Little Bethlehem

A small village on a ridge. A few houses. Some fields of barley. Shepherds on the hillsides. Nobody would put it on a map of important places. And yet God has written its name into his plans.

Micah was a prophet from Moresheth, a country town in the low hills of Judah. He lived around the same time as Isaiah, more than seven hundred years before Jesus. Micah was not afraid to speak against the rich and powerful in Jerusalem who cheated the poor, took their fields and twisted justice for money. He warned that Jerusalem itself would be judged. In the verse just before our passage, he describes the city under siege, its leader so humiliated that the enemy strikes the judge of Israel on the cheek with a rod. Jerusalem's kings had failed. So where would God find a true ruler for his people?

Not in the great city. In a little one. “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, being small among the clans of Judah, out of you one will come out to me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings out are from of old, from ancient times.” Bethlehem. The old village where Ruth gleaned barley in the fields of Boaz. Where Jesse lived. Where a young shepherd named David was out with the sheep when the prophet Samuel came looking for a king. Ephrathah was its old family name, to make sure no one mistook it for another town called Bethlehem up north. Micah says it is small, too small to count among the clans of Judah. And out of it, God's ruler will come.

But Micah says something strange about this ruler. His goings out are from of old, from ancient days. This ruler's story did not begin in Bethlehem. It reaches back long before. Then Micah explains that God will give his people up for a while, until she who is in labour gives birth. A time of waiting, like the long months before a baby is born. And then the rest of his brothers will return to the children of Israel. The scattered family will be gathered home.

And what kind of ruler will he be? “He shall stand, and shall shepherd in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.” A shepherd, like David, the boy from Bethlehem's fields. Not a ruler who uses his people, but one who feeds and protects them. “They will live, for then he will be great to the ends of the earth. He will be our peace.” Not just that he will bring peace. He will be our peace. About seven hundred years later, wise men arrived in Jerusalem asking King Herod where the new king of the Jews had been born. Herod called his chief priests and scholars. They knew the answer at once. In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what the prophet has written. And a few miles south of Jerusalem, in the little town of David, the shepherd-king had been born.

Christians have remembered a particular place in Bethlehem as Jesus' birthplace since very early times. Around the year one hundred and fifty, Justin Martyr, who came from the land of Israel, wrote that Jesus was born in a cave near the village. In the three hundreds, the Roman emperor Constantine built a great church over that cave. The Church of the Nativity, rebuilt in the five hundreds, still stands, and in twenty twelve it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Little Bethlehem. You'll find it in Micah chapter five, verses two to five. When the great city failed, God chose a small village, and from it came the shepherd who is our peace. So here is a question to carry with you. God chose small Bethlehem. Do you ever feel too small to matter? What might God want to do through you?