Selah2020: Pause and Reflect

[This is one in a series of devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during December 2022]

At this time of the year the words that Phillips Brooks wrote in 1868 become part of our seasonal repertoire:

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by

Does familiarity with these words mean that we lose some of their impact? Where is Bethlehem, what is its significance? Bethlehem is an administrative centre some 6 miles south of Jerusalem and dates from around 1340BC. A number of prophecies and contemporary reports give Bethlehem as the location for the birth of Jesus Christ.

Imagine if we could access the archives of one of the local newspapers in first century Israel, the Bethlehem Daily Star. As we leaf through the pages there would be some headlines that would cause us to pause and explore further.

In the obituaries section in 1903BC is a record of the death in childbirth of Rachel, the wife of Jacob. Her tomb became a local landmark; it was there that Saul learnt that his lost donkeys had been found.

In 1140BC a local reporter noted the return of a well-known local family. Some ten years earlier, Elimelek and his wife Naomi, with their two sons, had left Bethlehem to live in the country of Moab. Now Naomi returned, accompanied by her daughter-in-law Ruth, both widows. In due course Ruth married a prominent local landowner named Boaz. Soon, the Births, Marriages and Deaths section records the birth of a son to Boaz and Ruth, named Obed.

Obed’s grandson grew up as a young shepherd boy in the area around Bethlehem. In the pasturelands near the town he learned to care for his sheep and ward off their predators. Later, David the local shepherd boy became a musician in the royal court.

In 1024BC the archives record the visit of Samuel, the nation’s spiritual leader, to Bethlehem. Samuel anointed David to be the future king of Israel. However, his succession to the throne was not easy; he had to contend with family, friends and foes but no doubt his prior experience with sheep proved valuable.

In 6BC there was a public announcement that Caesar Augustus commanded all his subjects in the Roman Empire to return to their ancestral city for a census. Many families descended from David came to Bethlehem, to the point that there was not enough room to accommodate them all.

Around about the same time the archives record the scandalous story of a young woman, obviously pregnant yet claiming to still be a virgin – it aroused much scepticism and gossip. Other unusual events surrounded the eventual birth of her son; shepherds left their flocks in the countryside and came into town to see the baby, there was a strange resonance in the sky that some described as being like angels’ voices and then some wealthy foreigners turned up with a caravan of camels.

After 4BC the town receives no further mention in the Bible but the town still exists. Its principal economic focus is that of catering for visitors wanting the see the place of Christ’s birth. Surely a question of much greater importance is ‘where is he now?’

Now that we know a bit more about Bethlehem we can return to the words of the carol and sing them with more meaning:

O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray,
cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Immanuel!

Resources:
[1] www.biblegateway.com search ‘Bethlehem’
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlehem
[3] https://biblehub.com/timeline/

Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.

Bible dates: Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.

[This is one in a series of devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during December 2021]

“It’s over, now for a rest”. Another Christmas passes into history and there’s more than 360 shopping days before the next one, Was it a memorable celebration or eminently forgettable?

I recall a Christmas, over 50 years ago. Christmas lunch was baked beans on toast eaten whilst seated on a beach. It was one of those tropical beaches which travel brochures describe as idyllic, in a country where the primary celebration meal for Christmas was held on Christmas Eve. The main course featured eland steak grilled to look like zebra. Carols such as “In the bleak mid-winter” and “See amid the winter snow” did seem a little out of place in an area that had neither winter nor snow. It was Christmas, but not as we know it.

For those of us with birthdays in Christmas week it can sometimes seem that our special days get overlooked in the preparations for Christmas. Worse than that, we are expected to be thankful when receiving only one present to cover both occasions! Maybe of greater value is the lesson in humility and the management of expectations.

What is your experience of Christmas; how does that match up to your expectations? Does Christmas past invoke happy memories of family fellowship and healthy hilarity or was it subdued by empty seats around the table? Is it a case of gifts today and bills tomorrow? Perhaps it was enough that Christmas passed, just another day crossed off on the calendar.

The earliest mention of Christmas in Old English dates from 1038 although the feast itself was celebrated much earlier – some records place it at 200AD in Egypt. The determination of the date for Christmas Day is much later and to this day some Eastern Orthodox denominations celebrate Christmas Day on 6th January. In 1644 the English parliament banned the celebration of Christmas, insisting that it should be a normal working day.

Most dusty details from history get forgotten quickly, so what is it about Christmas that makes us continue to celebrate it? Is it just an opportunity to overspend and delay the consequences until next year? Perhaps it is the peer pressure – you can only say “humbug!” a limited number of times. Or could it be that there is actually something more in this story about a baby born in an obscure Jewish town some 2,000 years ago?

In many Christian traditions, the period immediately prior to Christmas is designated as ‘Advent’, a conveniently ambiguous term that can refer both to the birth of Jesus at Christmas and also his return as a conquering king. We put a lot of effort into celebrating his first coming; shouldn’t we be equally diligent about his return?

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Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.

Bible dates: Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.