Small Things

Micah 5:2-4

December 26, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I don’t often quote John Cougar Mellencamp, but…“I was born in a small town.” Well, technically I wasn’t born in the small town. I was born in Lafayette, at a hospital, a hospital which they have since converted into something else. But I digress! I grew up in a small town, and I am forever grateful for that. Sedalia, Indiana, population about 150 depending on how many dogs and cats were currently in residence. For those who remember the old television show Hee Haw, I have a strong desire right now to yell, “Saaaa-luuute!” It appears this morning may be just a series of digressions. Anyway—where was I? Oh, yes, I grew up in a small town. Sedalia hadn’t always been as small as it was then or is now. At one time, there was a general store, a garage that worked on cars, and several other businesses. But when I grew up there, we had two main gathering places. The post office, where I went every morning before school to get the mail, and the grain elevator, where the farmers would gather to catch up on the…news. That was pretty much the business district of Sedalia, though there was one manufacturing business that made pig feeders. So having grown up in that kind of a setting, it was surprising to those in rural church I served that I knew next to nothing about farming and had never been a member of FFA.

But there were a lot of advantages to a small town. We could go anywhere in town because everyone knew us and they knew our folks. The kids in town pretty much grew up together, moving from yard to yard to play during those long summer days. Royers had the biggest yard, Peterses had chickens in their yard, and we had the baseball/kickball diamond in ours. When suppertime came, my dad would get on his bike and ride from yard to yard to find us. But they never had to worry that we were in danger. Sedalia was one big neighborhood.

As soon as I was old enough, I took over the newspaper route—just about the only employment opportunity for an 11-year-old in Sedalia. It was January 1978 when I began delivering the Lafayette Journal and Courier. If you’re old enough to remember 1978, you know why that was significant. It was the blizzard of ’78. Almost as soon as I took over the route, the snow hit. We were out of school for two weeks and the only way people could get groceries was via snowmobiles. So those who had snowmobiles were like the earliest version of Door Dash, only they refused to take any extra money because, you know, this was a small town, and they knew they might need a favor from you the next time.

So I was born in a small town, and in many ways, though I’ve lived in much larger places since then, I’m still a small town boy. People will ask where I’m from, though, and when I say, “Sedalia,” I usually get that look. That look that says, “Where? Is that a real place or did you just make that up?” Occasionally, someone has heard of Sedalia, Missouri (after which Sedalia, Indiana was named), but usually I have to explain the towns it’s near. Have you heard of Frankfort? No? Well, it’s halfway between Lafayette and Kokomo. About an hour north of Indianapolis. Usually, somewhere in there, the light of recognition goes on.

And sometimes it makes me think of one of the first encounters Jesus has with one who will become a disciple of his. Philip, a young man who has already decided to follow Jesus, goes to get his friend Nathaniel to invite him to follow Jesus, too. “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph,” Philip says. And Nathaniel says, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:45-46). Nazareth was a small enough town that it isn’t even included in the lists of towns from the first century (cf. Hamilton, The Journey, pg. 15). Nazareth was ignored. Nazareth was somewhere you tried to leave, not somewhere you lived. Can anything good come from there? The irony of that statement is, of course, that Jesus had only lived in Nazareth a few years, since his family returned from Egypt. He was, technically, “from” Bethlehem, where he was born and where he lived for nearly the first two years of his life. Had Nathaniel known that, I doubt he would have followed Jesus at all. Nazareth might have a few redeeming qualities, maybe something good could come from there. But Bethlehem? That wasn’t really any better.

Today, Bethlehem is a larger city, though still in the shadow of Jerusalem and, today, hidden behind a protective security wall and checkpoints. It’s a Palestinian town, and the wall has made Bethlehem’s economy challenging at best. But in the first century, Bethlehem was a small town. Its population was around 300 (though some scholars say it might have been as many as 1,000, but that’s doubtful), which sort of amazes me (cf. Hamilton 39). It was, after all, the birthplace of the greatest king Israel ever had, King David. I’m surprised there was no enterprising person who had put up a sign that read, “Home of King David,” and started charging entry fees. Nevertheless, Bethlehem had remained a small town, home to poor people, day laborers and shepherds raising sheep, many of whom were headed for sacrifice in the Temple in Jerusalem. Its name means “House of Bread,” named thus because it was also home to farmers, millers and bakers. The small place Jesus was born was well-known but not well-thought-of.

Micah had predicted it, centuries before it happened, but even he seems amazed that God would choose a small town. “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,” Micah writes in the fifth century before Christ, “though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (5:2). Micah shouldn’t have been surprised. God tends to use the things that are small, the things no one else thinks much of, the things and the people others tend to ignore. He called an insignificant herdsman named Abraham to walk before him and to bless the entire earth (Genesis 12:1). He promised the runt of the litter, a shepherd named David, that his heir would always sit on the throne of Israel (2 Samuel 7:16). And he surprised a young virgin named Mary by telling her, first of all, that he knew who she was, and second that she would give birth to the Messiah, the Savior not only of Israel but of the whole world (Luke 1:31-33). God shows up in the small things, the insignificant places, and calls the ones no one would expect. We like wealth and power and bigness and good first impressions. And God says, “That’s fine, you can have all that. But I’m going to work over here in an out of the way place, in a way no one will expect.”

