Hopes and Fears of All the Years

Matthew 2:4-6

December 11, 2022 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Phillips Brooks was an Episcopal priest facing the same problem every pastor faces as December looms: how do you tell the old, old story in a way that is fresh, new and relates to people of all ages? As Brooks was thinking and praying about that on this particular year, his mind wandered back to the Holy Land three years before. He got to thinking about how he traveled by horseback from Jerusalem to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, and how they had ended up in the traditional location of the shepherds. Brooks noted in his writing that there were even shepherds in that field on the night they were there. They went to a church in the cave that is traditionally the place where the shepherds had stayed on that first Christmas, and attended Christmas Eve worship there. The music and the liturgy went from 10 p.m. until 3 a.m. So I don’t want any complaints if our Christmas Eve service runs over a bit! Brooks himself described it this way: “The whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, [and] again and again it seemed as if I could hear the voices I knew well, telling each other of the ‘wonderful night’ of the Savior’s birth.” As he thought about that experience, a new song began to flow from his pen, [a song we sang to begin this morning]: “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie…”

Brooks then took his lyric to his organist, Lewis Redner, and asked him to write music for it so they could sing it at their Christmas Eve service. Redner sat at the piano for a long time, trying out different tunes, but nothing worked. On December 23, he still had nothing and went to bed feeling defeated. In the middle of the night, though, Redner woke up and heard music in his head. He got up and wrote down the melody he heard, the same melody we use to sing the carol today. “I think it was a gift from heaven,” Redner said. And we’re still singing it today, over a hundred years after it premiered one Christmas Eve in Philadelphia. It endures, I think, because every time we sing it, we’re taken back in time to that first Christmas and to the tiny little place that hosted the birth of the Son of God.

This Advent, we’re exploring the “Roots” of Jesus, how he wasn’t born in a vacuum but came from a family, a place and a story. Last week, we talked about the people Jesus was born into: Israel, a name which means “God fights,” and we talked about how Jesus “fought” for us on the cross. This morning, we want to turn our attention to the place Jesus came from, the little town he was born in. Bethlehem—not the place any kings had been born for a very long time.

In Jesus’ day, Bethlehem was known as the home of the ancient King David, but it was still overshadowed by nearby Jerusalem. The traditional capital of Israel was only 6 miles away, just a two-hour walk, and so Bethlehem had largely become what we would call a “bedroom community” for Jerusalem. Its name means “House of Bread,” so at least at some point in its history, and maybe still in the first century, it had been home to farmers who grew wheat and barley along with millers and bakers, supplying bread to more affluent customers in Jerusalem. It was also the home to day laborers and, of course, shepherds. Some scholars believe the shepherds who lived there largely raised sheep who would be sacrificed in the Temple in Jerusalem. It’s entirely possible that the very shepherds who visited Jesus on the night of his birth were raising such sheep (cf. Luke 2:8; Card, The Nazarene, pg. 89). Bethlehem’s population at this time was somewhere between 500 and 1,000, mostly blue collar, working-class people. They were not people who were ever going to be famous, and none of them would have dreamed that anyone would ever know all that much about Bethlehem (Hamilton, The Journey, pgs. 39-40).

The passage we read this morning, despite all the inaccurate TV specials and nativity sets, actually takes place many months after Jesus’ birth—maybe as much as two and a half years after the birth (cf. Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 31). The Magi, probably astrologers from Persia or modern-day Iran, have traveled somewhere around two years to Jerusalem. They have been following a bright star they noticed in the sky, and it had told them that something important was happening. They had studied the Hebrew scriptures and apparently knew an obscure passage from Numbers 24: “A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel…a ruler will come out of Jacob” (vs. 17, 19). So they head toward Jerusalem, because of course a ruler, a new king, would be in the capital city, wouldn’t he? He would be among the powerful, the important, the wealthy and the significant. He would be in the important places. It’s interesting that their study of the Hebrew scriptures somehow seems to have never taken them to Micah 5:2, a passage we read every Christmas Eve: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel…” The Magi missed it, but King Herod’s advisors had not. When they are asked where the newborn king is, they know (2:5-6). Isn’t it fascinating that here they are, six miles from Bethlehem, that they know that’s the place where the Savior is going to be born, and yet when people who have made a two-year-long journey show up, asking about the Savior, these wise advisors, priests and teachers of the Scriptures, have no interest in going to see if it’s true (cf. 2:8). Six miles away, and they stay put in Jerusalem while sending the Magi down the road (cf. Card 33).

