Dec. 20- Micah 5,Lk.1:39-5The industry rusts away. The mall contracts, even during the holidays. Older churches empty. ISIS emerges out of the disaster of invading Iraq and expecting flowers to be tossed and to bloom in the carnage. Brussels, the site of the world court has been in a lockdown of Advent waiting for a terrorist assault.The bible set Eden in a mythic past, but the present is usually full of trouble. We hear the words of Micah with fresh ears. Micah speaks of peace-Micah is angry with everyone for the way things are and should not be.The gospels trace Jesus back to David a thousand years before him. Even for Micah David is in the past, as if we would reach back from before the Declaration of Independence.His hope is clear and we have one of the first hope for a Messiah here. Christians assert the Messiah for over 200- years and troubles continue to dog us. So Advent waiting is as real and frustrating to us as it was for those who read Micah all those years ago.
For Bethlehem and those who come from her, the old biblical pattern holds true: the insignificant are exalted.God loves and works through the small as well as the large action. The tables are turned, and the most unlikely of people are instruments of God's salvation. From this insignificant little village, a young shepherd boy grows up to become the most beloved king in Israel's history. And a descendant of that king fulfills God's long-awaited promises of deliverance, not just for Israel, but for the whole world. But it is the way God works,yet again.... A child born to a young unmarried girl, and that girl's song, heard today: "He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly" (Luke 1:52). And the one who comes from that little village and that young girl becomes the one Micah proclaims as "the one of peace" (5:5). It is a proclamation we will soon hear echoed from the pastures surrounding Bethlehem.(Schifferdecker) That is part of the reason people like A Christmas Carol and Tiny Tim, and The Little Drummer Boy.
This is a difficult season for church music. We want to follow the flow of the church year, but few wish to sing 4 weeks of Advent hymns, and the culture has been playing Christmas music in stores and on the radio for quite a while. We play it down the middle in a compromise and have a cavalcade of music for Christmas Eve. Know that when we gather together and sing to God, we, like Mary, are swept into God's divine activity to save and redeem. A few voices drawn together in song in late December may seem a small thing in the face of the wars and worries of the age, but surely no smaller than those voices joined in Leipzig and the fall of the GDR or those two voices joined in the Judean hill country twenty centuries ago. Mary's God, we should remember, delights in taking what is small and insignificant in the eyes of the world to do extraordinary and unexpected things.."David Lose
Both Hannah and Mary exclaim their joy ..take heart in the promise that the Lord considers, cares for, and acts on behalf of the lowly -- despite what one might expect (and contrary to how we human beings behave ourselves)rather it is for all the rest that God does great things.Both Hannah and Mary identify what God is doing as being not just for them, but also through them for the whole people.(Jacobsen) Look around. God is at work in our midst,making Christmas live once more.
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