Little Bethlehem

 This second week of Advent we light the Bethlehem candle. Although we've romanticized it in nativity story, Bethlehem was a troubled city, a city of death and birth. 

Bethlehem's first significant event was the death of Rachel, Jacob's beloved wife, as she gave birth to Benjamin in a difficult labor. As she was dying, and he was being born, she gave him his name: "son of my sorrow."

At the end of the Judges a horrifying story is told. A woman from Bethlehem, the wife of a priest, has left him and gone home to her daddy. The priest retrieves her, fails to protect her during their journey away from Bethlehem, and she is attacked, raped, and murdered. Which townsmen raped and murdered her? The men of Jerusalem -- men of Benjamin. How did the priest express his anger and offense at her death? He cut her into 12 pieces and sent her body parts to the heads of the 12 tribes. The nation was shocked and angry. Civil War ensued. The men of Benjamin were nearly wiped out -- all because a woman left her home in Bethlehem and died a brutal death in Jerusalem.

The very next Scripture is the book of Ruth, which also takes place in Bethlehem. Ruth is David's great grandmother. She's a stranger from Moab, but the rest of the family is from Bethlehem. Ruth has been barren until she comes to Bethlehem where she finds a husband and bears a son. And David's line continues all the way down to Joseph, who takes pregnant Mary there because the census requires that they be counted in their home town. So she goes to have her baby boy there, in Bethlehem.

So many babies!

After they escape Bethlehem by night, the baby boys of Bethlehem are all slaughtered in one night by soldiers sent from Herod, a king terrified of a new baby king. 

These thoughts rumble around in my head and I try to make sense of them. So many babies. So much violence. So much promise, but so much loss. Doesn't it sound like our lives? So much hope; so much loss. Babies fill us with hope, new little humans with years of potential in them! But the story of Bethlehem is a cautionary tale in the midst of that hope. For Mary, Jesus was also the "son of my sorrow," a baby boy destined for brutal death. 

These are uncomfortable thoughts at Christmas, but Advent is supposed to be a time of uncomfortable reflection, of somber preparation, much like Lent. Why isn't it a time of raucous, jubilant celebration because the Savior of the world is coming? Why do we grieve in Advent? Because he comes to die. The prophets foretold that as well. 

Thanks for bearing with me as I ruminate on this new understanding of little Bethlehem. God gives us eternal hope, unyielding hope, but the road to Bethlehem -- and away from it -- is hard.