The Weaver of Bethlehem : A story for Christmas Day

There was once a woman, called Sarah, who lived in small house just beyond the edge of the town of Bethlehem.

Her husband kept a flock of sheep on the hills around the town. Often, he would be gone for weeks at a time, and as their children were long ago grown up and gone, when he was away she was alone, but she kept busy, looking after the house, growing vegetables, and most of all, spinning and weaving with the wool from her husband’s sheep. 

Sarah was a very good weaver, known throughout the town for the beauty of her cloth. She could weave strong, thick fabric, to keep the fiercest wind out, but she could also weave the finest cloth, gossamer thin, like silk. But although both she and her husband worked hard, they still only just about made ends meet.

One day, when Sarah’s husband was away searching for pasture with the sheep, there was a knock on the door. There on the doorstep was an official looking man, dressed in fine clothes. 

“Are you the weaver, Sarah?” 

“I am,” Sarah said, nervously, wondering what all this meant. 

“I have a message for you – You are to present yourself at the court of King Herod in Jerusalem tomorrow, with a piece of your finest cloth.”

This didn’t sound like good news at all to Sarah. It was usually far safer to go unnoticed, especially by someone like King Herod, who had a reputation for being cruel and angry. But an order from a king can’t be ignored, so early the next morning, Sarah set off to walk the five miles or so to Jerusalem, with a piece of her very best weaving folded carefully in her pack.  

She presented herself at the palace gates, and was taken in through room after room, corridor after corridor, each one bigger and grander than the last until she was ushered into the most splendid room of all. She’d never seen anything like it; fine carved wood, and silk cushions on the chairs and a great throne upon which sat a bored looking man, holding a cup full of wine in his jewelled hands. 

“Who’s this?” he said to the attendant who had brought her in. 

“Sarah the weaver, sir”.

“Ah yes, the weaver. I hear that you are the best weaver in the area – is that true?”

“I, I don’t know, sir – I try my hardest to do a good job.”

Sarah handed over the cloth she had brought with her. Herod rubbed it between his fingers. “Yes, if it is as good as this, it will do.”

“Do for what, sir?”

“I want a toga – you know, one of those long things people wrap round and round themselves. They’re all the rage in Rome. All the best people wear them, including the Emperor. So, obviously, I should have one too. But it’s got to be made of your very best, finest wool. It must be the best weaving you have ever done. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. How long should it be, sir?”

“Twelve cubits exactly – no longer, no shorter. – A cubit was about the length from your elbow to the tip of your fingers – “ That’s what I’m told is the perfect  length, so that’s how it should be.”

Twelve cubits, thought Sarah – that will take months to weave in between all the other things I have to do! 

“And I shall want it to be ready by the time of my birthday feast, which is…hmm…three weeks away.”

Three weeks! Thought Sarah. How can I possibly get it finished in time?

Herod waved Sarah away impatiently. As far as he was concerned it was all settled. 

But Sarah knew there was one other question she really had to ask, so, summoning all her courage, she coughed gently. 

“Excuse me, your majesty, but might I ask how much you will pay me for the cloth I weave for you?”

Herod turned back towards her, and looked at her, astonished. “Pay you! What do you mean, ‘pay you!’ It will be an honour for you to do this work for me, a token of your admiration and loyalty. And just think of the important people who will see it – it will be free advertising for you. It might even bring you more work. Why ever should I pay you for it? But mark my words; if you don’t finish in time, or it isn’t just as I have ordered, then you can be sure there will be trouble. 

“The impertinence” – he said to the attendants. “how much will you pay me? – whatever next! Take her out!  “ 

So Sarah was taken out and sent home, knowing that there was nothing for it but to do as Herod demanded. 

There was no time to lose. And before she could even start on the weaving, she had to have yarn to weave with.  

She set to work. She sorted through the fleeces in the storeroom, choosing the finest she could find. She washed them and carded them and set to work with her spindle spinning the yarn. Every spare moment she had she spun and spun and spun, as finely as she could until there were reels and reels of yarn ready for weaving and her hands ached. Days passed, a week passed, before she was even ready to set up her loom and begin to weave. There was only a fortnight left. She wove and wove, sending the shuttle backwards and forwards as fast as she could, but it was slow, slow progress. The yarn was so fine. Sometimes the cloth hardly seemed to grow at all. Now there was only a week left. Faster and faster she wove. Now there were only two days left, now one, but it still wasn’t finished. On the night before Herod’s birthday, she still had two cubits to go. “If I stay up all night, perhaps I might just finish it,” she thought.  

She wove on by the light of a single candle as the darkness fell and the stars came out. Sarah was exhausted. Her eyes kept closing, no matter how hard she tried to stay awake. Maybe just a five-minute nap would refresh her, she thought, as she leant back in her seat at the loom and rested her back against the wall, just for a moment. In an instant she was fast asleep, but as she slept she dreamt she felt  the touch of soft feathery wings and heard sweet singing – a song of a world where people loved each other, and no one was oppressed.  

