C, Lent 2 - Luke 13:32b-33 "Paradox"

Jesus says, I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal. In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem! (Luke 13:32b-33)

Makeup, criminals, and fitness — these three things all have something in common. What might it be? Some may think a criminal might wear makeup and be fit enough to outrun the law. But no, there is something else common with these three, although they have not much to do with each other at all.

Makeup is worn by many women, models, and movie stars. Have you ever marvelled over the natural beauty of a woman, or a star on the screen or in the magazine pages? This beauty attracts both men and women to gaze in wonder at their perfect features.

But then we see a tabloid magazine, or the television news, or we see face to face one of these beauties, caught off guard, or unawares. We are shocked, how plain and normal these people appear. The natural beauty was not natural at all! Rather it was extremely good makeup.

Isn’t it funny how this works? Makeup artists work harder and harder, so the person looks natural — like they are not wearing any makeup in fact. The makeup is applied not to present the makeup; rather the less one notices it the more natural a person might look. This is a seeming contradiction or absurdity, but it is an explainable truth.

Most criminals are not the brightest characters around! They usually do something stupid after committing a crime and get themselves caught. There are not many who remain uncaught for a lifetime. Guilt is probably a factor in most criminals’ stupidity and capture.

Take for instance someone who is on the run from police. Instead of walking normally and not drawing attention to themselves, they act nervous. Instead of blending in with the rest of the crowd; they run or push through the crowds, drawing attention to them, and get themselves caught.

What about the high speed police chases we’ve all seen on the news? Most of the time the crooks are spotted because of irrational behaviour. One would think if you didn’t want to get caught you would drive normally not drawing attention to yourself. But usually the more normal these people try to appear, the more suspicious they look! This is a seeming contradiction or absurdity, but it usually is an explainable truth!

Fitness is also a hard one to pin down. How fit is fit enough? It’s relative to the person’s goals and expectations. How many fit people have we met who still seeking to be fit? Or how many unfit people have you met who have said their fitness has improved? Fitness is a slippery character! What measure do you use for fitness?

Usually the fitter the person gets, they more they want to become fitter. It’s like the more agile a sportsperson becomes it’s just not quite enough to win the point they’ve just lost. “There’s always room for improvement”, some of us may have heard a mentor say at one time or another. Or alternatively, the more unfit one becomes the less fit they want to become. The quest for fitness is lost in the unfitness. These too, are a seeming contradiction or absurdity, but it is an explainable truth!

Our lives are full of contradictions and absurdities outside the boundaries of rationality, but which are explainable truths. This is even more so in the Christian Church; especially as the church deals with “the truth” and not just “truths” or “a truth”. Our lives are full of paradoxes; seeming contradictions or absurdities, outside the boundaries of rationality, but nevertheless are truths. Even more so, the faith planted in each of us is full of paradoxes; and so too is he who plants faith, hope, and love in us.

Jesus Christ is a paradox. This is the reason; many people refuse to believe he is God their Saviour. Many turn from him to other more rational gods; many live as enemies of the cross of Christ (Philippians 3:18).

The ecumenical creeds of the church concisely capture these paradoxes, the things which are irrational to many. St Paul says to the philosophical Greek gentiles and loyal Jews in Corinth, “…we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1 Corinthians 1:23) In fact, it is precisely in the paradoxes of Christ and the church gathered around him, that the true power of God is present! He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. (Isaiah 40:28)

So what are the paradoxes of Christ? Jesus Christ is word, made flesh! In the creed we confess that he is “eternally begotten”, that is, he is forever being born of the Father. If we run a rational mind over this, we would say you’re either born or you’re eternal! Not both! But Jesus Christ is both. He is God the Son eternally begotten, and yet he is Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, born in Bethlehem in time. This is a paradox! This is the truth!

Jesus Christ is finite, locatable in one place, but he is also infinite, as God truly is. Some argue the infinite cannot be contained in the finite — especially in bread and wine! But by the power of God’s word, the infinite was conceived in Mary and walked amongst us as a finite man for thirty three years. Now he’s at the right hand of God the Father but he is still Immanuel, God with us. And these paradoxes flow through into Holy Communion where the infinite is physically and spiritually present in the bread and wine of communion as Christ’s body and blood.

