On Thursday, November 29, the people living in and around Anchorage, Alaska, went about their lives as usual – working … shopping … watching TV … talking on the phone ... making plans … surfing the net … hinging out with friends. Just going about life. Totally unaware that 3.9 billion – that’s “b” … billion – tons of TNT was about to go off right under their feet.
At 8:30 a.m, on November 30, what geologist called a “normal faulting,” 400 miles of rock shifted just a few feet, creating a 8.9 magnitude earthquake that sent shock waves around the globe and shook the ground beneath our nation’s Capital 4,000 mile away. Experts say the damage would have been a lot worse were it not for the fact that the shift in tectonic plates occurred over 20 miles below the earth’s surface. Since then, they’ve had over 200 after shocks … the biggest one being 5.7 on the Richter Scale. Roads were busted up. Buildings shook up. The airport and oil pipeline were shut down for a while. Thankfully, praise God, no one was seriously injured or lost their life.
How many times had they driven over that fault line? Walked on it? Camped on it? Maybe even had their house built on it? Totally unaware of the massive pressure that was building up right under their feet?
The epicenter of the Anchorage earthquake was about 8 miles north of tow. Two thousand years ago, Bethlehem … a little town about six miles south of Jerusalem … would be the epicenter of a spiritual earthquake that is still sending shock waves around the world!
During the day, Bethlehem had been packed with people coming to register for the Roman census. All the inns were full. It was there, in the still of the night when most of the people were asleep that a spiritual event occurred that would change the whole world forever. And it happened in a manger right there under their noses. Yet all but a very special few woke up the next morning and went about their day and their lives as though nothing unusual was happening … except for the Roman census.
“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man” (Matthew 24:37-39).
That was how it was when Jesus first came … and how it will be when He comes again.
Phillips Brooks captures this hidden tension so marvelously in the opening verse of his poem, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” “O Little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie; above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by” (stanza 1) … yet! Yet …
In 1865, Phillips Brooks did what many pastors did after the Civil War. He went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On Christmas Eve, Brooks hired a horse and began riding south and somewhat west of Jerusalem toward the hill country of Judea. As evening approached, he found himself coming to the fields and hills where he imagined the shepherds had been keeping watch over their flocks when an angel of the Lord appeared heralding Jesus’ birth. His mind and his heart were flooded with the images of the Advent story as he rode and walked through the silent streets of Bethlehem. “I remember standing in the old church in Bethlehem,” he wrote in his diary, “close to the spot where Jesus was born. And the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God; how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices I knew well, telling each other of the Savior’s birth.”
The night that he was in Bethlehem, the town was filled with music and chiming bells … and it got him to thinking about the night when Christ was born. There was singing … an angelic choir … but only the shepherds in the fields heard it. The rest of Bethlehem slept on. For them the night was dreamless and the heavens were silent.
Brooks wrote his poem about that night three years later. He then asked his organist … Lewis H. Redner … to set his poem to music so that people could sing and remember and experience the birth of Jesus in much the same way that he did that Christmas Even night in Bethlehem.
The main focus or feature of this carol is, of course, the identification of Bethlehem as the chosen birth place of the Messiah in whom “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight” (stanza 1b). In the eight century BC, the Prophet Micah announced that Jesus would be born in the sleepy little nowhere town of Bethlehem. “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathat, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you,” says God, “shall come forth for me one who is to rule Israel, whose origin is from old, from ancient days” (Micah 5:2).
These words speak of God’s glorious plan for humanity … and Bethlehem was part of that plan. When humanity turned from God in the Garden of Eden, God gave humanity its first glimpse of His plan. He told Adam and Eve that a Redeemer would eventually come to undo the sin that they had caused to come into the world (Genesis 3:15). As the years went by, God revealed more and more of His plan. When God saved His people from bondage in Egypt through the blood of a lamb … He revealed a little more of His plan (Genesis 12). When He gave them manna in the wilderness, when He brought water from the rock … He revealed a little more of His plan. When He gave Israel the Law and the sacrificial rituals and ceremonies … He was revealing more of His plan. Every aspect of the Tabernacle and the priesthood revealed more of God’s plan. Through the mouths and symbolic actions of His prophets … He revealed more of His plan. When Isaiah wrote of a virgin birth, he was writing about God’s plan. “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. ‘Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and you shall name him Immanuel’” (Isaiah 7:14). Isaiah revealed His name and purpose, but the Prophet Micah revealed the place where He would be born … the small nowhere town of Bethlehem of Ephrathat” (Micah 5:2).
You may be familiar with the name “Bethlehem.” “Beth” is the Hebrew word for “house” and the word “hem” means bread. Put it together … Bethlehem … and it means “House of Bread.” But what is “Ephrathat” … or, more accurately, “where” is it? “Ephrathat” was the name of Bethlehem before it was called the House of Bread. “Ephrathat” means “place of fruitfulness” in Hebrew. At one time, the region grew grapes and olives. In Ruth and Jesus’ time, however, the region grew mostly grain and was known as Israel’s bread basket. Today it is once again an “ephrathat,” a fruitful place, that grows grapes and olives again. How appropriate for Jesus, the “Bread of Life” and the “True Vine,” be born in a place that Micah called a “House of Bread” and a “fruitful place,” amen?