Herod, of course, does ask the Magi to let him know what they find in Bethlehem, “so that I too may go and worship him” (2:8). But Herod had no intention of going to worship this rival to his throne. Everyone in Jerusalem knew that (which, I think, is why Matthew says that when Herod became “disturbed” at the Magi’s arrival, “all Jerusalem” joined him in that feeling, 2:3). Herod was not the worshipping kind, at least not of anyone or anything besides himself. Herod called himself “king of the Jews,” but he was only partly Jewish. His father was Idumean, from Edom, an ancient enemy of Israel (descended from Esau, Jacob’s brother; Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospel, pgs. 318-319). And Herod was intensely paranoid. He had no problem killing anyone he perceived as a threat to his throne, including his own sons and the one he called his “favorite wife,” Mariamne. (Before their relationship went south, he said he loved her so much he planned to have her killed when he died so they would not even be separated by death.) I’ve shared this before, but it bears repeating because it gives us an idea of how Herod was perceived, even by those who had appointed him king. Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor, remarked that it was better to be Herod’s pig than his son (cf. Card, Matthew, 32). Herod had no interest in going to worship this newborn king. He wanted to know where he was so that he could get rid of him, as he later attempts to do by killing all the babies in Bethlehem under two years old.

So the place Jesus was born was not a safe place. If I were God (and we should all be thankful I am not), I would have chosen somewhere safer, somewhere with less strife and conflict, and somewhere more comfortable for my Son to be born. But God chose Bethlehem, which to this day is not a quiet, safe place. Bethlehem, six miles from Jerusalem, is still a focal point for conflict and strife. It sits behind the infamous “security” wall, in Palestinian territory, and while tourists can relatively easily go back and forth into the town, citizens have a hard time getting across the barrier to work or to see friends or family. This is the place Jesus came to when he was born, a place where, as the song says, the “hopes and fears of all the years” seem to have always met.

So what does this place teach us about the way God works? First, we could say God works through the small. That’s not the American way, though, is it? We’re impressed with the “big.” The bigger, the better—that’s our slogan. This past summer I was in Germany for the Oberammergau Passion Play, and one day we had very little time for lunch so a few of us ran into a Burger King to grab a bite to eat. At least there we knew what to order and what we would be getting. I, of course, being an American, ordered a large coke, but what I got was the equivalent of a medium here in this country. I remember when I was a kid, that was true here but over the years, our sizes have increased to where everything is super-sized. We’re impressed with big buildings, big cities, big churches, big everything. And yet, when God decided to visit Earth, he came to a small place, a small town, a small part of the world.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem, probably lived there for a couple of years before Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, during which Joseph took Jesus and Mary to Egypt. When they returned to Israel, they settled in Mary’s hometown of Nazareth (Matthew 2:23), a town small enough that it’s not even on the maps or the town lists of first century Israel (Hamilton 15). Most of Jesus’ ministry was in Galilee, a rural area that boasted very few large cities in his day. The biggest city he visited, according to the Gospels, was Jerusalem and that only at the time of the important Jewish festivals and, of course, at the end. My point is this: it was not only the place where he came from but the place he chose to spend his life that was small. And that should remind us that God chooses the small to do his work. There is no place and no life too small that God can’t work. Your life is not too small for God to work through; in fact, whether you’re actually aware of it or not, if you have surrendered your life to him, God is even now working through you in small and yet significant ways.

He works through the person who shows up every single week and makes sandwiches for the kids at 14th & Chestnut. He works through the person who does the behind the scenes work at the Crisis Pregnancy Center, work that might seem menial but is actually incredibly important to the staff there. He works through the person who takes the time to read to a child, or who listens to a youth who is struggling with faith. He was working while our group was in Kentucky putting a nail in a board or picking up screws from the job site or clearing a site of large sticks in preparation for building  or assembling furniture. God works through the small. Think about it this way: you take one small stone and lay it on the ground it may not seem to make a whole lot of difference. But take a lot of those stones, pile them together, and they can change the landscape. God takes all the small things we do and uses them to change the world; God works in the small.

God also works in what seems to be powerless. Outside of Bethlehem, two years before the Magi arrived, were some pretty powerless people. Shepherds were not looked upon kindly, and generally were excluded from society, certainly polite society. Even though their services were essential for Temple worship, they usually could not attend worship themselves because they were “unclean” by virtue of their profession. Their word was considered untrustworthy (cf. Hamilton 113; Card, Nazarene, pg. 89). Hard to think of anyone more powerless. And yet it was to them God spoke first. It was to these powerless, untrustworthy people outside a nowhere town that God sent angels to announce the best news ever.