But then, suddenly, interrupting that glorious music came the loud crowing of a cockerel. Sarah sat bolt upright. The first light of dawn was streaming in through the window. She’d slept all night. Oh no! there was no chance she’d finish the weaving now, was there. She reached for the shuttle, but what was this? 

She looked at the loom. She knew where she had stopped weaving the night before, but somehow the loom was full. The weaving was finished. Had she been weaving in her sleep? No, she was sure she hadn’t. As she wondered what could have happened, she noticed one stray white feather lying on the floor beside the loom which was far too big to have come from any bird she’d ever seen.  

Shaking her head, she cut the cloth off the loom, and measured it. One cubit, two cubits, five cubits, ten cubits, eleven cubits, twelve cubits – the length she’d promised – but there was more - thirteen cubits, fourteen. Two cubits too many. What should she do? Herod had been clear. It had to be twelve cubits long – that was the perfect length, he said. Would it matter if it was longer? With someone like Herod you could never be sure. So, Sarah cut off the extra bit and hemmed both pieces with tiny stitches to stop them unravelling. She set the smaller piece to one side, wondering what to do with it. As she looked at it again, it seemed even better than her own weaving. 

But there was no time to think of that now. She folded Herod’s toga and put it in her bag and hurried off towards Jerusalem. When she got there, a servant at the gate took it from her with a grunt and shut the door in her face – no thanks, no acknowledgement, and certainly no pay. All she could do was turn around and head back the way she’d come, hoping that the toga was good enough not to bring Herod’s wrath down on her head, hoping that was the last she would ever have to do with him.  

But as she put Jerusalem safely behind her, she started thinking about that spare piece of cloth she’d set aside. What should she do with it? It would raise very good money if she sold it; it was so fine! She started daydreaming about what she would spend the money on; something useful for the house? Or just something beautiful – there was never any money for luxuries, and it would feel lovely to have a treat… By the time she got home, she had a whole shopping list in her mind. At least something good had come from this.  She was very excited. She folded the cloth into her bag and decided to set off for the market to see if she could sell it straight away. 

But as she headed for the door, it opened, and there was her husband, home at last! He seemed to be just as excited as she was.“You’ll never guess what happened” they both said at the same time. 

“You go first,” he said. “No, no – you tell me your news” she answered – so he did.

“Well!” he said, “What a night! We were out on the hillside, just like always. It was pitch black, no moon, and cold, cold. But then, all of a sudden there was light everywhere and great flying things with snowy white, feathery wings, singing at the tops of their voices. It was amazing. Then one of them says to us ‘Don’t be afraid’ – which we were – ‘the Messiah has been born, the one God said he would send to save you. He’s in Bethlehem, and he’s lying in a manger, and you can go and see him.” Well. We were gobsmacked. We just stood there with our mouths open until he said again – ‘Go on then…’  So we did. Turns out he’s right here in Bethlehem staying in old Eli’s place – the father is some sort of relative of Eli. But Eli’s guest room was full, so there was nowhere for them to stay except down the end of the house where the animals were. They’d had to put the baby in the animal’s feeding trough. The poor little scrap was just lying on the scratchy straw. The angel said he was “wrapped in swaddling clothes”, but it looked like they were cut from one of Eli’s old hessian feed sacks to me. We’d never have let our babies sleep like that. The mother and father – Mary and Joseph were their names - must be really hard up, and old Eli doesn’t have a clue about babies.

Anyway, sorry to be rattling on. What was your news?”

“Oh… never mind,” said Sarah. “It can wait. This baby… do you think I could go and see it too.”

“I don’t see why not” said her husband, “I expect Mary would be glad to see another woman – she looked worn out and terrified.”

Sarah didn’t wait a moment. She set off on the short journey to Eli’s house. She called out quietly as she pushed open the door, but she needn’t have worried. The young mother, trying to hold the wriggling baby in her arms, looked up at her with tears of relief in her eyes. “I’m so glad to see you. This is my first and I don’t know what I’m doing. All I know is that this isn’t how it’s meant to be, a baby having to lie in the straw among the animals.” 

“I’m sure you’ll do just fine” said Sarah “It takes a while to get used to babies. But I have something for you that might just help.”

Sarah took the cloth out of her bag. It was funny; it looked even more beautiful than it had done when she’d first seen it. She could swear it shone with its own light. It must be her eyes – she was very tired! 

“Here,” she said. “I don’t really know where this cloth came from, but I know where it should be going.”

And she wrapped the child around with the cloth, just as she had her own children so long ago, and gave him back to his mother, and he lay in her arms, comforted, and quieted by his fine new shawl. 

And as he slept, Sarah told Mary what had happened, about Herod – ‘steer clear of him if you can’ – and about the weaving, and about her dream, and about the single white feather she’d found. “What can it all mean?” she asked. 

“I don’t know” said Mary, “but I do know this. There will always be Herods in the world – people who have to throw their weight around to feel they matter at all - but there will also always be love, and this shawl will remind me of that, whatever happens in the future. If what I’ve heard is right my son who is wrapped in it, has come to bring us love enough to wrap the whole world if we will let him.” 

And the child fell asleep, and so, not long afterwards, did his mother. And Sarah tiptoed out and left them to rest, and so shall we. Amen