Richard Davenport
December 22, 2024 – 4th Sunday in Advent
Micah 5:2-5
As I’ve said, the season of Advent is one of preparation and of repentance. It is a mix of both sadness for our sins and eager expectation of the fulfillment of God’s promise to send a savior. We are in the midst of difficult times and we know our sins have brought us nothing but misery and will continue to do so until the day we die and we are cast away into the outer darkness, away from the light, away from life, away from joy and peace and everything other good gift that God gives. What’s more, we know it is all entirely our own doing and we deserve all of it. We here in the Western world benefit a bit from winter and Advent coinciding. The darkness and gloom of the weather helps reinforce the somber nature of the Advent season.
Advent also has another meaning, another theme that helps it to connect seamlessly to the end of the church year. Advent, from the Latin word “Adventus,” meaning “coming” or “arrival.” Jesus will soon be coming into the world. As with most everything God does, the way he comes into the world now also directs our attention to how he will come into the world again. He did it once, just as promised. So we can be assured he will come again, just as promised.
The prophecy given through the prophet Micah is a reminder to God’s people of what is to come. Bethlehem wasn’t a noteworthy town by any stretch. The only thing it had going for it was that long ago, a man named Jesse lived there. Jesse was of the clan of Ephrathites, of the tribe of Judah. Jesse had a son named David. David would be chosen by God to be king over his people. What’s more, God promised that David’s line would reign over God’s people forever.
That’s about all Bethlehem has going for it. It isn’t a major trading center. It has no national parks or other big tourism draw. It has no nightlife. It has no major industry or anything else that would put it on the map. Its one claim to fame is in its connection to David. A common shepherd boy who also had little that was noteworthy about him was chosen to lead God’s people. He had no degree in administration. He was no war strategist. There is nothing to indicate he understood economics, urban planning, diplomacy, or any other thing a king might need to know better than anyone else did. He was simply a shepherd and he was faithful.
The prophecy makes the connection. The savior isn’t going to be just any savior, he’s going to be the promised king, the one who will rule on the throne of his father, David, the shepherd-king. He is the one who is coming and Bethlehem will be his point of arrival. One needn’t watch the whole world to see where the savior will show up. One need only watch the descendants of David in Bethlehem and know that, someday, he will arrive there.
It’s one of those phenomena that political parties are always trying to combat. You’re in a community that always votes for a particular political party and the candidate up for election is in the opposing party. There’s the tendency to think, “What’s the point of even voting? I’m not going to change anything. One vote isn’t going to upend the election.” Well, no, it probably won’t. But, whatever party you vote for wants you to vote anyway. Even if one vote doesn’t change anything, you certainly aren’t the only person out there thinking that way. If all of the people who thought that way went ahead and voted anyway, maybe something actually would change. If all of the people who think that way give up and don’t vote at all, then things certainly won’t change and it ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The same mentality gets applied to all sorts of other things as well. Any place just a little effort, just a little influence won’t seem to make any real difference, the proverbial drop in the bucket. Why bother? Why waste the time and energy to do anything when it all amounts to nothing anyway? You can hardly deal with your own mundane problems, much less giant, world-spanning problems. You’re not going to end world hunger. You’re not going to cure cancer or broker peace between the nations. You probably won’t even do that in your community. If you aren’t some great diplomat who can bring everyone to the table and work out a treaty that resolves all conflicts, if you aren’t a billionaire who has all of the resources he could ever need right just a phone call away, you’ll never make much of a difference. So why even try?
There are those who call that attitude defeatist. “How do you know you can’t do it if you don’t even try?” While that makes a certain amount of sense, it’s also unrealistic. Very qualified, very capable people have been working on big problems like these for as long as there has been a world and people in it. Why would anyone think that will suddenly change just because you get involved?
Those issues are all secondary to the more critical, more fundamental problem of sin and salvation. Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about saving the world from sin. Jesus took care of that problem. At the same time, you do have a role to play in the process when it comes to other people. There’s a whole world out there that knows nothing of God, that knows nothing of grace and salvation, that knows nothing of eternal life, that knows nothing of peace and joy. What are you doing about all of it? How are all of those people going to be saved if you aren’t out there doing something about it?
