Where We Are From

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

December 23, 2012

The Fourth Sunday in Advent

Where We Are From

Micah 5:2-4

After visiting Bethlehem a few years ago,

the author Annie Dillard described it as a “queer little place,”

an odd place that to her had more

the feeling of an amusement park

than a holy place where Christ our Lord was born,

the place where God came down in love to become human,

to walk with his children.

Dillard summed up her feelings writing,

“any patch of ground anywhere smacks more of

God’s presence on earth…”

Bethlehem is the birthplace of our Lord,

yet Dillard, a woman of great faith,

 didn’t hesitate to denigrate the town.

She’s not alone.

“The runt of the litter” is how Eugene Peterson

wrote of Bethlehem,

paraphrasing negatively the verse from our lesson

that described Bethlehem as

“one of the little clans of Judah”.

Bethlehem, the little town where our Lord was born,

where the heavenly host trumpeted the news of the birth

to the shepherds as they watched over their flocks.

Bethlehem, that place where the Inn was full;

where Mary and Joseph were offered shelter

in the stable out back because

it was the best the Innkeeper could do,

or, perhaps it was all he was willing to do.

In Luke’s birth narrative,

we are told that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth,

up north, near the Sea of Galilee.

They traveled to Bethlehem reluctantly,

traveled because they had to:

the Roman government wanted all citizens to register

and Joseph was required to go to Bethlehem,

also known as the city of David,

because he was “descended from

the house and family of David.”

It is easy to forget that the great King David

was himself born and brought up in the mud of Bethlehem,

a gangly boy, the youngest of Jesse’s sons,

destined, at least so it first seemed,

to life as a shepherd,

until God intervened through the prophet Samuel,

(1 Samuel 16:7)

In Matthew’s gospel we find a very different story.

There is no census, no registration,

no journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem

by Joseph and Mary great with child.

We can only draw inferences from Matthew’s text,

but he seems to suggest that

Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem.

Matthew tells us that when the Wise Men came

to pay the Christ child homage,

they came not to an Inn, or a stable, or a manger,

but to a house:

the star they followed

settled over a house in Bethlehem.

Why Bethlehem?

Why not Jerusalem, the big city, the real city of David?

Or why not just leave poor Mary alone in her pregnancy

and let her have the child in Nazareth,

if that was in fact where she and Joseph lived?

Jesus could have been born anywhere,

but our text reminds us that Jesus came to fulfill the Scriptures,

and some 700 years before the birth of our Lord,

God spoke through the prophet Micah

telling his children that just as he had called David from Bethlehem,

he would call the Messiah from the same town,

as utterly forgettable a place as it was:

“from you Bethlehem,

shall come forth one who is to rule all of Israel,”

From Bethlehem,

as little as it was,

as odd as it might have been.

None of that mattered to God, though.

How quickly we forget that,

“The Lord does not see as mortals see.”

(1 Samuel 16:7)

So God chose Bethlehem to be the birthplace of his own Son,

the one who “…would stand and

feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,

in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.”

God chose Bethlehem as the birthplace

of the one would rule with justice and righteousness,

whose name would be Wonderful Counselor,

Mighty God,

Everlasting Father,

and Prince of Peace;

whose “people would live secure;

[who] would be great to the ends of the earth;

and [who] would be the one of peace.”

This is how God works,

in ways we often don’t understand,

often turning our most firmly held assumptions upside down.

As the apostle Paul taught us, God often works by,

“choosing what is foolish in the world to shame the wise,

choosing what is weak in the world to shame the strong,

preferring what is low and despised”

to the high and mighty.

(1 Corinthians 1:27)

And, as a result,

Bethlehem, the runt of the litter,

holds a special place in our hearts and minds,

a place filled with the very presence of God,

the Spirit of God,

the glory of God.

As we will sing in a few minutes

“O little town of Bethlehem,

How still we see thee lie;

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by:

Yet in thy dark streets shineth

 The everlasting Light;

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee to-night.”

It was the Episcopal priest Phillips Brooks who wrote those words,

back in 1868 after visiting the town.

His reaction was not at all that of Dillard’s.

In a letter to his father, he wrote,

“It was only about two hours [riding] when we came to the town,

situated on an eastern ridge of a range of hills,

surrounded by its terraced gardens.

It is a good-looking town,

better built than any other we have seen in Palestine.

… Before dark, we rode out of town to the field

where they say the shepherds saw the star.

… Somewhere in those fields we rode through

the shepherds must have been.

…As we passed, we saw shepherds who were still

‘keeping watch over their flocks by night.’”

Brooks rode through the town

with his mind’s eye focused on what it must have been like

on that wondrous night 1865 years before,

when the cry of a newborn pierced the darkness

and shattered the cold, awakening the world;

when angels of the Lord God announced the glorious news

first to the shepherds in all their dirt,

all their pungency,

all their sheepish squalor.

Brooks was able to see in his mind the marvelous birth:

the exhausted Mary,

the proud and relieved Joseph,

the curious animals gathered round,

and that florid face glowing as though lit from within.

Brooks was able to hear the angel as he spoke to the shepherds:

“I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people,

for to you is born this day in the city of David –

and yes, I do mean  Bethlehem –

a Savior who is the Messiah, the Lord,”

(Luke 2:10)

Brooks was able to hear the multitude of the heavenly host singing

“Glory to God in the highest heaven

and on earth peace,

goodwill among all people.”

Brooks heard and saw

as though the clock had turned back 1,865 years.

He heard and saw in such a way

that he was inspired to write one of our most beloved hymns,

a tribute to a town that no one thought worthy of tribute.

We are, all of us, from different places,

yet we are all from Bethlehem

for we were all born to new life

in the birth that happened in that odd little town.

In the birth at Bethlehem, as Paul reminds us,

there is no longer slave or free,

Jew or Gentile,

male or female,

black of white,

left or right,

for we are all one in Christ Jesus our Lord.

All of us one, all of us singing

“O holy Child of Bethlehem,

Descend to us, we pray;

cast out our sin,

and enter in…”

Enter into our hearts,

our hearts we keep so boxed up,

wrapped up,

and closed up.

Enter in dear child with your peace

and fill our hearts with your love.

Enter in Lord Christ with your grace,

that we might open our hearts to all.

Oh child born in Bethlehem

come to us,

abide with us:

Come to us and abide with us here in Manassas;

abide with your grieving flock in Newtown;

abide with all your children in this country

in every country,

everywhere.

Abide with us so that we learn

that it isn’t where we are from that matters,

but where we are going,

for we are called to Bethlehem:

for unto us a child is born,

the Messiah,

the Savior,

our Lord Jesus Christ.

Glory to God in highest heaven!

AMEN