Welcome!
To Week 3 of the Sunday School in a Bag Advent and Christmas program – six weeks devoted to Immanuel and the question: What does it really mean to say “God Is With Us”?
If you have not already, check out Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 first!
Now… On to Bethlehem
Bethlehem is mentioned for the first time in Genesis 35.
Here, we are told that Jacob is traveling with his family from Bethel—which means “House of God”—to this place called Ephrath. Rachel, Jacob’s wife, goes into labor along the way. She ends up dying in childbirth. The baby, Bejamin, survives. But Rachel is buried on this road to Ephrath.
And we’re told that another name for Ephrath is Bethlehem.
Hence Micah’s prophecy:
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
Though you are little among the thousands of Judah,
Yet out of you shall come forth to Me
The One to be Ruler in Israel,
Whose goings forth are from of old,
From everlasting.”
Ancient almost beyond imagination
Now, I just want to pause here and acknowledge something:
First, three ancient cities, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Nazareth are heavily featured in Jesus’s life.
It is interesting to me, that two of those three cities find mentioned in the Bible all the way back in Genesis. Two of the three are featured, by different names, all the way back in the stories of the patriarchs, men who lived—at least according to legend—before the Israelite people even existed. Before the Roman Empire existed… before the Babylonian exile… before David, Solomon, or the temple… before even the Tabernacle—the Hebrew tent of worship before Solomon built a stationary temple in Jerusalem… before Moses… before the slavery in Egypt… before Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…
Before any of that, already, there were Salem (Genesis 14) and Ephrath (Genesis 35)
Better known by the names, Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Both are mentioned in Genesis. Both, in fact, are the sites of significant events, all the way back in Genesis
If nothing else, I think this is an important reminder that when it comes to the bible and the unfolding of the biblical story, we are dealing with stretches of time that those of us raised in a 250-year-old nation might have difficulty wrapping our minds around. There is a depth to the meaning of the word “ancient” here that we must pause for a moment and appreciate.
There is, probably, more time between the founding of the “little town of Bethlehem” and Jesus’s birth than there is between Jesus’s birth and us today.
By the time, too, that Jesus walked on the Temple mount in Jerusalem, that mountaintop had already been inhabited for thousands of years.
Just let that reality sink in, for a second.
God’s story—just the tiny sliver of God’s story that we are even aware of—the tiny sliver of human existence that we are aware of—unfolds over eons… Not years. Not decades. Not even centuries.
Eons.
With that in mind, let’s turn again to this “little town of Bethlehem,” and experience that story again.
What’s In a Name?
The name “Bethlehem” comes from two Hebrew words, “bayeet” which means “house,” and “lehem” which means “bread” or “food.” The older name, “Ephrath,” comes from the Hebrew word meaning “fruit/fruitful.” Both names make a lot of sense for a farming community known for its good and abundant wheat harvests.
There are deeper meanings here, though. Since pre-historic times, a connection has always existed between religion and food.
All those animal sacrifices in the ancient world—people ate those animals afterward. The sacrifices were cooked, prepared, and often followed by a city-wide feast. This evolves, I think, into the tradition many religions share of a sacred meal.
Judaism has a few such sacred meals. First every sabbath traditionally begins on Friday night with the sabbath dinner. But the main sacred meal in Judaism is the Seder dinner, eaten during Passover. The Seder was the last meal Jesus ate with his disciples before his execution—which leads directly to the Christian sacred meal, Eucharist, or more commonly known as Communion or Lord’s Supper. It’s also pretty clear that all early Christian worship services were centered around an actual meal.
Come, let us eat!
Religion and food have always been tied together for a few reasons:
First, rather obviously, food keeps us all alive, physically. Religiously/spiritually, though, we understand that all life comes from God.
So, while food keeps us alive physically, religion is meant to keep us alive spiritually.
There’s also the humanitarian tradition. Churches and religious institutions have historically been the institutions in societies most concerned with helping the poor and feeding the hungry.
Aside from these rather literal reasons, though, I think actually a lot of it is social. There is something rooted deep within the social psychology of food and eating that brings people together like nothing else in human experience. We need to eat. We enjoy eating, and throughout history we have used that need and that enjoyment to bond communities. Eating is a communal thing.
And for the vast majority of us, the place we go to eat is the place of warmth, of joy, comfort, family, friends… It’s often the place where we feel safest. Yes, most of us, I think, do associate food with safety.
The place where food is the place of hearth and home. And this is where Jesus is born, in the Bait Lehem, the house of bread, Bethlehem, which is, of course, a real town that still exists in the world today.
But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the savior of the world is born in a place with that name.
Images of Might and Peace
A final observation:
We have in the story of Bethlehem and intriguing contrast in imagery. On the one hand, there is the manger scene, the quiet little town, new mother and father – images of peace, the hearth and the home, domestic tranquility, and the entirely ordinary miracle of a young woman having a baby…
All of this contrasts sharply against the military imagery of the “angelic host” flooding the night sky outside Bethlehem.
These terms “Lord of Hosts” and “heavenly host” are indeed meant to evoke military imagery. Writing about the “host of heaven” back in the 1st century AD, Luke would have been imagining heaven’s actual army, arrayed for war (nope, no harps in the original image), commanded by God as a king presides over actual battle…
No wonder the shepherds were “terrified.”
But Bethlehem is not the site of war. It is the place of home, family, food…
The Savior born in Bethlehem is the Savior of hearts, minds, and souls. The Savior who feeds, shepherds, nurtures, and loves.
The one sent not “into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved,” (John 3:17).
The army poised over Bethlehem appears to deliver a message of peace, sending shepherds to a manger to see a baby.
This is the very heart of Christmas.
That’s all for this week folks!
