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Scripture: Micah 5.2-5a (NLT)
2 But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
are only a small village among all the people of Judah.
Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you,
one whose origins are from the distant past.
3 The people of Israel will be abandoned to their
enemies until the woman in labor gives birth.
Then at last his fellow countrymen
will return from exile to their own land.
4 And he will stand to lead his flock with the Lord’s
strength,in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
Then his people will live there undisturbed,
for he will be highly honored around the world.
5 And he will be the source of peace.
Comments
Where would we expect the Christ Child to be born today, if He were born in these United States? San Francisco, CA? New York, NY? Atlanta, GA? Dallas, TX? Would anyone expect that Child to be born in Two Egg, FL? Denton, GA? Tylertown, MS? Whiteville, NC? Penacook, NH?
Our passage today reminds us that Divine Wisdom often is born and lives in the most unexpected places. We often judge these places insignificant compared to other, more-notable places. Certainly, is not Atlanta, GA more significant than Denton, GA? Well, possibly it depends on the standards by which you decide.
Micah describes Bethlehem as "only a small village." Certainly, there were more apparently significant towns in Judah. Yet, out of the crisis of oppression by the mighty, ruthless Assyrians, the prophet sees great significance in the small village, the little House of Bread (Hebrew, Beth-lechem).
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In thinking on the message I was to preach on Advent 4C,2007, Christmas Eve Day, I kept seeing three persons who used to sit on the front seat of our school bus. The time was the late 1960s. There was only one African American family in our small, rural community in Georgia. They lived in what looked like a rundown barn facing the Bell Telephone road. The three siblings were Elijah, Lilly Mae, and Roberta. Daily, they sat in that front bus seat, reserved for them due to skin color. Not only were they marked as different on the bus, they were considered so different that they could not drink after a white person, visit white homes, or worship in white churches. They were the modern lepers of our community, as well as much of the States. Compared to the white population, Elijah, Lilly Mae, and Roberta were considered by many insignificant and to many others much less significant than white children.
However, something both haunts me and instructs me this Advent about those three social outcasts sitting on that bus seat with their backs to all the white children. When my mind goes back to that time, I sense the Love of God so intimately present with those three black siblings sitting alone and set apart. I see and know that they were a Bethlehem on that bus. They were that insignificant place that God delights in and does a new work in. Considered social lepers by the dominant white and supposedly mostly Christian citizens, Christ was intimately present and in love with Elijah, Lilly Mae, and Alberta. Those who claimed to follow Christ cut off the apparent insignificants; however, Love lived in them in a special way. And, I am certain they learned some lessons about true Love that we white children, in our being the apparently privileged failed to learn and rightly appreciate, too.
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