No Ordinary Town

 

SIW 14.12.25

Micah 5:2-5

Ezekiel 37:24-27

 

Can anybody name a town which has a famous festival? Tamworth country music, Grafton Jacaranda, Griffith citrus, forbes elvis.
By now you all probably know that I like to explore a new town. The bigger ones which might have a fabulous bakery or festival. The ones with murals or silo art, even the ones I only stop in for a quick wee usually have something to take my interest for a moment.

Lets have a quick look at the photos I’ve taken in very small places.

 

Bethlehem was a very small place, about an hour and a half walk from Jerusalem on a road called The Way of the Patriarchs. An ancient road used by people like Abraham and Jacob and it still is there, in it’s modern form, called highway 60

Bethlehem was so close to Jerusalem that people might not stop there, if they just kept walking they would reach their destination so it was small and sometimes overlooked but it was important: in 200 Bc it became the main aquifer for Jerusalem. The dead sea scrolls came from Bethlehem and was the home of an important stone age art work called the Ain sakhri lovers.

Bethlehem  was, of course the home of David. David was beloved by his people. His early defeat of Goliath made him a hero and showed his qualities of leadership and courage. After his glorious win on the battlefield he went back to being a shepherd and of course, we all love a humble leader so his star grew brighter.

He was a poet and musician and maybe he had some of that rock star quality that we see in a charismatic leader.

WE still see places like Bowral celebrate their famous son, Don Bradman. The tiny settlement of Barellan celebrates Yvonne Goolagong. If our modern small towns can have so much admiration and pride in their home grown sporting heroes, imagine how Bethlehem celebrated David. King of Israel, humble but great, great but humble, rock star charisma, he had a kind of poet laureate status.

And David eventually died but Bethlehem knew that there was a prophecy over their town.

It makes sense that a small place, occupied by an aggressive and brutal regime would grab onto anything to give them hope for a better future. The promise of a coming David-like king must have sometimes been the only available spark of hope, the only glimmer of joy or peace.

And the prophecy reads like this:

  “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,
 whose origins are from of old,
     from ancient times.”

 

 

 

And Micah goes on:

He will stand and shepherd his flock
     in the strength of the LORD,
     in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.
 And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.

And he will be our peace...

Micah 5:2-5a (NIV)

 

Bethlehem knew there was this prophecy, they knew God had promised a king would arise from there again but after David, Bethlehem was a sleepy place, not appearing to be important, not having any famous sons, not even a major stopping point for people travelling the way of the patriarchs.

Throughout my life I can remember the talk about towns bypassed by highways, I especially remember talk of “the Goulburn bypass” and how we worry when these things happen. We think that without the travellers, without the merchants passing by, without the busyness, our towns will become redundant and die.

When we worry about these things we are right, many many towns from antiquity to now have shrunk and died for various reasons. Families have had to uproot to find work, social structures break down and what was good becomes rubble.

I don’t think that’s exactly what happened to Bethlehem because it has survived a long long time but we know that Bethlehem was a backwater, it was under occupation, the people were oppressed and things were hard.

In those post David years, centuries in fact, the people of Bethlehem must have wondered what was going on with that prophecy.

Where was their promised King like David? When would the occupation end? Was the prophesy real?

We know, don’t we that hard times feel never ending? We know that when covid happened we felt like life would never again be the same. In our personal lives we feel that an illness, a depression, a period of unemployment or loneliness or relationship breakdown will never end. We can feel that we wont recover. We can feel that God has forgotten us and doesn’t hear our cries for help.

As we come up to the celebration of Christmas, we know that the promised saviour came.

Jesus was born in the promised place at the appointed time.

 

The king they had been waiting for was born in Bethlehem, just like God had promised.  

 

Let's hold on to this idea of ‘in just the right time’. I am sure it didn't feel like just the right time for the people of Bethlehem, I’m sure they had been thinking the messiah was well overdue, just like we do when things aren’t the way we hope

 

I think this is a good word for us today. Because at times we can feel so knocked about by life and circumstances. Maybe you feel like that today. We can feel like we have no choice over which path to take. We can feel resentful and powerless. And yet we see the hand of God through history in the story of Bethlehem.

 

I want to encourage you with the thought that The creator and governor of all things has their hand on you. The hurts and the frustration and the sense of being forgotten or overlooked were part of Bethlehems story and but Bethlehem was not just any town , it was the town where the new King was born. Bethlehem claimed her place in God’s story. We can claim our place in God’s story, God’s promises to us will be fulfilled and we can have the gifts of advent, every day. Today we lit the candle of joy and I would like to encourage you with the thought that joy is coming. If you don’t feel it already, God’s promises of peace, hope and love are coming too.

 

We pray for Bethlehem today, for the healing of pain in that region of the world and if you are in a period of pain or waiting, lets think of Bethlehem, God’s promises are true and good and they arrive at the right time.

 

Bethlehem was a small town, mostly insignificant, and Bethlehem became a place of the greatest ever significance. You have a place in God’s story, you are significant.

 

Lets take hope from bethlehems story and rest in the certainty of the love, hope,  peace and joy represented and delivered by that little boy born in Bethlehem.