This week, we continue our Journey to Bethlehem. We left our comfortable home in Nazareth, took the easy road down the Jordan River Valley past the point where John the Baptist will one day preach and baptize, and we climbed the mountainside from Jericho into the high hill country of Judah. And now comes the end of our journey, our arrival as we come walking into Bethlehem.
The cold, windy road we have been following reaches the high hill country of Judah. It is a sparsely populated area, for water is scarce and level farm land is difficult to find. Still, homes are found here and there, 5 homes here, 8 homes over there a mile or two away. The road splits – one branch will go to Bethany and then over the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem – the other branch turns south to Bethlehem.
It is not a far walk once we made it up here – about three hours. The road has ups and downs. The one thing it does not often have is much water, for any rain that falls up here quickly soaks into the ground or runs downhill toward the Jordan Valley far below us. We are about 2500 feet above sea level, 3900 feet above the Dead Sea, the Sea of Death. Fields of barley and buckwheat grow around us, for nothing else can handle the winter’s cold and the lack of water.
Still, birds fly around us – the seeds of thornbush provide enough food for them. The dry smell of dust and what animals have left behind flies into our faces on the cold wind that swirls around us. A couple of snowflakes fly past our head. Joseph and his wife Mary are on the donkey – we are all headed to Bethlehem, because we are all descendants from King David, and a man far away in Rome, a mortal man who arrogantly calls himself the Son of God, the emperor, the “Augustus” – a title that means “worthy of being worshiped” – this mere man has ordered all people to be counted in the city of their ancestors. But he has an army at his command, so we do what he wants. We walk the hundred miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
Bethlehem is normally a small town – a few dozen residents. Limestone caves are common in the area. The area is pretty dry, mainly growing barley, so a major industry is sheepherding and has been so for at least a thousand years, since the time a young teenage boy named David was watching his father Jesse’s sheep. You remember the story?
David The King
The great prophet Samuel, the high priest of Israel, had come to town, for the Lord had told Samuel that King Saul’s replacement was a son of Jesse of Bethlehem. Samuel asked Jesse to bring all his sons in front of him. Seven sons, big strapping men were brought before Samuel. But the Lord rejected each of them as they came before Samuel. Finally, Samuel asked Jesse – “The Lord hasn’t chosen any of these. Are these all the sons you have?”Jesse answered. “There is still the youngest, but right now he’s tending the sheep” And Samuel told Jesse, “Send for him. We won’t sit down to eat until he gets here.”
And when the youngest one, David, arrived, the Lord told Samuel, “Anoint him, for he is the one.” In ancient Israel, anointing, pouring fragrant olive oil on a man’s head, was how the kingship was designated. Crowns came much later. So Samuel anointed David with oil in front of his brothers and the Holy Spirit of God took control of David from then on. And after that, Bethlehem became known as the City of David.
Yes, God doesn’t evaluate men the way we often evaluate men. We tend to pick big, tall men as our leaders. We look for the powerful, the strong, the men who will make us feel tough or safe behind them. But God looks for leaders who are wise, who are smart, who are focused upon what God wants rather than on what the leaders – or the people – want. Read the Psalms David wrote to see David’s heart. It is humbling to think that God wants leaders that focus upon His wants more than God wants leaders that focus upon giving us what we want, isn’t it?
And the second big memory of Bethlehem is that this place is where Jacob’s favorite wife Rachel is buried. Jacob, like Abraham and Isaac, was a wandering herdsman – having sheep and cattle. Jacob was a shepherd – and the people of Israel never forgot that their roots were with the shepherds.
Rachel was special to Jacob – his favorite wife. Rachel found it very difficult to conceive. Eventually, though she gives birth first to Joseph and then to Benjamin.
Joseph, thrown into a hole in the ground, sold to slavers, taken to Egypt.
