“Small Town News”

December 24, 2006

Micah 5:1-5

Luke 1:39-45

Occasionally on the Late Show with David Letterman, Dave reads clippings from small newspapers about events that, while perhaps of interest to local residents, seem only humorous to most viewers: strange items for sale, bizarre police calls, the events of daily life in countless places that would never make it into the New York Times, maybe not even into the Press-Citizen. It’s “Small Town News.”

Down in southern Illinois where my parents live, the local paper is filled with small town news. A few years ago the paper ran an article about my father’s upcoming ninetieth birthday party—again, not something of much interest outside a very small geographic circle. The paper even included a photo. Underneath my father’s picture was the caption “John Lovin to celebrate ninetieth birthday.” And that was really nice, except that my father’s name isn’t John. Small town news.

This morning, as Advent preparations move closer to Christmas celebrations, we heard again the well-known small town news from the prophet Micah: “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel.”

Bethlehem of Ephrathah—so called to distinguish it from the more important town of the same name in the northern part of Israel. The New Testament remembers Bethlehem as just a “village.” Christian tradition recalls it as a “little town.”

The stress is on insignificance here. Bethlehem is far different from Jerusalem, the center of religious and political life. Yes, Bethlehem once had its fifteen minutes of fame. It was the birthplace of David, the greatest king the nation ever knew.

By the time of Zephaniah, however, it knew only faded glory. Bethlehem was nothing. In those days such a report might have been as laughable as anything on Letterman. Could anything important come from this little town?

And yet in the words of the prophet we hear a central theme that runs throughout all scripture: God chooses the least likely, the least significant, to accomplish God's purposes.

The prophet invites us to imagine something new, to see what might be. This is the problem and the promise of Christmas.

December arrives and Christmas approaches. Many people start developing a “siege mentality.”

Some are dealing with serious illness. Some face an end-of-the-year overload of work or find their very employment threatened. Some know that the new year will bring difficult decisions. Others feel the crunch of money or time because there never seems to be enough of either.

Samuel Miller, once the dean at Harvard Divinity School asked for all of us: “How shall the heart, bearing its burden of loneliness and shame and grief, sing the songs of Christmas gladness? The truth is, we need Christmas. We need it so deeply, so desperately, that we will celebrate it though our hearts wear sackcloth and ashes. We will celebrate ‘something’ in it that the world and all its fury cannot dim or obliterate. We will keep it as a ‘sign,’ a sign that we believe in a world of ‘peace on earth, good will to [all],’ though all appearances are against it. Fundamentally and ultimately, we believe that God will not forsake us, even at our worst. We have a hope—a star over the new born child.”

Even in the worst of times the hope remains that God will be present as a shield, a comfort, a shepherd. Even in the worst of times, the hope remains that God is giving birth to a new possibility—the reconciliation of God and humankind.

The British choral composer John Rutter, finds hints of this possibility in the music of Christmas.  “With music,” he says, “your Christmas can always be perfect. With real-life Christmas, there's always something that's going to go a bit wrong. You're hoping it’s going to snow on Christmas day, but it doesn’t. Or your turkey smells absolutely gorgeous, but it turns out that it’s a bit burned when you come to eat it. But the music of Christmas is always perfect.” Maybe you have a sense of what he means—and we certainly had evidence of this last Sunday.

Rutter adds: “I love Christmas. It’s the child in me. Maybe I’ve never quite grown up. I still feel just for those few magic days a year, that we have the world as it might be.”

In Luke’s gospel, we hear Mary tell of the world as it might be, the world as God will one day make it. Her song speaks of the deep human hope—and perhaps of deep human fear:

God has shown strength…[and] scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

God has brought down the powerful…and lifted up the lowly;

God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

Catching a glimpse of this new possibility, Mary sings: “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

One of the main reasons for you to be alive is so that you can find joy in God.

            You’re not alive to be overworked and burned out.

            You’re not alive to feel guilty.

You have been given the gift of life so that you might find joy.

Christmas offers us the world as it might be. It is beyond magical thinking. It is not for children alone but for the often weary and jaded adults that we have become. We hear the good news that God is still at work in the world, so that the world that is more and more becomes the world as it might be.

Yes, we are still waiting—still waiting for the advent of God—centuries after the birth of Jesus. All our preparation for that birth, the exhilaration that is sometimes felt, the joyful expectancy of children—all are echoes of the active waiting that continues.

In the days ahead, we draw closer to the heart of the meaning of this season. God moves toward humankind in Jesus Christ, reconciling a waiting world, redeeming all creation.

And what place does God choose for a beacon of this hope? The least likely of places: Bethlehem.

When God chooses the least likely—whether that is Bethlehem and Mary or you and me—nothing stays the same. The weak become strong; the hungry are filled with good things. What seems absolutely impossible is presented to the world as a sign of God's love.

“We are all asked to do more than we can do.[1]” Over and over we discover this in the stories of scripture. Over and over we discover it in our own lives. At some point we come to the limit of our abilities. Just at that point, something—life or circumstances, desire or God—something calls us beyond those limits. Our inability becomes an opportunity for greater achievement. Our disability becomes the opportunity for even greater action.

No wonder the hopes and fears seem to be met in that little town of Bethlehem. The God who uses the least likely, the insignificant, does not keep us that way.

In life as we know it, there is considerable surprise. Things happen unexpectedly. The web of circumstance and experience is so complex, perhaps we would even dare to say that the power of God is so resourceful and creative, that at any time we may be astounded by the “impossible.”

Recall in your own lifetime the sudden turn of events, the unexpected of which there was no prediction. We are not stretching the truth to say that God does the most unexpected things.[2]

I'm left listening to the strange news about Bethlehem and wondering: How will God use this small congregation to announce good news to a world under siege? And how will we be transformed in the process?

Let us in the days ahead, once more tune our voices to sing of joy and faith.

Let us train our lives to show love and mercy.

Let us shape our world into a place of justice and peace.

Let us look again with wonder as God incarnate in Jesus recreates our lives and makes the world as it might be.

In the coming year, let us allow God to work among us in surprising and unexpected ways.

In the coming year, let us allow ourselves to prosper so that we might learn what it means to be generous.

In the coming year, let us allow God to transform what is weak within you and me into new strength.

This is the time of year that we all get small town news—reports of how life is going, sometimes from close friends, sometimes from people we only hear from at Christmas.

The news comes in form letters or short notes written beneath Hallmark greetings.

Craig writes this year from Indianapolis about the recession and its effects on his life. Doug says in a hand written addition to his Xeroxed letter, “We’ve left out some of the rough spots. And I tell of parties and pageants, of hospitals and homes, of weddings and births and deaths and all the other Iowa City small town news that says in some odd way: “The Creator of heaven and earth has come to us in Jesus, born in Bethlehem.”

The news from that little town continues to be heard two thousand years later.

Our message is still that the Christ has come from Bethlehem; in that little town something amazing happened. God has come to the besieged city, has joined the besieged soul. The shepherd, the one of peace, is Jesus of Nazareth.

Along with all of creation, you are loved by God, whose mercy is great, whose compassion is eternal.