2024.12.22 | Bethlehem: A Place of Humility
“Bethlehem: A Place of Humility”
Rev. Brenda Loreman
Designated Term Associate Minister
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Fourth Sunday of Advent,
December 22, 2024
Luke 2:1-14
Throughout this Advent season, we have been on a journey, on our way to Bethlehem. We started in Rome—a place of longing—and we heard again God's promise that even in the midst of trial and tribulation, there is hope. We journeyed on to Jerusalem—a place of waiting—and we found ourselves waiting for peace in a city whose name means “the place where peace is established.” We realized there that Christ brings not just inner peace, but a call to action, to be the peacemakers and strive to bring about the kin-dom of God here and now. Last week we visited Nazareth—a place of simplicity—and we heard again Mary's joyful “yes” to bringing the Light of Christ into the world. We watched with joy as our children reenacted their own creative journey to Bethlehem.
And now finally we find ourselves arriving in Bethlehem, a town just a few miles from Jerusalem, a small town whose name means “house of bread.” It was a small town—a place of humility—but a place with a very large history in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Luke’s gospel tells us that Joseph is descended from the house of David, the great King of Israel. As a descendant of David, Joseph’s ancestral home is Bethlehem. But to understand how Bethlehem became the home of David, we have to explore another story in the Hebrew Bible—the story of Ruth.
It seems a bit odd to go the story of Ruth in this season of focusing on the birth of Jesus, but bear with me here. Because in the story of Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi, we find the DNA that shaped Jesus and his ministry, and we find the reason for Bethlehem's importance to the Advent journey.
Ruth was a young Moabite woman who married a Jewish man whose family lived in her country, [the mountainous region east of the Dead Sea, in what would now be the country of Jordan]. Her mother-in-law was a devout Jewish woman named Naomi. Shortly after Naomi's husband died, so did her son, Ruth's husband, as well as her other son, whose wife was named Orpah.
Naomi told her bereaved daughters-in-law that she was going to return to her home country, and they should return to their families of origin. After all, they were still young enough to remarry and have families of their own. After putting up initial resistance to leaving Naomi, Orpah relented and returned to her home. But Ruth refused Naomi's request. She vowed to stay by Naomi's side, speaking words that may sound familiar: “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God.” We sometimes hear this scripture read at weddings, but the words weren't spoken by two people about to be married. They were spoken urgently by a young woman to her mother-in-law, both of whom were united in grief.
Together Naomi and Ruth returned to Naomi's hometown of Bethlehem. They were without resources, so to help make ends meet Ruth found a field where hired pickers were gleaning the produce. The workers allowed her to go behind them and gather from what was left. In Leviticus it says, “when you reap the Harvest of your land you shall not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien.” The Torah commands people to provide for the poor and the stranger. Ruth fit the description of a resident foreigner, so the fact that she was allowed to glean in this field meant its owner was obedient to the commands of Torah Law.
The owner, as it turns out, was a relative of Naomi. His name was Boaz. He learned Ruth's story and how she refused to leave Naomi. He showed compassion for Ruth, telling his workers to protect her, allowing her to glean even from the main harvest, and offering her plenty to eat at meal time. That evening when Naomi asked Ruth where she had gleaned that day, Ruth told her the whole story. When Ruth mentioned the name of the man who owned the field and showed her kindness, Naomi told Ruth, “The man is a relative of ours, one of our nearest kin.”
Let's pause in the telling of this story and notice a couple of things that are important. Both Ruth and Naomi are widows, and in this time in history, widows are some of the most vulnerable people in any society. Ruth is also a foreigner, a stranger in this place. And yet in Bethlehem, in the field of Boaz, Ruth and Naomi are offered care and sustenance, and Ruth is not treated with suspicion, but with hospitality. Notice also that Naomi no longer talks to Ruth as someone who should go back to her people. She speaks to Ruth as someone who shares her family history. Bethlehem, the “house of bread,” is a place where strangers are welcomed and abundance is shared. Everyone is included in God's provision and hope.
As you may recall from Pastor Marvin's sermon last month, Naomi gave Ruth some crafty advice on how to win over Boaz's affection, which Ruth did. Boaz and Ruth marry and have a son. They gave him the name Obed. Obed became the father of Jesse, who became the father of David, the king who was promised by God to have an heir one day who would be the Messiah.
This is how Bethlehem came to be associated with David as his ancestral home. Given that the promise of a future Messiah came from the line of David, it is interesting to note that David's own great-grandmother, Ruth, was not Jewish. She was a Moabite widow who depended on the provisions in the Torah for the welfare of the poor and foreigners. She was an immigrant to Bethlehem, one who despite being a foreigner, was welcomed into a community.
Bethlehem represents Jesus's family history, a history that came about because a foreigner received compassion. Jesus's DNA contains ethnic diversity, immigrant assistance, religious faithfulness, and loving mercy. No wonder he said and did the things he did. Jesus came to identify with the least of society. He healed lepers whose condition excluded them from participation in the life of the community. He protected a woman whom the religious leaders were ready to execute because of adultery. His parables, like that of the prodigal son and his brother, and the good samaritan, and the widow and the unjust judge, all show compassion for people many would have deemed unworthy or unimportant. he extended Grace to a notorious tax collector, Zacchaeus, as well as the thief on the cross. Bethlehem foreshadowed the many ways Jesus would give attention to those who were among the least in society. (1)
We live in a world that teaches us that people are valued for their money and prestige and power. We look up to celebrities and political figures and wealthy entrepreneurs and social media influencers. We are distracted by the exploits of the powerful on the news, on the phones in our pockets and the shiny objects in our social media feeds. But Bethlehem teaches us that the wealthy and powerful do not have the answers and are not worthy objects of our admiration and devotion. The wealthy and powerful are not who lived in Bethlehem or who visited the baby Jesus at his birth. No one who represented religious or government or worldly power was present in Bethlehem. Instead, the angels chose to come to the salt-of-the earth shepherds to announce the birth of the Messiah, and Jesus’s first visitors were the shepherds who tended flocks in the fields surrounding Bethlehem. Those shepherds are a testimony to the message of Mary’s Magnificat, when she sings,
“God has brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.”
If we were to visit Bethlehem today—or perhaps in a near future when peace may prevail—we could travel to the Church of the Nativity. This church is considered to be the oldest Christian church in the Holy Land, first erected by the Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century. In order to enter the church, one must pass through a doorway that is just four feet high, causing all but children to bow low in order to enter. There are several stories associated with how this door came to be, but the likeliest one is that the old large entrance was filled in and the small entrance created to deter looters from entering the church with horses and carts during the Ottoman Empire. Whatever its origin, the door became known as “the door of humility,” because everyone—no matter how important or powerful—has to humble oneself to enter the church, the site that is believed to be where Jesus was born.
Bethlehem is a place of humility, but it is also a place written into the DNA of Jesus and the Christian faith. It is a place whose history teaches us what Jesus taught. It is a place where we learn about caring for those who are disadvantaged by poverty and unjust systems of oppression. It is a place where we see what happens to whole communities when strangers are welcomed and supported. It is a place where we learn about the community that is created when we commit to relationships built on love and mutual care and respect. Jesus was born in Bethlehem; may our hearts become Bethlehems—little houses of bread and love—so Jesus can be born in us. Amen.
(1) This retelling of Ruth’s story is from Rob Fuquay, On the Way to Bethlehem (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2024), 89-101.