Micah refers to Bethlehem as “one of the little clans of Judah” (Micah 5:2). The tribe or clan of Benjamin was the smallest of the 12 tribes of Israel. When Jacob and his family were traveling to Canaan, Rachael went in to labor and gave birth to a son. She died in childbirth but as she was dying she named her son “Benoni.” Ben … “son” … oni … “sorrow” … Benoni, the “son of my sorrow.”
Jacob buried Rachael just outside of Bethlehem. After he buried her, he changed Benoni’s name to “Benjamin” … “Ben” … “son” … “jamin” … right hand. “Benjamin” means “son of my right hand” in Hebrew and the right arm or right hand, be it king or God, was a sign of power and authority.
Once again, do you hear the divine tension? Before Jesus was born, Bethlehem was the place where Jacob buried Rachael and was associated with sorrow and death. By changing Benoni’s name to Benjamin, Jacob transformed the place … prophetically … knowingly or unknowingly …into a place of power and authority … a place that seats the “son of my right hand.” Jesus also took a place associated with grief and suffering and transformed it into a place of strength and glory … Golgotha.
The Prophet Isaiah said that the Messiah would be “a man of sorrow.” “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; he was despised, and we held him of no account” (Isaiah 53:3). The One who created the universe … who was born and took on flesh in Bethlehem … had no where to lay his head (Matthew 8:20). The One who left Heaven to come and die was rejected by those He came to reach (John 1:11). He knew pain. He knew sorrow. And in the end, was crucified (Isaiah 53:4-6). He is our “Benoni.” He is God’s “Son of Sorrow.” But He is also our “Benjamin” … the “Son of the Right hand” … the crucified Lamb who right now sits at the right hand of God our Father!
Bethlehem … where Jacob buried Rachael … where Ruth and Boaz’ grandson, David, would look after sheep … perhaps in the same fields where the shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks by night … the same fields where David may have composed the 23rd Psalm. Micah prophesized that a day would come when this small, down-trodden, insignificant little town would see the birth of a mighty ruler and the Messiah would rise up from the House of David, so that even magi … gentiles from the East … would be familiar with the prophecy of Micah and come seeking the child that had been born in a stable in Bethlehem.
The main focus of Brook’s carol is on Bethlehem as the chosen birth place of the Messiah. Another focus is on Heaven. “For Christ is born of Mary, and gathered all above, while mortals sleep, the angels keep their wondering love. O morning stars together, proclaim the holy birth (stanza 2a). The angels and the stars in Heaven join together to sing praises to God the King lying in an animal feeding trough in Bethlehem.
Brooks again creates a marvelous tension … in this case, between Heaven and earth. As Brooks contemplates the shepherds who are watching over their flocks at night, he remembers and pictures the angels and heavenly hosts singing and praising God: “Glory to God in the Highest Heaven, and on Earth peace among those whom He favors!” (Luke 2:14).
While the shepherds were watching over their flocks, the angels and the heavenly hosts were watching over the birth of Jesus … the Shepherd who watches over us! They were watching with “wondering love … full of astonishment and joy as they watched the unfolding of God’s mysterious plan of redemption.
We know of angels and archangels. We know of cherubim and seraphim. We know that there are orders and degrees among the angels, but there may well be … and Revelation seems to hint … orders of beings that you and I haven’t even begun to wonder about or imagine And these sinless creatures whose life is filled with worship and praise watched as the Triune majesty of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit fulfilled that ancient promise … not in Jerusalem … but in Bethlehem of all places … born in a manger with cattle and donkeys, sheep and oxen looking in along with the angels. They look down with awe and wonder as God becomes “Emmanuel” … God born in the flesh. Can’t you hear the gasps of angelic wonder? The “ooo’s” and “ahh’s” and sanctified high-fives in Heaven as God accomplishes every detail of His promise to raise up a Redeemer to undo all the sin on earth and bring “peace to all on earth” (stanza 2b).
What Pastor Brooks has done here in this wonderful carol is to get us to look not just at Bethlehem but to raise our eyes and our hearts towards Heaven … to not only have our eyes fixed on what is below but to fix our eyes on that which is above … on that which is unseen … on God’s greater plan and purposes … on forces of unseen creatures that we may entertain unawares (Hebrews 13:2).
There’s Bethlehem. There’s Heaven. And then there’s our hearts. “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given; so God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His Heaven” (stanza 3a).
Do you hear what Brooks is doing? It’s one thing to sentimentalize the story of Bethlehem … it lends itself to that. It’s one thing simply to see the objective reality of the incarnation of the Son of God. But the real challenge is to accept this truth in our hearts. The real point of Christmas and the real point of the incarnation is that God has come to save us from our sins. He has come to quicken and regenerate us. He has come to bring us into union and fellowship with the now-risen Christ who sits enthroned at the right hand of the Majesty on High. These are the “blessings of His Heaven” that God wishes “to impart to human hearts” (stanza 3a).