Joseph becomes a leader of Egypt – indeed is second only to Pharaoh in Egypt, and rescues the clan of Jacob from starvation by inducing them to stay in Egypt. To the rabbis, there would be a future figure, a man known as Mashiach ben Yosef – the Messiah, son of Joseph, who will prepare the way for the kingship of the Mashiach ben David, the Messiah, son of David. The man leading the donkey is a Joseph. The unborn boy who rides in the womb of Mary is descended on both human sides from King David. A coincidence?
And the Messiah? The great savior of Israel, indeed, the savior of the world. The man who will set all things right again, who will return Israel to the importance she once had under King David. The man who will be a fine ruler who dispenses justice as it should be instead of helping his rich friends and punishing the poor. The Messiah, who will bring back the worship of God Almighty into the land and defeat the pagans.
The Followers of Messiah
We focus so much on the Messiah that we forget about the dozen core students who were to follow Messiah – and we forget about the 120 who believed and followed the Messiah – and we forget about the 3000 who believed on that first day when the public news was proclaimed that Messiah had come! We forget about the thousands and tens of thousands and millions who did the day-by-day work of bringing the worship of God Almighty into the land, who even today defeat pagan belief around the world. We forget that we are each called to do that work, like William Carey who worked in a basement in England for years as a repairman of shoes, who dreamed of telling the people of India about the Messiah who had come, who convinced several men in his church to raise some money, who went to India, translated the Bible into the local languages and began the greatest missionary movement in over a thousand years.We forget about the teenage students in a small town in the southern hills of West Virginia who began a revival that brought hundreds of people to the Messiah just a few years ago. We forget about the young black preacher in the small capital city in the hills who grew his church as large as it could grow in that town, and then persuaded fifty people to follow him 1500 miles to Dallas TX to start a church that now has over 8000 people in worship and has a worldwide television ministry, the Potter’s House. We only focus upon the Messiah – we forget that God can use anyone of us to do great things, for God is God – we only need to be willing. The Spirit of the Messiah can work through any of us, if we listen and truly give permission to that Spirit. God asks YOU to do great things and God will guide you through God’s Spirit – if you will simply say “Yes, I will do what the Spirit asks.” Will you say “Yes?” This is the legacy of Joseph.
And Rachel’s other son Benjamin? The clan of Jacob multiplied in Egypt and escaped from Egypt, wandered for forty years and then crossed into the Promised Land of Israel. When the tribes cast lots for the land of Israel, the land around Bethlehem was given to the descendants of Benjamin. Once, the other tribes almost wiped out the tribe of Benjamin for a crime committed by the clan.
And it was here that Ruth and Naomi returned after their husbands died in a famine in Moab. And it was here that Ruth – a foreign woman - met Boaz and married him, giving birth to Obed, who was Jesse’s father. Yes, there is much history in Bethlehem. It is a small village, but important in history. In some ways, it might even be more important than mighty Jerusalem, the capital, the location of the Temple of God, just a couple hours walk up the road.
And as we walk along the road, the shepherds are still there even though the snow is beginning to seriously fall on their naked feet. Some are like David – young teenage boys who are helping their families. Others are hired hands, men who don’t have their own flocks, or their own land. They are the poorest of the poor these days – nothing like the proudly independent Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob of old. After all, what is the job these days? The lions and bears have mostly been run off, bandits don’t usually operate this close to the garrison in Jerusalem, and so they live without much pay, without shelter, just on the leftover scraps of wool, of ewe’s milk, some occasional mutton. No one expects them to become a king like David was. No one would invite them to visit a king. No one would even invite them into their home for dinner. Do you see the shepherds around you as you walk through your world? Would you invite them to your home as the snow flies? Do you even take time to talk with them?
A Small Town
Yet there is one other thing about Bethlehem that is important. Because seven hundred years earlier, at the time of Isaiah and King Hezekiah of Judah, a man named Micah prophesized the destruction of Jerusalem. And he prophesized more:Bethlehem Ephrathah,
you are small among the clans of Judah;
One will come from you
to be ruler over Israel for Me.
His origin is from antiquity,
from eternity.
