point. The second he turned toward the location, his brothers also altered their course and followed him. They soon spotted the building bathed in the glistening aura, and the spectacular star remained in its place among the other host of galactic bodies, where it would shine for two years.
In a few more moments, the winded young shepherds stopped running to catch their breath just outside a stable beneath the main residence. They could see a small fire inside, along with an ox, three goats, and a donkey. A man stood beside a young woman resting against a pile of hay, and close beside her was a manger holding something that from a distance looked like a bundle of cloths.
The brothers turned and looked at one another with uncertainty.
“Are you sure about this?” Johanan asked Azriel.
“No,” Azriel admitted, “but we have our orders… from Heaven… from the angel.”
Johanan opened his mouth to argue but was so overcome that he shivered involuntarily and then just nodded.
Azriel took a deep breath and began slowly walking toward the stable and the firelight in the chilly breeze. His brothers joined him, and the four of them, holding their staffs, slowly entered the circle of light, crowding the entryway.
The couple, Joseph and Mary, looked up at them. Joseph stiffened instinctively and appeared alarmed, then softened as he saw the relatively young ages of the shepherds.
A moment of silence passed as Azriel struggled for words.
“We are here to see the Savior, Who is Christ the Lord,” he admitted, directly quoting the angel.
“How did you know where to find us?” Joseph responded in a kind voice.
“The angel… just tonight…” 14-year-old Bartimaeus gushed with excitement. “And then the star led us here.”
The new mother smiled broadly, her eyes lit with understanding. “Of course!” Mary responded with her own effervescent joy. “Come and see,” she added, gesturing to invite them over to the manger where her firstborn Son lay wrapped in clean cloths.
The four shepherd brothers gathered around the manger as Mary softly pulled aside the cloth tucked snugly around the Baby. Jesus’ unfocused eyes were opened wide, and His little head occasionally turned, His tiny fingers alternately clenching and relaxing as he kicked His feet beneath His coverings.
“He’s beautiful!“ Ethan proclaimed spontaneously, irresistibly drawn to this holy Child.
“Yes, He is!” Mary responded gently, looking with love at the Christ child she had borne.
“Please tell us about the angel,” Joseph requested and glanced at Mary, curiosity evident in his voice, he and Mary alike recalling their personal encounters with heavenly beings.
“There were many, many angels,” Bartimaeus stated with unhidden excitement.
“They appeared to us this very night, leaving us no more than an hour ago, out there in the fields,” Azriel said, pointing to the surrounding hills. “Hundreds, perhaps thousands… more than any man can count. But the angel in charge, the powerful one, clothed in majestic attire, came first with heaven’s music and choirs, and said,
“Behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, Who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
Azriel quoted the divine pronouncement verbatim with a memory that surprised even him. Then he looked back down at the baby in the manger. “Is His name Christ the Lord?”
Mary laughed lightly. “His name is Jesus. And what are your names?”
“I am Azriel ben Timaeus,” he replied and then pointed to his brothers. “And these are my brothers Ethan, Johanan, and Bartimaeus.”
“It was wonderful for you to leave your flock and come straight away,” Joseph replied.
“Oh, but sir, we did not leave our flocks,” young Bartimaeus said with enthusiastic matter-of-factness. “We would never be so irresponsible! Angels are tending them at this very moment.”
Young Bartimaeus looked down into the manger to discover Jesus staring directly at him with an intent, focused gaze. And then the Baby smiled up at the shepherd boy as if He knew him.
—
Hours after the shepherds had departed back to their flocks, when the fire had reduced itself to embers, Joseph lay sleeping soundly in the straw beside Mary. But Mary remained awake, tenderly embracing her baby boy near her bosom. Her eyes were consumed with the tiny form of Jesus, upon Whom Heaven itself had fixed its fullest attention.
She thought of her own angelic visitation announcing the impending birth of this very Child, of the ones her Joseph had shared with her of when the same angel told him too of Jesus’ arrival in their lives, the warning he had received to flee with his family to Egypt from Herod’s wrath, and again when it was safe to return his family to Galilee. Now there was the young shepherds’ spectacular tale of the angelic announcement of her baby’s birth.
With these thoughts, Mary clung to her precious Jesus even more tightly while treasuring each story and pondering all these things in the deepest part of her heart.
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