But all these paradoxes are not just a display of how wonderful God is before us. These paradoxes have a function, and that is to benefit us. Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12) In fact, we carry Christ in us bearing greater paradoxes than him, but only because of what he did for us on the cross.

In the gospel we hear Jesus say, I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal. In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem! (Luke 13:32b-33)

God’s word is full of paradoxes concerning Christ and us. The phrase “Christ crucified” is a paradox, for Christ means messiah or anointed one. So how is it, the one who was anointed by God to be our messiah, finds himself hanging on a cursed tree at Jerusalem? What good is God to us when he is nailed to a cross in one point in time two-thousand years ago? We know the answer because of faith!

This is what makes the horrors of Good Friday, so good for us who believe! Jesus drives the devil out of us today and tomorrow. He perfects people, eternally healing them today and tomorrow. He does this because he reached his goal and was perfected through his innocent suffering and sinless death in his resurrection.

So, to many, it seems we live lives of contradiction and absurdity. At baptism we speak of death; where at death we speak of life. In the cross and suffering, we receive peace and joy. We have been saved, we are being saved, yet one day we will be saved! We are a work of God in motion!

We are sinners but saints, sinfully weak but given strengthen to live as Christians by the Holy Spirit. Where others receive their glory in life now, we live with faith and hope, in that we will be glorified for Jesus sake in eternity. We live eternal lives now, but we suffer today and tomorrow, and we are still going to die.

Thanks be to God he sent his Son to be our strength in weakness, to be crucified a sinner, yet being without sin — to beat the devil, the world, and our sinful selves, when all thought the cross was the end. God who seems so loveless because he let his one and only Son die, is God Almighty who loves us so much he sent his one and only Son to the cross, and raised him in glory after three days. So although we expect pain, suffering, and scorn, we live in faith and hope trusting we will be raised in love to live with him forever in glory!

…our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. (Philippians 3:20-21)

Stand firm in the Lord, Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Redeemer. Amen.

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C, Midweek Lent 1 - Exodus 12:17-28 "Egypt Exodus"

17 “Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. 18 In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. 19 For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born. 20 Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.”

21 Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. 22 Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. 23 When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.

24 “Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. 25 When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. 26 And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ 27 then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped. 28 The Israelites did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron. (Exodus 12:17-28)

When we think of Egypt in a biblical sense we immediately associate it with the Old Testament, the fathers of Israel, and bondage. Rather, I encourage you to remember “God” and his mighty acts when you think of Egypt.

In the bible, Egypt is mentioned just over 600 times in 565 verses. In most of these verses God called the Israelites to remember what he did “when he brought them out of Egypt” and he kept his covenant with the Israelites, who often rebelled against him.

In recent times the country is known as Egypt, but it has uncertain origins, and in Greek was pronounced, Ah-ee-goop-tos (for Aiguptos). But in Old Testament times, the Israelites called Egypt, Mizraim (mits-rah-yim), meaning “two Egypts”, for the upper and lower reaches of the Nile River. However, Mizraim is formed from a Hebrew word which means, to hem in, or to cramp or confine, or to distress. To the Israelites Egypt was a place of boundaries and limits; a place of slavery and oppression. Egypt to an Israelite was big trouble.

The first mention of Egypt is in Genesis ten, in the genealogy of Ham. Ham brought Noah’s curse upon himself by looking at his father’s nakedness and not covering him when Noah was sleeping off the wine he had drunk.

