Year C Advent
4
Micah 5:1-5
Advent is all about waiting,
preparation and expectation. That is
what we have been telling you for three weeks now. It’s true in that we are preparing for the
birth of Christ. Our refrain when we light our Advent candles is “Come Lord
Jesus.” Yet here is the irony-- the
readings we hear in the season of Advent, perhaps even the majority of the
Bible stories we know and love-- tells us that God loves to surprise us. Essentially we are telling you to “expect the
unexpected,” which might be the worst advice anyone has ever given or
received. It’s right up there with
“don’t worry.”
A few weeks ago we learned that
Elizabeth, a woman previously considered barren, would give birth in her old
age. Her son would be a locust eating,
camel hair wearing, prophet. Instead of acquiring a religious degree and living
in one of the places of power (like Jerusalem), he preached from the wilderness
and told people to repent. He was an
unexpected prophet. But then again, who
better to prepare the way for a Messiah who would shock the world with his
refusal to conform and his insistence on associating with the marginalized and
oppressed?
As we know, John was not the only
prophet who was a little different. Our
Old Testament is chock-full of prophets, typically the people you would least
expect to be prophets. Micah was a
prophet who lived about 700 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. The first
verse of our reading for today speaks of a siege. The city of Jerusalem was under siege. They were trapped by their own walls. Defeat was inevitable. The city and the king would fall. Imagine what that would be like, just waiting
for death or imprisonment, knowing there is nothing you can do to escape. Yet
after that verse which declared the siege and the imminent destruction of all
they knew and loved, Micah switched gears.
“Bethlehem, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall
come forth one who is to rule Israel.”
Bethlehem had a certain notoriety at
that point in time. That was where King
David had come from. King David had been
an unlikely king. He was a shepherd and
the youngest of his family. It was an
odd choice for God. However, as one
would expect of one chosen by God, he was a mighty king. It was expected that the Messiah would come
from the line of David. However the line
of David and the hometown of David are two different things. This reference to
a Messiah coming from the same backwater town of David was strange. It was especially strange that Micah would
bring it up at this very point, when they were under siege and their present
king was about to die.
Yet isn’t that often the way--when
we feel as though we are truly under siege--relief and hope can come in the
most unexpected places….or in the most bizarre dreams. Micah prophesied something almost
unimaginable. This leader, born in the
small town of Bethlehem, would rule not with money and armies, but with a
shepherd’s crook. Instead of depriving people of things to enforce his rule, he
would feed the people. He would do all
these things in the strength of the Lord.
He would bring peace to his people who are now under siege.
While that sounds very nice, we know
now that none of the people Micah was talking to would experience that peace on
earth. The city was taken over. Many of
the people were enslaved. But that
picture that Micah painted never quite faded.
It lived on in people’s hopes and dreams. It gave those who remained
something to live for. It gave those who
died, a foretaste of their imminent future in life everlasting.
Our Bible is full of prophesies and
dreams. So many of these visions from
our prophets contain God’s dream for us.
They are full of hope and promise.
We ignore them at our own peril.
Unfortunately our divine imagination has been limited by the acceptance
of our present reality. Many consider
the stories of the Bible as fairytales or myths. But these stories contain radical truth. They may be hard to believe, but some of the
most extraordinary things in life are things we never could have imagined. The more comfortable we become with our
present reality and the more reluctant we are to imagine God’s dream for us,
the less likely we are to experience the dream.
Our Gospel reading contains what we
refer to as the Magnificat. It is
essentially written in the form of a song.
But it is more than praise or worship.
It is prophesy. It is God’s dream
for our world—a dream that Mary interpreted for all of us. “He has shown strength with his arm; he has
scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their
thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the sent the rich away empty.” She was able to articulate that dream
because that dream lived within her in the form of an unborn child. A child who would turn the entire world
upside down. What people thought was
reality wasn’t real at all. Jesus
brought the world truth.
700 years before Mary shared her
prophesy, Micah prophesized about a shepherd who would feed his people and
bring peace to a violent nation. Jesus
was a carpenter, not a shepherd, but he fed the people. He fed thousands with a couple fish and a
loaf of bread. He inspired thousands more with his words and actions. That was only in his lifetime. Billions, trillions have been fed by his
legacy of love since his death and resurrection.
Yet….despite
all that….we know that he did not bring peace. Look at Israel. It is a land that has never known peace. And our nation isn’t much better. Violence plagues us. Some look around and conclude that Jesus’
words and actions had no effect…no better than a dream. That could not be
farther from the truth. A dream only
remains a dream if we refuse to allow it to manifest.
We still carry the dream. But we have to do more than carry it. We have
to do more than talk about it in our churches.
We must live like that dream of peace and salvation is real for
us...like we are trying to bring it forth, not just in the next life, but this
life. In John’s Gospel, Jesus told his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be
troubled. Believe in me...” No matter how troubled our hearts become, we
cannot give up the dream. Christmas is
almost upon us. Let us take that day and
the 12 days after to bask in the glow of that dream, a dream that became real
in the form of a baby boy. That dream
lives today in our hearts and actions.
Carry the dream. Share the dream.
One day it will be the only reality we know.
