Today is the second Sunday in Advent. Last week I began my Advent series of messages, called A Song for Christmas. Each message in the series is based on a Christmas carol, and at the end of my message I will play that week’s featured carol on guitar. This morning’s message is based on two carols – Away In A Mangerand The First Noel. The title of the message is There Are No Insignificant People or Places.
The Scripture text for this morning is a combination of two passages, the first from the prophet Micah and the second from the gospel of Luke. Follow along with me as I read those passages –
Micah 2:2, 4
2 “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.”
4 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.
Luke 2:8-16
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.
9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.
11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.
12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.
I have two points that I will mention this morning, both of which are reflected in the title of this message –
1. Away In A Manger – There Are No Insignificant Places.
The prophet Micah says this of Bethlehem – But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah. I find that an interesting verse, as even the Bible acknowledges Bethlehem to be a place that is not viewed in terms of any great significance. Even the followers of Jesus would have this attitude as well. Upon hearing that Jesus was from Nazareth (while Jesus was born in Bethlehem, he grew up in Nazareth), for example, Nathaniel said, can anything good come out of Nazareth? (John 1:46). And that’s the attitude of one who would become a follower of Jesus!
Bethlehem of today is not the small village that it was in the time of Jesus. Modern Bethlehem has a population in the city of more than 25,000, plus numerous others in the surrounding area. At the time of Jesus, it was a village of a little over 1,400 people and one that had been in decline for some years. It was not, certainly, a place of particular significance by any social, political, or economic measure (with one exception, and that is that it was the birthplace of David, the renowned king of ancient Israel. That is not insignificant matter, but outside of being the birthplace of David, by the time of Jesus the town was not recognized as a place of any major importance).
When I think of the words away in a manger, I think of the many places in the world like Bethlehem. They are the small towns and villages that are seen as being away, in the sticks, in the boondocks, in the middle of nowhere. People have long looked at the small towns and out of the way places, such as Bethlehem, as places from which to escape. The cities – the urban landscapes – those are the places to be. That is where the action is. That is where the opportunity is. That is where anyone who is anybody will want to be.
I come from a place of little significance. I was born in Steubenville, Ohio but grew up in Wellsburg, West Virginia. Wellsburg is a town that has long been in decline. I graduated high school in 1975, and at that time the area surrounding Wellsburg had a strong economy because of the steel and coal industries that served as the economic engine of that part of the Ohio Valley (yes, there were very severe environmental consequences to those industries, but my point in this message is about the decline of that area, not the industries themselves). The high school I attended is now well below half the student body that was there when I graduated. My hometown’s population is less than half of what it was at its peak. To walk through the downtown is to see many boarded up and dilapidated buildings, making Wellsburg a mere shadow of what it was when I was a child and young adult. It is painful to see the amount of decline that has taken place. Wellsburg is the county seat of Brooke County, and several years ago I read an article that labeled Brooke County as the dyingest county in the entire United States (having the worst birth to death ratio. Technically, it was statistically tied with a county in Florida, but that county was listed below Brooke County because it was made up of so many retirees who had moved to that area). Several years ago there was a chemical spill in central West Virginia that caused severe environmental damage to several counties. The spill received little attention from the national news media (although they did eventually catch up to the story, but it took a while). I sent an email to the editor of a national publication lamenting the fact that the spill had received so little attention, saying that if this had happened in any other state, it would have become front-page news. That fact that it was not front-page news was proof, to me, that most people simply do not care about West Virginia. To many, West Virginia is little more than the poorest state in the country, relegating it as a place of no significance. In fact, USA Today recently listed West Virginia as the most miserable state in the country. (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/07/24/america-happiest-and-most-miserable-states-well-being/36959203/)
I say all that as a reminder that many people live – or have lived – in places considered to be of little or no significance. We live in Kentucky, a state that is viewed by many as a place of little significance, outside of the Kentucky Derby. Ours is a poor state and is plagued by stereotypes that reinforce the perception that we live in a place of little or no significance.