3 Therefore, He will abandon them until the time
when she who is in labor has given birth;
then the rest of His brothers will return
to the people of Israel.
4 He will stand and shepherd them
in the strength of Yahweh,
in the majestic name of Yahweh His God.
They will live securely,
for then His greatness will extend
to the ends of the earth.
5 He will be their peace. (HCSB Micah 5:2-5a)
Of this, the wise men who study scripture are agreed: Messiah shall come from Bethlehem, a small town in the hills you might overlook.
Do we turn up our noses at people because everyone we know comes from a small town in the hills? Do we assume that everything good and new must come from a distant great city? Do we assume that all spiritual people must speak with a southern accent? Do we rule ourselves out from doing great things for God because of our prejudice against our own hometowns?
It reminds me of a man named Billy from a small town who was the son of a dairy farmer, a boy who did not believe in God’s love until he was ready to graduate from high school, a boy who God took and did great things with. It reminds me of a man who was educated and did not even believe in the existence of God until he was in his early thirties, who took another ten years to begin to do things for God, who did not begin to preach until his late forties, who now has baptized about fifty people. It reminds me of a woman who heard the call of God as a little girl, but listened to those around her who said she couldn’t lead a church – until finally in her late fifties, she began to lead churches, tripling her first church in size in three years. We so often don’t believe we can do good because we come from small towns in the hills. Yet Messiah shall come from Bethlehem, a small town in the hills you might overlook. What great leader might come from our small town?
And so we walk into the little town following young Mary on the donkey, and Joseph, leading the donkey. The snow is now an inch deep and falling fast. We pull our cloaks tight around us as the cold wind whistles through the little town.
So many times, we think in our lives that we will be left out. There are no more jobs at the factory that employed our fathers. There are no good homes left to buy that we can afford. There is something about us that keeps closing doors in our faces. People in our neighborhood feel the same way – they didn’t make a reservation at the inn, there is no room for them because they don’t wear the right clothes, speak the right way, have too many tattoos or not enough tattoos, they don’t understand the code words we speak – Communion, Doxology, Grace. Our fellow travelers in life feel shut out. Do we do this to them with a glance, a roll of the eyes, an impatient gesture? Do we tell them that there is no room at this particular inn? Or do we find them a place in our lives?
In Mary’s case, the local innkeeper takes pity on the poor pregnant girl and says that her and Joseph can stay in the small cave where he keeps his animals. And they gratefully head there among the straw and hay.
It makes us wonder – are we so different from the animals we keep? For we would gladly have our donkey, our cattle, our sheep give birth in such a place, surrounded and protected by warm, insulating straw and hay, surrounded by thick walls of stone. Joseph and Mary are glad for their place that night – it may not be the bedroom of a relative, but compared to God, is there that much different between humans and beasts? Not much, judging from our behavior.
The beasts shove and jostle one another to get close to food and warmth. We push and shove and jostle one another for our paychecks, our entertainment, our groceries. What is the difference? Has God made a difference between us? Does God care for us any more than the beasts? Jesus tells us we are more valuable by far.
And so we bed down for the night on the edge of town, looking out over the fields where the shepherds are watching their flocks this night.
Some wait with their families. Some wait alone.
Some have food and are feasting. Some have a crust of barley bread. Some have nothing.
Some are warm – others are cold.
Some are healthy – others are sick and dying.
Some are safe – and others flee at this moment from soldiers or bandits.
Some are looking forward to their lives – and others have given up on this life.
But all wait. All wait.
The world is waiting, decaying, falling apart.
But there is hope. There is hope for all of us, from the shepherds to the kings, from the oldest men and women to the youngest children, there is hope.