Beyond that, the Lord of Life came in a pretty powerless way. He came as a baby, a helpless infant, into a family that had virtually no standing. No one knew who Joseph or Mary were. They were no one important and had no significant influence in culture. But God specifically chose these two. There was no mistake. He chose a powerless couple to be the earthly parents of the Son of God. So let me ask you: do you often feel powerless, like you don’t matter? You may be powerless in the world’s eyes, but that’s just the place God wants you to be in order to use you. For the last few decades, Christians have been focused on attaining particularly political power and this has made every election “the most important election in our lifetime.” But what if the answer isn’t found in political power? What if the answer isn’t influence? What if the answer is found as individual people actually live like Jesus, changing the culture one life at a time? What if the answer to our cultural ills isn’t power but powerlessness? What if God can only use us when we set our bid for power aside? I’m just asking questions, but this I do know: Jesus came in powerlessness. In fact, Philippians says he intentionally set whatever power he had aside. Paul is probably quoting an ancient hymn when he writes this: Jesus, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing…” (Philippians 2:6-7). God works through the powerless.

And God works in the hidden. Many of you know I grew up in a small town. Sedalia, Indiana—population 150 if you counted the cats and dogs. And if you are from there, you know where it is and how to get there. But if you’re not, it’s kind of hard to describe. Well, it’s in Clinton County, north of Frankfort. Yeah, a lot of things are “north of Frankfort.” It’s about halfway between Lafayette and Kokomo on Highway 26. So are a lot of other tiny towns. It’s just five miles outside of Rossville. And where is Rossville again? Many people could drive right through Sedalia and, even though there was a speed limit, very few people paid any attention to it, so they would miss it. There was a town there? I kind of get that vibe from Bethlehem, and Nazareth, too. They were both small towns (though bigger than Sedalia) that were usually overshadowed by their larger neighbors. Bethlehem was “kinda near” Jerusalem, and Nazareth was “kinda near” Sepphoris. In fact, most people think one of the reasons Joseph and Mary settled in Nazareth is because Joseph could find work in the building of Sepphoris. Sepphoris was a Roman city, cosmopolitan, a place for the wealthy and the important people of Galilee to live. Today you can still see the remains of beautiful mosaics and expensive houses there (cf. Hamilton 15). But here’s the thing: today Nazareth is still a place, a thriving town, and Sepphoris—well, we will visit the ruins of that Roman city in January. No one lives there anymore. God isn’t all that interested in working in the halls of significance, in the places where so-called important people want to be seen. God works in the hidden, in the places like Bethlehem and Nazareth, the places where Jesus could grow and mature and become strong, growing in favor with God and people (cf. Luke 2:40). When you think your life doesn’t matter, that you’re from a place no one knows about and no one cares about, know this: God knows your name (cf. Isaiah 43:1) and he is shaping you into the person he wants you to be in that hidden place. God works in the hidden.

There were a number of famous people who were once interviewed and asked this question: what was the most fulfilling part of your life? John Lennon said it was when he was playing in little pubs before the discovery of the Beatles, and Henry Fonda said it was when he was eating beans out of a can while doing summer stock theater in Martha’s Vineyard before he was discovered (Things Above Podcast, 11/9/2022, time stamp 23:11). In other words, fulfillment doesn’t come from big, powerful, public moments. It comes in small, seemingly powerless and hidden places. It’s in the moments that might just as easily go unnoticed. I love the well-known story of the prophet Elijah when he is running away from a queen who wants to kill him. He is hiding in a cave when he hears God telling him that he is about to pass by. And then there’s this terrible wind, followed by an earthquake, followed by a fire. But God is not in any of those things. Instead, God shows up in a “gentle whisper” or one translation (NRSV) says “the sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:11-12). God, perhaps most often, shows up in the small places. He uses the ones the world thinks are powerless, and he works in hidden spaces.

Phillips Brooks really wrote the carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” as one way teach the Christmas story to children. I especially love the third verse of that carol, and it seems an appropriate way to bring this message to a close this morning.

How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is giv’n;

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heav’n.

No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.

And that’s still true today. Where meek souls will receive him, Jesus will come and live within you. Let’s pray.