But God used such a place – Bethlehem – as the location where he entered into the world. We must never disparage any place – and especially should not overlook or disparage the places deemed to be insignificant – because these are the places where God is present, these are the places God uses, and such was a place where God entered into the world.
2. The First Noel – There Are No Insignificant People.
It is fascinating to me the way in which God so often used people who were viewed at the time as being insignificant. Even when God used someone who was significant – such as Moses – it was not until he had become insignificant. Moses, a child of a Hebrew slave, was raised in the home of Pharaoh as a prince of Egypt (Exodus 2:1-10 – 1Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. 5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said. 7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” 8 “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him.10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”)
Moses had all the power, wealth, and privilege that came from being a part of the household of Pharaoh. As you know from his story, however, that ended when he took the life of an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave (Exodus 2:11-15 – 11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?” 14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well). Midian was almost 300 miles from Egypt – a long way from the center of power and influence – and Moses lived there for a long time before God called him to lead the people out captivity. Upon his return to Egypt, Moses was anything but significant.
David, the great king of ancient Israel, started out as someone with no significance whatsoever. In fact, when Samuel traveled to David’s home to find the next king, David’s father did not even bother calling him in from the fields (I Samuel 16:10-13 – 10 Jesse had seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to him, “The Lord has not chosen these.” 11 So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”“There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered. “He is tending the sheep.”Samuel said, “Send for him; we will not sit down until he arrives.”12 So he sent for him and had him brought in. He was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features.Then the Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; this is the one.”13 So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David. Samuel then went to Ramah). That David could be a candidate to be the future king of Israel was too preposterous for his own father to believe.
Speaking of little significance, it would be accurate to say that neither Mary and Joseph nor the shepherds were people of any significance in their time. The shepherds were most likely on the bottom rung of the socio-economic scale, probably caring for sheep owned by others. Mary and Joseph, as typical of the time, were a couple trying to make it as best they could, although even their best efforts would have left them struggling economically. It is fascinating to me that God used people and places of no particular significance for the first Christmas. That the announcement of Jesus’ birth came to shepherds, and not from a place of power or importance, underscored that God was communicating this truth of great significance – there are no insignificant people or places.
Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay – There was, most likely, very little or nothing in their experience that would cause the shepherds to believe their lives had any level of significance to warrant receiving such an appearance and such news. To make the announcement to the shepherds – such a momentous announcement – would be the equivalent of bypassing the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC in favor of the Brooke County Review (my hometown paper) or the Sentinel-News (and I am not meaning at all to slight either paper. I do write a column for The Sentinel-News, after all). It would be the equivalent of having a press conference in Waddy, instead of Washington, DC. And yet here was a messenger from God, coming to them, of all people.
We can’t overlook the humble circumstances into which Jesus was born, and that fact that he was born into a family of no significance. These humble circumstances served as a foundation throughout Jesus’ ministry, and we see this in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12), where he used the language of poverty – blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,blessed are the persecuted. This is the language of one who has experienced an upbringing in a family that was on the margins of society, a family that not only struggled financially but would have struggled to find any sense of significance.
I do not know why God works in the way he works. I do know, however, that God’s ways are often very surprising, certainly when we compare those ways to our expectations and to the ways we think things should work. God most often works in surprising and unexpected way, but those ways remind us of what God values. God values, as we certainly see from the Christmas story, all people and all places. No place is insignificant to God and no person is insignificant to God.
I like how the theologian NT Wright speaks of Jesus when he described him as having muddy feet, because he live[s] in our world. He weep[s] with those who weep. Jesus, throughout his ministry, made a regular point of noticing those who were not seen as having any inherent significance, affirming that their lives – all lives – mattered. He noticed the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1-26), he noticed Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10), he noticed, and healed, the ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19), he noticed, and healed, the woman long crippled (Luke 13:10-17), and many others. God, the creator of all things, became part of his creation. God did not stay far removed or distant from his creation and the needs of that creation. No, not at all. God became one of us in the Christ child, and walked among us, and had muddy feet as he cared for his creation.
At this point, I played a medley of Away In A Manger/The First Noel on my guitar. You can watch a video of the worship service, which includes that guitar piece here –
or watch a video of the medley I did later here –
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