December 2012 Bethlehem: Faith, Hope & Love

In our Sunday morning readings in December we will look again at the Christmas story with a particular focus on Bethlehem. We will hear a promise of hope for all people and we will celebrate a variety of loving relationships, including that of the awesome saviour. We will also seek guidance for continuing our journey of faith into 2013. Bethlehem is first mentioned in Genesis 35, as the place to which Jacob is travelling after he has been given the name of Israel and has received the promise of hope that “a nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will come from your body”.

However, Bethlehem has a dark side too, for on the way to the town, Jacob’s wife, Rachel, dies giving birth to Joseph. It is appropriate that the carol “O little town of Bethlehem” contains the line “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight”, particularly in the light of conflict in the region. The book of Ruth begins and ends in Bethlehem. Here the story again includes death (three of them), but describes two remarkable loving relationships. The first is the beautiful relationship between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law (“Where you go I will go” Ruth1:16), and the second is an equally beautiful romance between the great-grandparents of King David, Ruth and Boaz.

Sometimes we feel that there is famine (Ruth 1:1) in the love department, but our God gives us our daily bread as we come to the “House-of-Bread” (“Beth-Lechem” as it is in hebrew). In Luke 2:1-20 Bethlehem is the birthplace of the awesome saviour. Like Joseph’s ancestor David, Jesus was a shepherd as well as a king - even before the shepherds came to visit I wonder if the feeding trough reminding us of this.

As good shepherd Jesus shows his love by laying down his life for the sheep, by rising again he gives us hope, by filling us with his spirit he gives us the ability to follow him by faith. The wise men in Matthew 2:1-12 should have gone straight to Bethlehem, but ended up in Jerusalem. This was partly because they didn’t have a personal message directing them to the manger, like the shepherds had from the angels. Instead, the wise men journeyed by faith – following the less exact guidance of a star, supplemented by a reasonable, though inaccurate, assumption that a King would be born in the capital, Jerusalem, and by correction from a prophet in scripture (Micah).

As you celebrate the birth of the Good Shepherd may you be filled with faith, hope and love; and may you be secure in the knowledge when the decorations are taken down, when the festive food has been eaten and when the visitors have left, that “these three remain: faith, hope and love” (1Cor13:13)