Later on, Abram took his wife Sarai to Egypt during a drought, but left in disgrace after he told Pharaoh that his wife was his sister. Pharaoh took Sarai as his wife and soon found out she was, in fact, Abram’s wife when he became inflicted by diseases. (Gen 12:10-20)

And then there is the story of Joseph and his brothers, who sold him into slavery and ended up being Pharaoh’s right-hand man — the second in charge of all Egypt. After his father Jacob and the entire household move to Egypt, the bible falls quiet for four-hundred years after Joseph tells his brothers, “I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” (Genesis 50:24)

During these four hundred years, Pharaoh and Egypt’s favour turn to hatred and oppression over the descendants of Jacob and his sons. As Israelite numbers grew, Pharaoh ordered every Hebrew boy be thrown into the Nile. So God raised up Moses, the child of a Hebrew slave, hidden in a floating basket in the reeds of the Nile. He was rescued and raised by Pharaoh’s daughter in the house of Pharaoh.

Moses killed an Egyptian and fled after Pharaoh sought to kill him. While he was in the wilderness God appeared to him in a burning bush and commanded weak unconfident Moses to go back to Pharaoh and demand Pharaoh let God’s chosen people go.

Pharaoh was no match for the God of the Hebrews, even though in Egyptian thought he was the son of “Re” the Egyptian sun-god. So while Pharaoh hardened his heart and refused to let the Israelites go because he thought he was god, God commanded Moses to pronounce plagues on Egypt.

Pharaoh was finally broken on the night of the Passover, when God sent the destroyer to kill the firstborn of Egypt. Pharaoh’s son, who was also seen as a god, was killed with all the Egyptian firstborn by God Almighty.

Out of slavery came freedom — freedom through the spilling of a lamb’s blood, on the cross members and sides of the doorframes to each house. God’s word was no match even for Pharaoh as God saved his people and called them to remember the night when they received their freedom. In the years after they celebrated what God did in Egypt, through the festival of unleavened bread, and the retelling and teaching of the “Lord’s Passover”.

God had promised this freedom to Abram over four-hundred years earlier, and God delivered on his word. He promised to Abram and Israel, if they keep all his statutes and laws they would live in the land of milk and honey — a sample of paradise on earth, where God would be their God, and they would be his people.

However, even as the prophets constantly reminded Israel of the bondage and oppression in Egypt, and God’s saving work, they struggled to keep the law and teach their children, and often turned against God throughout the lifetime of the Old Testament. Then God and his word fell quiet for four-hundred years, yet again.

Although Egypt is mentioned over six-hundred times in the Bible, in the New Testament, Egypt is spoken of only twenty-seven times on nine occasions. At the coming of Christ, after the four-hundred year silence something had changed. Egypt is rarely mentioned and the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey, isn’t mentioned at all in the New Testament. Why?

It’s no accident that Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt with the infant Jesus in Matthew’s gospel account, written to teach Jews, Jesus of Nazareth was their King and Son of God. Only in Matthew chapter two is Egypt mentioned anywhere in the gospels.

When Jesus came to the cross it was the Passover, and the feast of unleavened bread. It is not just a coincidence that Jesus broke bread and gave the cup of wine to the disciples and said, “This is my body, this is my blood.” And that his blood was spilt on the cross and flowed down his sides.

It was not by chance the preparation for the Passover meal occurred at the same time as the disciples prepared for what is known today as the Last Supper. It is no fluke in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke that Jesus eats the Last Supper on the night when Jews ate the Lord’s Passover meal and remembered God giving them freedom from Egypt. It’s no human apparition in Holy Communion we to remember what God did for us on the cross, and receive the promise of Jesus in bread and wine!

And in seeming contradiction in the gospel of John, it’s no mistake that John has the preparation for the Passover on Friday afternoon, when at about 3 pm the lambs were being slaughtered for the Passover meal, rather than Thursday afternoon as in the other gospels. Did not the Lamb of God die on Friday afternoon so the destroyer passes over us? This is God’s new covenant give and shed on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins?

All of us have now crossed over from Egypt; cleansed of the devil’s oppression under sin through the waters of the Red Sea; through the waters of baptism. Now God lives with us in the wilderness, leading us like he did with those he led out of Egypt, towards the land of milk and honey.

But even greater than the promise of the covenant, in the Old Testament, is that we get a foretaste of paradise as God gives himself to us in the new covenant. We receive “manna from heaven” in the body and blood of Jesus Christ in bread and wine.