That probably sounds a bit harsh, but that’s really what the job is. When it’s about voting, there are all kinds of ways people might try and motivate you or guilt you into voting, but the truth of the matter is, you don’t have to do it. There’s an argument to be made that it’s better to not vote at all, than it is to vote when you know nothing about the candidates or the issues being presented. But you don’t get to opt out of Christ’s command to make disciples of all nations. The king came into the world and his royal directive is that others be brought into his kingdom.
You can bring up all of the same kinds of points. “I’m not a great speaker. I’m not theologically trained. I’m not a teacher. My prayer life isn’t all that great. I’m not a very good example of Christian faith. No one will want to talk to me if they think I’m prying. They’ll think I’m mean or judgmental. They’ll just throw me out, cut me off, slam the door. What’s the point?”
All of those things might be true. The arguments all sound very much the arguments for not getting overly worked up about curing cancer and all of those other things. Yet, none actually absolve you of the responsibility for sharing the Gospel and telling the world about Christ.
We use worldly standards and ways of doing things and compare them with God’s work. We use them for all kinds of excuses to avoid being about the tasks given to us. We look for the easy way out. We look for any reason we can find to not being involved. We see and hear many who do not know Christ and we do little or nothing to stop it.
Testimonials aren’t a big thing in the Lutheran church in general. Telling people about my faith journey tends to be a lot of feel good emotion kind of stuff that tries to get you all amped up about sharing the faith. Emotions often don’t have a lot of staying power, and when they fizzle out, all of your motivation ends up going with it. Still, it’s interesting hearing the stories the Gideons share when they come to do their presentations. They’ll tell about some down on his luck guy who just happens to be in a hotel and picks up the Bible and it changes his life, or the one little Bible that gets passed around from person to person and touches all of these different lives.
In some sense, they’re doing the same kind of thing that political parties do in trying to get you to vote. They want you to think even a little bit matters. While they sound similar, there is one huge difference between voting and sharing the Gospel. When it comes to sharing the Gospel, your capabilities and qualifications don’t matter at all, because it isn’t you who is actually doing the heavy lifting anyway. Maybe you aren’t well educated. Maybe you aren’t a great speaker. Maybe people will get angry at you. None of that matters. God doesn’t need all of your qualifications. He can work with even the most unqualified and uneducated people and do great things, not because you are capable, but because he is.
Going through God’s work throughout Scripture, you’ll see it’s actually his preferred way of doing things. Find the least capable, least powerful, least impressive person or group of people and use them to do things no one ever thought possible. Take the least impressive thing and make it the centerpiece for the grand work of salvation. What does Bethlehem have to commend it? Nothing. What do the people of Israel have that’s impressive? Nothing. What do you or I have that make us useful for God’s work? Still nothing, and that doesn’t matter. God knows what we are capable of and he chooses to favor small things, inconsequential things, unimpressive things, and use them for great things.
Our sin drives us to hide, to give up, to not bother, but God’s grace shows us a different answer. If the bigness of the problem were really a barrier to God, then we would still be lost in our sins, for our sin has corrupted and broken all of creation. But, God uses small things to defeat big things. A small, inconsequential city is the birthplace for a small, inconsequential baby, who will grow up to die a small, inconsequential death that will end up being the end of the power of sin.
Advent is a reminder that all we have to offer God is our sin, because that’s all we have. He comes to us anyway, offering all of his love, not in a big, fancy package, but one that is lowly and humble. God heals and redeems humble people through humble means.
Is the message about getting out there and doing the work of God? To an extent. That’s what Micah does as a prophet and the prophetic work continues. We are still called to declare God’s will, just like the prophets of old. But more than that, as the prophets then knew all too well, the work was always by God and about God. The Gospel is never about what I can do. It is always about what God has done and continues to do. God comes into the world as a humble baby in a humble town and through his humble life and death, he is lifted up in glory and the humble town is forever known as the birthplace of the savior.
The same savior who forgives you through humble means will work through you to bring his grace to the world. This is how God has done things and will continue to do things until his second Advent, when all that is humble is made glorious, just as his humble life became glorious eternal life.