And then Brooks closes with a prayer. Did you ever notice that before? “O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray” (stanza 4a; emphasis mine). And what are we praying for as we sing? That this Holy Child “cast our sin, and enter in, be born in us today” … and we ask this in the name of our Lord Emmanuel (stanza 4b).
Jesus is not “back there’ in the dim recesses of history. He is not “over there” in Bethlehem or Jerusalem. He’s not just “up there” in Heaven with the angels looking down at us this morning. He abides with us here. He abides with us right now … because He abides in our hearts. He came in the flesh as an atonement and sacrifice for our sin. His Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts so that we can experience the blessings of His Heaven.
That night in Bethlehem, Jesus began a work in us … to bring us out of darkness and into the light … to convert us … to wash us … to justify us … to adopt us into His heavenly household and family … to plant in our hearts the very seed of promise that assures us that having begun a good work, He will complete it.
Do you know Him in that sense? Do you know Him as your Lord and Savior? Do you know Him as Prophet … Priest … and King? Or are you like the good citizens of Bethlehem? Deep in dreamless sleep as life drifts by?
Despite the Everlasting Light that was born in Bethlehem, Bethlehem is as much in darkness today as it ever was with the Light came down from Heaven and took on flesh. It is located in what is today called the “West Bank” and under Palestinian control. There is a different kind of tension there today. Two hundred thousand people live there … 40% are Christian and 60% are Muslim. It is no longer a “House of Bread” but is still an “Ephrathat” … a “fruitful place” growing grapes and olives. It is also a tourist town … with all that comes with it. They receive about 300,000 visitors during the Christmas season. If you were to visit there right now, you’d find yourself in “bedlam.” You have to deal with military and police checkpoints. There’s a massive Israeli checkpoint on the main road going into Bethlehem. You have to deal with the other tourists … and the gaudy commercialism. Trust me, I’ve been there. For example, there’s a tacky orange billboard in the middle of a field where it is believed that the shepherds tended their sheep on that fateful nigh when the heavens broke out in song and announced the Christ Child’s arrival. Just a bright orange billboard that says “Gloria in excelsis Dio” … “Glory to God in the highest” … that’s it! No mention of Jesus or what happened on that night. We would have had no idea what the significance of this orange billboard was if it hadn’t been for our tour guide pointing it out and explaining it to us.
Going to Bethlehem today is a very weird and somewhat unsettling experience. In an article he wrote for “Christianity Today” magazine, author Kevin Bego … I don’t know who he is … describes Bethlehem by playing around with the words to “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” “O jailed town of Bethlehem, how eerily still we see thee lie.” He goes on to describe the network of trenches and fences, barbed wire and walls and military check points that section off the “House of Bread” today. When I visited Bethlehem, there was a military post directly opposite the Church of the Nativity … the spot where Jesus was born .. and right next to the Church of the Nativity is the “Mosque of Omar.”
Not only does Bethlehem produce grapes, olives, and souvenirs … it also produces suicide bombers who strap explosives to themselves and attempt to make their way into Jerusalem … hence the need for all the military and police check points and surveillance. The unemployment rate is said to be upwards of 70% and an average of 500 Christian families flee from there every year.
What a difference between the Bethlehem today and the Bethlehem of long ago. Today’s Bethlehem is a vivid reminder of the chaos and confusion of our world.
In the year 1247, a group of monks founded a small hospital in London that was called “St. Mary’s of Bethlehem.” Initially, they took in sick paupers and street beggars who could not afford care elsewhere. At some point, the monks began to care for the mentally ill as well, which included epileptics, people with dementia, and learning disabilities.
By the 1400s, the majority of the patients at St. Mary’s of Bethlehem were mental patients … which, in those days, were often hopeless cases. All that could be done for them was to house them and feed them and keep them safe from themselves and others safe from them. Through the years, the hospital … which became one of England’s finest psychiatric hospitals … gained a reputation for being a very noisy and chaotic place. Over the years, the name was shortened from “St. Mary’s of Bethlehem” to “Bethlem” … then it got mispronounced to “Bedlam.” “Bedlam” became the generic name for psychiatric hospitals for many years. Because of its association to St. Mary’s of Bethlehem mental hospital, the word “bedlam” is now used to refer to a “place, scene, or state of uproar and confusion.”
As we reflect on this bit of history … how a hospital that had the name “Bethlehem” in its title became known as “Bedlam” … perhaps you’ve noticed how our world today is moving in the same direction. Bethlehem is where the Prince of Peace was born on a still, quiet night. Bedlam is the uproar and confusion that we find ourselves living in from day to day. Bethlehem was the birthplace of hope for our world. Bedlam is the incurable hopelessness that often infects our hearts and souls.
We need to go to Bethlehem … the Bethlehem of long ago. We need to find the peace and hope that was born there in Jesus Christ … and Advent and hymns like Brooks’ “O Little Town of Bethlehem” can take us there in mind and heart, amen?
Let us pray …
