A Small-Town Messiah
It was Advent 2012, the week before Christmas. Allison and I joined a mission team from the church I was working at and headed to the Highlands of Guatemala. Over the previous year our congregation raised $250,000 to help the village build a community center and water sanitation station. Because of the four-plus-hour bus ride to this village for Guatemala City, mission teams rarely spent more than a few hours in this village and villages like it. There was typically only enough time to build a stove before snapping a virtue-signaling selfie before the teams needed to head down the mountain and return to their hotel.
Our team was staying in the village, in homes given up by their owners so that a bunch of good-doing Christians had a place to lay their heads. The floors in these homes were barely poured concrete. I park my car on better surfaces than the owners of these homes parked themselves after a day of back-breaking work. Speaking of back-breaking work, we worked alongside the tradesmen of the village and neighboring villages. We, their day-laborers, outfitted from head to toe in new gear from REI while our local supervisors wore shoes that had been donated, used, used again, and eventually made their way up the mountain. While this community lacked access to modern medical care, our entire team arrived with prescriptions of Cipro, napalm-grade antibiotics to destroy whatever might ail us during our trip.
After a day of digging footers by hand and mixing concrete in buckets, when the missionaries ended their day of labor, our hosts kept working, making meals, pouring baths for their out-of-town guests, and correcting the work we had messed up on the job site. We ate more food at each meal than our hosts would eat in a day. A tiny village, like the thousands of tiny villages like it around the world, would be the place I first felt the hospitality of the gospel and see for myself the place where God chose to enter human history in flesh and blood.
“O Bethlehem from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel.”
Before the birth of Christ, Bethlehem was a town of little consequence, another village you might pass as you made your way north, toward Jerusalem. Bethlehem was a “one donkey town” that had its time to shine – Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz all walked the streets of Bethlehem. David, the giant-slaying hero-king, hailed from downtown Bethlehem. This town five miles south of Jerusalem had its places in Israel’s history, but now the prophet Micah declares the Messiah will come from a town many had not thought of since David’s death.
How could it be realistic to think the Messiah would hail from David’s hometown when the Davidic dynasty came crashing down?
For Israel, the peace Micah spoke of would come through the sword of the occupying Roman Empire – Pax Roma. For God to do what the prophet promised God would do, in the place the prophet said God would do it, can leave us scratching our heads.
Then, there is the one through whom the Messiah would come. Mary, a woman of minor status in her day, would be the one to bring God’s earth-shaking Good News into the world. God’s great turning-point in history is near, and ground-zero for the event is the womb of a woman no one had heard of in a town no one had thought of for generations. Elizabeth’s son knew what was going on as he “leaped for joy.” And Mary’s Magnificat – a lyrical poem full of Hebrew Bible prophecy and praises for God – signals the fulfillment of all God’s promises.
During my Advent trip to Guatemala, I realized that while the Good News of Christ’s embodied life fills me with joy, it is even better news for the people of a nowhere village than those living in an empire like, well, us. For people who live in the empire, with all the privileges of Pax Romana, those same privileges can blur our vision and prevent us from seeing that Christ would not be born and Virginia Hospital Center. Mary’s Magnificat was not sung in the Temple or National Cathedral. No, her song of praise and servanthood was sung in the backwoods as she and her cousin lived under the boot of the empire. We often say that God does not take sides, but God has done just that in Bethlehem and through Mary. In flesh and blood, God has taken the side of those on the margins.
With those pulling a double-shift only to be barely able to put food on the table.
With those working in the fields, feeding the empire while not being able to come out of the shadows.
Mary’s boy with a birth certificate stamped in a one-donkey town takes the tidings of comfort and joy we sing of and amplifies them to those who are overlooked, forgotten, and ignored.
God is revealed in the places, and in the people we least expect. We might expect God to be announced in grand or ornate spaces, and God is revealed in these spaces, but, as the prophet Micah said, and Mary and Elizabeth reveal the embodied presence of God, God in flesh and bone, will take place in a town of little consequence and through a person that many might overlook. This is what makes the Good News of the Gospel good news for all creation: God did not enter human history through power and influence as we describe those terms. Mary’s song of faithfulness, along with the words of the prophet, invites us to look for the hospitality, love, and redemption of God in the people and places we least expect.
Off the map places.
People overlooked.
Swiss theologian Karl Barth notes that God did not choose the pride-filled, the historically strong, or influential at the first Advent. Instead, God chose Mary, whose response was faithfulness, thanksgiving, and praise. Mary is the example for the church today for what we are to embody as we prepare the celebrate the birth of Christ and as we await Christ’s second coming: expecting God to be revealed in grand sanctuaries but also in one-donkey towns the rest of the world has forgotten.
The one born in the place we least expect is good news for us because the child born into a village with barely poured concrete floors was born for us, in our matching REI outfits, with our Cipro prescriptions and hole-less shoe. This is good news for us because while we might have properly poured concrete, we have hearts that need mending. This is good news for us because while we might live in the center of the map, we still struggle to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. After all, we still struggle to love ourselves. And where we struggle, God steps in because, after all, God has always loved us, loves us now, and will always love us. In Mary’s womb, causing others to leap for joy, Christ came, and Christ promises he will come again.