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O Bethlehem of Ephratha…

So begins our OT reading from one of the lesser known OT prophets.

Ephratha … 

I had to look that one up in a Bible dictionary. I eventually found the connection between today’s Gospel from Lk. and Micah’s words.

A little history is in order. (Don’t leave me now, I promise our side trip will be worthwhile). Remember Ruth? 

Ruth tells her mother-in-law Naomi “Do not press me to leave you…where you go I will go. Where you lodge I will lodge, your people will be my people. Where you die I will die and there I will be buried.

It is sometimes read at weddings. It is a beautiful affirmation between two women but has about as much to do with a wedding as the traditional wedding march…                                                                  (humm…. “Here comes the bride”).

Ruth and Elimelech had left their home town of Ephratha with their two sons and moved to Moab to escape a famine.

While in Moab their sons married Moabite women. Naomi’s husband Elimelech, and her two sons eventually died, leaving Naomi and her two daughters-in-law widows.

Naomi, at some point decides to go back to her home.

She is accompanied by both Ruth and Orpha to the border dividing Moab and Israel.  At that point Orpha turns and goes back to Moab and Ruth continues on with Naomi. (vss.1.11-14).

Eventually Ruth marries a good Jewish farmer by the name of Boaz.

The last few verses of this story go like this:

So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife… she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without next of kin, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has born him. Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his wet-nurse. The women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.”

In Matthew's Gospel, when the Magi come to Jerusalem looking for a “newborn king” Herod, the defacto King, asks his scribes if there is anything in Scripture that speaks of a “newborn king” in the OT (2.5ff.). 

It is from Micah that they quote Micah 5.2.

There seems to be a theme throughout the Bible ….

God will chose the lowly, the marginalized, those who are the least of any culture and nation, to be his messengers. 

Nazareth a marginal place in Judea – but the home of Jesus.

It was the Nathaniel who once asked “an anything good come out of Nazareth.... like can anything good come out of Goshen, or Woodbine, or Belleplain?

Hold that thought for a moment, as we explore a second truth in these pre-Christmas lessons on the last Sunday in Advent and the power of a song.

Mary’s song of praise – “The Magnificat”

Zechariah’s song – “The Benedictis”   “you my child will be called the prophet of the most high!”

Simeon’s song – “The Nunc Dimittis”  Now Lord let your servant go in peace…The Angels' Song of Praise in the hills of Bethlehem “Glory to God in the highest…”

Songs have power.

Twenty years ago about this time, the longest guarded border in the world came tumbling down.

While most of us have heard of then Pres. Reagan's words:

 “Mr. Gorbachev take down this wall…”

Few know the peaceful protest in my mother's home town of Leipzig that preceded, in many ways, the collapse of the Wall between the free world and communism in 1989.

Gathering, holding candles on Monday evenings, around St. Nicholai church – the Church where Bach composed many of his Cantatas -- they would sing. 

Over the months their numbers grew from fewer than a thousand voices to more than three hundred thousand -- over half of the city.

Singing songs of hope and protest and justice, until their songs shook the powers of the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly … and the walls came tumbling down.

Remember the songs of the civil rights movement and protest songs of Vietnam – “If I had a hammer” “We shall over come” “This land is your land…”

A few voices drawn together in December in the face of a recession, global warming, a snow storm and a health care crisis -- on the surface does not seem like much but what is small, insignificant – of no apparent consequence in the eyes of our neighbors can do extraordinary things.

It is not the way of the world.

The world insists that bigger is better, might makes right, and “my country right or wrong.”

But it is not the way of God… over and over and over again, an insignificant village,

a child born out of wedlock.

A young girl’s song which is still heard today…

“He has brought down the powerful…. and lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things.” Amen.