So when you think of Egypt think of the bondage God has freed you from, and walk with him in the wilderness, in the hope of eternal life in the land of milk and honey, our heavenly home, face to face in the presence of God. Amen.

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C, Lent 1 - Romans 10:8b-9 "Jesus is Lord"

If there is one sin, which single-handedly is destroying the church and our society, it is a sin where people deliberately seek to compete with each other.

This sin is one which every person loathes, both inside and outside the church, because this sin brings us into direct conflict with each other. In fact the more we loath this sin in others, the more we’re usually unconscious of it in ourselves. The more this sin is engrained in our being, the more we detest it in everyone else.

What is the sin? What is this ultimate sin that threatens your relationships with each other and with God? What is the number one complete anti-God state of being? Let’s ponder that for a moment and come back to it in a while!

In Romans ten, we hear, ‘“The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.’ (Romans 10:8-9)

Jesus is Lord! Let’s all confess it together… Jesus is Lord!

What does it mean to confess Jesus is Lord and to believe in one’s heart that God raised him? What does saying it and believing it do?

None of us can say these words in a vacuum; without something already having happened in us. Before we can believe “Jesus is Lord” in our hearts — something must act on us from outside ourselves and our sinful human condition — someone from outside our anti-God state of being must come.

In fact it takes a sacrifice to say “Jesus is Lord” and to believe in our hearts he truly has been raised from the dead. When we say Jesus is LORD, what are we actually saying?

This sacrifice in saying and believing Jesus is Lord, is explained a little further by the words at the end of Romans 10:9, which tell us if you confess and believe, you will be saved.

In our human condition we once protested against this statement, saying in our anti-God state of being, “There is nothing wrong with me, I don’t need to be saved — I’m doing just fine!” And every time the old Adam is revived in us, up rises this old anti-God attitude.

But we need saving, because we don’t do fine by ourselves, there is something wrong with everyone born under Adam, and if left untreated all of us would be on the highway to hell. If we are to believe Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from the grave, we have to believe these horrible things about ourselves and humanity too.

So if Jesus is Lord over us, and we believe God has raised him, what is he as our Lord? What is a lord?

The upper house of parliament in London is called the House of Lords. If you were under a king you would have to address him as “my lord”. In other religions they refer to their gods as lords. If we rent a house or property we have a landlord. Our cities have lord mayors. And all of us can lord it over someone else. So what are we saying, when we say, “Jesus is Lord”?

Lords are above us! They are masters over us. Is Jesus our master? What does a master require? To be under a master demands we are completely obedient to his rule and laws, or else! So when we say “Jesus is Lord”, are we saying he is our master and we are obedient?

If Jesus is our master, why do we struggle to be obedient? In fact, when we admit to being sinners, we admit to being disobedient.

So over what is Jesus master? He became master in his perfect obedience and in his innocent death. When we say Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts, God raised him from the grave, we believe Jesus is master over sin and death.

If in saying Jesus is Lord, and we think of him as our master, under whom we are to be obedient, then doesn’t our continual sinning show this confession of Lord to be a lie?

Therefore, this still leaves the question, how is Jesus our Lord? In summarising the second article of the creed in the Large Catechism Luther says this: the little word “Lord” very simply means the same as Rescuer. That is, he is the one who has led us back from the devil to God, from death to life, from sin to righteousness — and keeps us there. (LC, 2^nd Art, 31)

He is the one who has mastered sin and death for us. Jesus humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. He placed himself under God and his word and in his death and resurrection brought all glory to God and saved us. So Jesus is Lord because Jesus is our Rescuer and saves us from our disobedience leading to death and destruction.

Now back to the sin, which separates us from each other and God. In his humility Jesus resisted the devil’s temptations in the wilderness for forty days. If it was you or me, with all the power and authority of God, we would have competed with the devil, and tried to conquer him. But Jesus doesn’t do this here.

He could have done what the devil had said. In fact, he could have completely throttled him! But if he did, why would he have done it? Instead he went the way of humility; which led him to the cross and to death. He went in full obedience to the Father, and God raised him from death and made him master over sin, death, and the devil.