Micah gets at that. He describes an abandoned Israel, a land no one thinks of anymore. When he wrote, Israel was pretty much that. Israel had been conquered and taken away into exile. And with the exception of a brief period of freedom, even after the people came back to the land, they had been ruled by one foreign government after another. Rome was simply the most recent in a long line of oppressors. Even though they were back in the land, they still felt abandoned. The prophet Ezekiel had seen the glory of the Lord depart from the Temple (Ezekiel 10:18-19) and it had not come back. Abandoned. And some of you know what that feels like. Many if not most of us have experienced that over the last two years. I read a devotional in the last week or so that talked about how these have felt like two of the least merry Christmases we’ve ever had. The pandemic and the division and the arguments and the politics and we could go on and on about all the things that have made us feel abandoned, desolate. We’ve had this experience in the last year a couple of times where, just when it seems like things might get back to some semblance of “normal,” the world takes a sharp turn and things get bad again. Delta, omicron and whatever Greek letter is next are playing havoc with our world. Things we looked forward to for a long time have been cancelled. People we loved are no longer with us. Others are no longer talking to us because we don’t see things the same way they do. Let’s be honest: we’ve lost folks from our church over things like that, disagreements and misunderstandings. It’s easy to feel abandoned, desolate, small. Micah knew Israel would feel like that, and I believe that’s part of why God allowed him to foresee the coming of the savior to Bethlehem. Because Bethlehem was like Israel felt—small, insignificant, abandoned.

And yet, to Bethlehem will come the greatest of all things. Micah says Israel’s abandonment will end “when she who is in labor bears a son…He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord…for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth” (5:3-4). From insignificant Bethlehem to the ends of the earth. That’s the way God loves to work. Author Dan Wilt puts it this way: “From the small places, the out of the way places, the places where one wonders if anything good can come out of them, comes God’s greatest deliverance of all. ‘Though you are small,’ little town, ‘out of you will come a ruler, who will shepherd my people Israel’ (Mic. 2:6; Matt. 5:2)” (Seedbed Daily Text, 12/18/21).

And so the people were expecting a king, a powerful ruler, someone who would ride in on a white horse and kick out the Romans. They were expecting a powerful kingdom and a strong king, and instead God showed up as a baby in a manger born to a poor family in a poor town. When that baby grew up and began to gather disciples, those disciples, steeped in the culture of expectant Judaism, kept waiting for him to pick up a sword and take control. Instead, he planted seeds of love, mercy, grace, forgiveness, and compassion. He taught a way of life that, he said, would bring in the victorious kingdom of God, but it would not come all at once nor would it start at the “top.” Rather, it would grow, like a small seed. Jesus described it this way: “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade” (Mark 4:30-32). And when they tried to force his hand, Jesus willingly gave up his life and died on a cross. That was that, the officials said. He was gone and pretty soon everyone would forget him. An insignificant preacher from an insignificant town. But then he had the nerve to rise from the dead. And from a small seed, everything changed.

Those disciples were nobodies. No one outside of their families knew their names, and before they met Jesus, their best hope was to be able to feed their families day by day. They did not have aspirations of greatness. In fact, these were the guys whom the approved rabbis had turned down. They were the second string, not considered good enough or smart enough to be a rabbi’s disciples. No one wanted them. But Jesus chose them, and after his resurrection they spread throughout the whole earth and turned the world upside down. From a small seed, everything changed.

A monk named Martin found himself frustrated with his faith. He never felt good enough, and then he read the Scriptures and found that he didn’t have to be, that much of what the church of his time taught only lined their own coffers and did not build the kingdom of God. And so he posted some points for discussion on the church door, much like we might make a posting on Facebook, but what he hoped would generate discussion led to his excommunication, which led to a reformation and then a counter-reformation. The protestant church was begun and the Catholic church was reformed. Martin Luther was a small seed, and from him, everything changed. Later, a man named after him also had a few points for discussion, and his revolved around injustice and racism that the church had helped perpetuate. Martin Luther King, Jr. dared to speak up in a world that did not want to listen. King did not initially seek influence and power. He was a pastor who wanted to share the good news about Jesus. And yet, God called, he answered and from his small seeds, everything changed.

Then there was a small seed named John Wesley. Born in a nowhere town named Epworth, in a church parsonage, one of 19 children, and he wasn’t even the most skilled of them. He nearly was killed in a parsonage fire, probably set by one of his father’s disgruntled parishioners (don’t get any ideas), and he became an Anglican priest not because he wanted to but because it was expected of him. He struggled with his faith, failed as a missionary, and doubted his own ability most of his life. And yet, beginning in a small prayer meeting during college (called the “Holy Club”), the ministry of John Wesley grew into what we know as Methodism today. From a small group meeting to a worldwide movement. From small seeds, everything changed.

So here’s my question for you as we stand on the cusp of a brand new year: where will you plant your seeds this year? What is God calling you to in 2022? We have no idea what this pandemic is going to do in the new year, and it’s easy to be discouraged. I’m struggling with that myself, especially with our Israel trip postponed for the second time, but I’m wondering what God wants to do with me in the time I was supposed to be gone. How will God use that for his good? I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to finding out. If you feel small, hidden, out of the way or misunderstood, “count it all joy. The Lord loves to come to, and work through, the small” (Wilt). He did it in Bethlehem, and he will do it again, in Terre Haute, Indiana. This I know: it doesn’t matter where you’re from, what your skill set is, or how few opportunities you think you have. All that matters is how big your God is, and you serve a God, this year and every year, who loves to surprise us by working through the small things. Let’s pray.