Reflecting on Bethlehem

The following is the text of a worship service from Dec. 14, 1986, at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church on South Ridge. Rev. Fred Fedke presented the service. 

When governor-elect Thompson was asked by the news media where Elroy was, he answered, “Halfway between Union Center and Kendall.”

Small towns have always been unknown entities to the great masses of populations in the large cities.

Little towns like Elroy become known and get “put on the map” when they produce someone famous. 

Whether Elroy, or Springfield, Ill., or Plaines, Ga., little towns become well-known when someone who had once lived there becomes a ruler. 

There was a small town like that in the Bible. It was high on a ridge, only five miles from that most famous and “golden” capital city, Jerusalem. This little town, Bethlehem, was famous for producing Israel’s most famous king, David. 

David’s great-grandmother, Ruth, was in her own right a famous lady. Bethlehem was also known as her home. 

Even before, Bethlehem had been put on the map because it had been the place of a bitter funeral. Rachel, the mother of the Children of Israel, that beautiful and beloved wife of Jacob, had died in childbirth there.

But that was all long ago. One wonders if there was even a highway marker, or at least a remarker, about the home of Ruth and David, or an old, weathered stone in a wayside cemetery noting the burial plot of Rachel. 

If there was that, Bethlehem was, for the rest of it, ignored along with all the other little towns, and it was let sleep on in its country tranquility. 

Except on one extraordinary occasion, it was as crowded as Warrens at the Cranberry Festival. It happened when the ruling Romans decreed a census for the purpose of taxation. Part of the mandate was that everyone had to return to the place of his ancestral birth. 

It was then that all the folks whose families had once left Bethlehem had to return. Then, as now, many young people had left the small towns and farms to live and work in the cities and elsewhere. Now, their descendants streamed back to the sleepy little village, swelling its streets with crowds and overflowing its restaurants and inns (or was there only one?). In the teeming crowds, there was a pregnant girl looking none too comfortable. But would you have noticed that at Cranberry Fest?

And did anyone in the crowds happen to recall that a prophet long ago had said a startling thing — that another and greater king than David would come out of Bethlehem?

Oh, but who had time for that in the busy rush and carnival atmosphere of the occasion? Other things would seem more pressing. Wouldn’t they?

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