When we face the temptations of our old Adam, the world, and the devil, the worst sin takes over, and we fall into the temptation that we can do it ourselves. This sin is the opposite of humility. Our sin is pride.

In humility Christ put pride aside and suffered in obedience to God. When we are moved by pride we fall straight back under the masters of sin and death. Pride made the devil fall from God’s grace. Unlike Christ, Adam’s pride led him and Eve to listen to the devil and eat, and then turn away from the word of God. It is pride making us think …we are ok …we are better than others …we can do enough to be masters of our own destiny …and to even say, “Lord, Lord, look what I’ve done!”

But the Rescuer comes to us and saves us. He places the Spirit in us to make us holy and shine on Christ who is in us rescuing us. He continually wills us to sacrifice pride, all the other sins, and the sinful nature that guts our humanity and separates us from God. When we confess Jesus is Lord, we humbly hang our sin on Jesus’ death and believe in our hearts he will raise us from the grave too.

In humility the Holy Spirit gives you the words, Lord Jesus Christ, Lamb of God, have mercy on me. God hears the Son in you, he sees the master over sin and death in you; God sees the cross and forgives you all your sins for Jesus’ sake. Jesus is Lord! Amen.

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C, Ash Wednesday - Micah 5:2-5 "Bethlehem"

Text: Micah 5:2-5

2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” 3 Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labour gives birth and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites. 4 He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. 5 And he will be their peace. (Micah 5:2-5)

Sermon

It’s hard to imagine someday we will return to dust and dirt. You are dust and to dust you shall return. We know it will happen, but even so, it’s a tough thing to grip.

Perhaps even more difficult is the knowledge that we came from the ground. God made Adam from the earth and breathed life into this body of dirt, and then created Eve from him. It’s hard to believe humanity was formed from soil.

During the midweek Lenten services, and then into Holy Week and Easter, we will examine locations in the bible. Tonight we look at Bethlehem in Judah, then in following weeks we will study places such as Egypt, Nazareth, Jericho, Bethany, and Gethsemane; Jerusalem, the Upper Room, and Paradise – the garden of eternal grace.

But tonight, one might ask, what’s Bethlehem got to do with Ash Wednesday, and what’s Bethlehem got to do with death and dirt?

The name Bethlehem in Hebrew means, house of bread. Around the town were grain fields and sheep grazing country. Bethlehem is also referred to in the Old Testament as Ephrathah, which in Hebrew means, to bear fruit. So Bethlehem or Ephrathah was a place associated with food and fruitfulness. It seems to focus on life being created from the soil rather than death and our return to the dust.

We all know the Christmas gospel ­— baby Jesus born at Bethlehem. But Bethlehem appears in a number of places in bible. Let’s look at them to give us a fuller knowledge of what happened at Bethlehem because of us and for us.

The first mention of the town is in Genesis, and it’s a sad occasion. Rachel was the wife of Jacob, and the mother of Joseph. She had trouble conceiving and bearing children and as the family moved towards Bethlehem, or Ephrathah, Rachel went into labour with her second son. She gave birth to him and on her death bed named him Ben-Oni, which means, son of my sorrow. But Jacob renamed him Benjamin, which means, son of my right hand. And then he buried his much loved wife, Rachel, in a grave at Bethlehem.

So here in Genesis we have a prototype or preview of the gospel at Bethlehem. Jesus was the son of Mary’s sorrow because of her birth pains and his death on the cross, and like Benjamin, Jesus is the Son who now sits at the right hand of his Father.

Then in Judges chapter seventeen, a cloud is cast over Bethlehem, as it becomes the location from where an idolatrous Levite came as priest to serve a man called Micah in Ephraim. This is not the prophet Micah who spoke out against idolatry, but rather he and the Levite became the father of idolatry in the tribe of Dan after the tribe overran Micah’s house and carted off his idols and the Levite priest.

And from events starting in the Bethlehem, in Judges nineteen, unfaithfulness, rape, murder, bodily mutilation, war and near genocide took place between the tribes of Israel and another of its tribes, Benjamin.