For Messiah is coming. God has promised. Our Savior is coming. God has promised and Mary groans in pain. Soon, the hour will be here. Come quickly, O Messiah. Return to this world. Come quickly…
God of the Universe, we wait for the arrival of Your Son, Jesus Christ, in our lives. Some of us have met Him already and await His face to shine amongst us. Other are still walking in the cold and dark, looking for Him in unlikely places. Help all to find Him. Send Him quickly to all of us. This we pray in His name, the name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Song: Angels in the Realm of Glory
Closing Song: King of Kings
No Room for Us
Where do we look to stay? Unlike Jerusalem, full of guest houses because of the great annual festivals held in that city that triple her size, few people come to Bethlehem. There are few places for guests – only family. We are late, so there are no places left for us. It appears we will have to sleep outside tonight.So many times, we think in our lives that we will be left out. There are no more jobs at the factory that employed our fathers. There are no good homes left to buy that we can afford. There is something about us that keeps closing doors in our faces. People in our neighborhood feel the same way – they didn’t make a reservation at the inn, there is no room for them because they don’t wear the right clothes, speak the right way, have too many tattoos or not enough tattoos, they don’t understand the code words we speak – Communion, Doxology, Grace. Our fellow travelers in life feel shut out. Do we do this to them with a glance, a roll of the eyes, an impatient gesture? Do we tell them that there is no room at this particular inn? Or do we find them a place in our lives?
In Mary’s case, the local innkeeper takes pity on the poor pregnant girl and says that her and Joseph can stay in the small cave where he keeps his animals. And they gratefully head there among the straw and hay.
It makes us wonder – are we so different from the animals we keep? For we would gladly have our donkey, our cattle, our sheep give birth in such a place, surrounded and protected by warm, insulating straw and hay, surrounded by thick walls of stone. Joseph and Mary are glad for their place that night – it may not be the bedroom of a relative, but compared to God, is there that much different between humans and beasts? Not much, judging from our behavior.
The beasts shove and jostle one another to get close to food and warmth. We push and shove and jostle one another for our paychecks, our entertainment, our groceries. What is the difference? Has God made a difference between us? Does God care for us any more than the beasts? Jesus tells us we are more valuable by far.
And so we bed down for the night on the edge of town, looking out over the fields where the shepherds are watching their flocks this night.
Waiting...
And we wait in the cold, with the wind-driven snow swirling around us. Here at the edge of Bethlehem, we wait for the Messiah, son of Joseph. We wait for the Messiah, son of David. We all wait for there is nothing important in our lives except who will greet the Messiah – and who will not greet Him. We wait like people waiting for the bridegroom to show up at a wedding, on the edge of Bethlehem, snuggled under a blanket as the snow begins to fall in clumps. And we think about the other people we know. Who else needs to be here to greet Messiah when He arrives? We wait here, under the blanket like shepherds, hearing the sheep call in the distance. Other people wait in their homes, people wait at their workplaces, others wait on highways, in airports. Others, like shepherds, wait in open fields, in ditches, under roadway overpasses, in shelters.Some wait with their families. Some wait alone.
Some have food and are feasting. Some have a crust of barley bread. Some have nothing.
Some are warm – others are cold.
Some are healthy – others are sick and dying.
Some are safe – and others flee at this moment from soldiers or bandits.
Some are looking forward to their lives – and others have given up on this life.
But all wait. All wait.
The world is waiting, decaying, falling apart.
But there is hope. There is hope for all of us, from the shepherds to the kings, from the oldest men and women to the youngest children, there is hope.
For Messiah is coming. God has promised. Our Savior is coming. God has promised and Mary groans in pain. Soon, the hour will be here. Come quickly, O Messiah. Return to this world. Come quickly…
Prayer
Let us pray:God of the Universe, we wait for the arrival of Your Son, Jesus Christ, in our lives. Some of us have met Him already and await His face to shine amongst us. Other are still walking in the cold and dark, looking for Him in unlikely places. Help all to find Him. Send Him quickly to all of us. This we pray in His name, the name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Song: Angels in the Realm of Glory
Benediction
May the glory of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit shine upon you. And may you be the hands and voice of Jesus in this world as you go forth to do good and speak the Gospel. Be blessed each day! Amen.Closing Song: King of Kings
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