This all came about when a concubine left her husband and returned to her home at Bethlehem. On fetching his concubine and travelling through the Benjamin countryside, he stayed in Gibeah and when his life was threatened, he gave his concubine to the wicked men of the city and they raped her and left her for dead. Her master cut her into pieces and sent her body to the far corners of Israel. So distraught at what had happened to the concubine, Israel fought against the city and their brother tribe of Benjamin, and nearly destroyed it forever.

As we can see, Bethlehem was anything but fruitful or a house of wholesome food in these times. Rather, from the events of this town, we see very clearly the sin that permeated the Israelites; the sin that commits humanity to dust and ashes; the sin that shows our need for a Saviour.

This fruitlessness continues at the beginning of the book of Ruth. Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, fall on hard times as they battle drought at Bethlehem, so they move to Moab with their two sons. After moving, Elimelech dies and the sons marry two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Eventually the two sons die as well, leaving the three women widowed. Orpah returns to her family in Moab, but Ruth stays with Naomi, who returns to Bethlehem just in time for the barley harvest.

On returning to Bethlehem, Naomi requests she be called Mara, which in Hebrew means, bitter. Naomi in Hebrew means, pleasant or beauty. She told them she had left for Moab full, but the Lord had brought her back empty. One could understand why she might have felt this way, with no welfare system and having lost all the men in her life, Naomi’s future looked more bitter than pleasant.

But the Lord had not left Naomi and Ruth bare and bitter in Bethlehem. Her husband — whose name Elimelech, incidentally means, my God is king — had relatives at Bethlehem. And the Jewish custom was for the family of the dead husband to support the widow and children with a kinsman-redeemer. Boaz was the redeemer and eventually married Ruth and looked after Naomi. Therefore, Ruth remained faithful to her mother-in-law and found favour with Boaz, a relative of her father-in-law, and continued the line of Elimelech. It is no accident that Boaz and Ruth are the great-grandparents of King David.

As we all know, David was a shepherd who came from Bethlehem. God laid his hands on David through Samuel and also made him shepherd and king of Israel. There were numerous times in David’s kingship that he looked to God as his “Elimelech” — his God as King. We can see, despite the horrors and bitterness surrounding Bethlehem, God was making the town, Ephrathah, fruitful!

Therefore, it is no accident Jesus Christ, humanity’s Kinsman Redeemer, was born in Bethlehem. Just as the human spirit of Elimelech lived on through Boaz and Ruth in King David; our God — the King of Creation — was conceived in Mary, lived on earth, and was raised to life through the Holy Spirit, in the person of Jesus Christ, beginning at Bethlehem. It comes as no surprise to us that God fulfilled his promises made through the prophets, like the prophet Micah, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2)

But if it is hard for us to imagine our flesh has come from dust and will return to dust. It is even harder to fathom how the Creator of the universe could come down to a town on earth which has had so much evil and sin surrounding it, and be born as a part of his creation, and laid in all the filth, Bethlehem has to offer — the manger.

From Psalm twenty-two we hear, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? 6 …I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: 8 ‘He trusts in the Lord; let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.’ 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. 16 Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. 18 They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.” (Psalm 22: 1, 6-8, 15-18)

When Jesus was born and laid in the manger; he was born to lie in the dust of death for you and me. Bethlehem has much to do with us and Ash Wednesday. We are weak; our lives without a Redeemer, God, and King, would be bitter; much more bitter than Naomi and Ruth’s life without a kinsman-redeemer.

Therefore, we are called to believe that we have a Saviour, who saves us from our sinfulness and weakness. Mary’s sorrow in loosing her Son at the cross is our Salvation raised to the right hand of the Father in glory. Jesus was laid in the dust of death beginning at Bethlehem, but Bethlehem has been fruitful for us who believe, ever since.

Jesus was raised out of the same dust as Adam, but he remained without sin. He was killed by the sin of humanity, in the Garden of Eden, at Bethlehem, and here today. And he was raised to life and lives on as our Redeemer over sin and death. His greatness reaches the ends of the earth; he is our peace forever! Amen.

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