O Little Town of Bethlehem is one of the many Christmas carols that contain rich theology. How easy it is to sing without thinking about what we are singing! It is a danger anytime, of course, but maybe more so at Christmas. The tunes of the carols have become such a part of the Christmas experience and so the tunes themselves can – and often do – overshadow what is actually being sung. It is the sounds of Christmas, not the content, that matter.
That is why Bing Crosby can sing Remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas day to save us all from Satan’s power. Non-Christians and Christians sing without really knowing what is being sung.
O Little Town of Bethlehem simply paints the picture of a little Palestinian town on a certain night two thousand years ago. The town is dark and quiet. Its inhabitants are all in their beds in a ‘deep and dreamless sleep’. Overhead, the blackness is punctuated with a multitude of stars that drift across the sky. It is the kind of night that, if you happened to be there, you would say, ‘Nothing is happening’.
Now, we, of course, have no idea if it was a ‘quiet night’. The town was filled with travelers, and the inn was full. Was everyone asleep? It’s doubtful. Were the sky and the stars clearly visible? Maybe. Maybe not. Were Mary and Joseph alone when Jesus was born? Almost certainly not.
But frankly, none of that matters.
Even if there were lots of people awake and in the street on a cloudy night, it wouldn’t change the reality that something was happening in Bethlehem that they were all missing: Divinity (God!) was being born as a baby, coming to save a lost world, coming to make sinners (us) children of God. Only the angels knew that something of vast importance was taking place.
The song puts it this way, talking to Bethlehems itself:
Yet, in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
In Bethlehem that night, in the birth of a baby, in a stable, the hopes and fears of centuries of human history, of billions who have lived, and do live on this planet, BC and AD, converged in this one person, this one, helpless baby.
What are the hopes of all humanity? What are the things longed for? And what are the fears?
History. witnesses. to millenia of mankind’s struggle to draw near to the divine, to appease him. We long for God but we fear him.
Will he accept us? Will our rituals and sacrifices satisfy him? Or will he destroy us?
We hope he is good. We fear he is angry.
We hope for life and joy and safety. We fear death and danger.
We long to be good. We fear our own badness.
We hope for mercy. We fear judgment.
We hope he is for us. We fear he is against us.
In Jesus, all these things are met and answered. In the coming of Jesus to die for the sins of the world, we realize how monstrous is our own sin. These are not ‘mistakes’. Humanity’s ancient choice to be our own lord and to refuse to submit to the perfect and holy Lordship of the Lord has played out so continuously that it has become our default setting. Sin has become our natural and unthinking pattern.
And still, we choose it.
We have all had countless moments when we have known what was wrong and right, and chosen wrong. We have rebelled against the infinite goodness and authority of God. Sin is not a Band-Aid question. Sin leaves us morally hemorrhaging. It does not get ticketed. It gets the death penalty. And the fact that it is Jesus himself, infinitely and eternally sinless, who came to earth to live and die for us, reveals just how vile is our sin and how well-founded are our fears of God’s anger.
But it is in Jesus, too (the infant who cannot speak or move and is totally dependent on his mom) our best hopes are met and exceeded. ‘That God so loved the world that he gave his son’ John 3:16 is followed by verse 17: He did not come to condemn the world. Why not? Because the world was already condemned!
But the Son of God came to save the world. God’s infinite wrath against sin was poured out not on us but on his own son who died in our place. We see, in Jesus, God’s commitment to accept us, to forgive, to show mercy. In Jesus, as in no other way, we know God is for us.
And yet when divinity (God!) came and entered the world to share in it and to redeem it he came so quietly. How silently the wondrous gift is given. We are still amazed every year, in remembering this event, that it was to a humble virgin that Jesus was born, in a stable, and that shepherds – not kings or priests – were the first to hear about it. The eternal God came incognito.
And God still comes the same way. So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heav’n. He seldom comes with great fanfare. He usually does not burst into one’s life.
The journey of faith so often involves a growing awareness of a deep hunger and a growing realization that God, through Jesus Christ, is the answer to that hunger. No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in. Though it is life transforming, it is yet an almost intimate event. It is the personal, relational act of a sinner saying, ‘Jesus, it is you that I need and it is in you that my life belongs.’
The last verse of this carol simply is a prayer that Bethlehem would be repeated for each of us in our own hearts. ‘Just as you came from heaven to be born in history and on earth as a baby, make our hearts your resting place. Come and live there. Don’t just be God on earth but be God in us, cleansing us from our sin, and giving us life.’
In you the hopes and fears of your life can be met today. They can converge and be answered. This Bethlehem baby is the man who died for your sins, that you may become a loved child of God.
That is why there is Christmas at all, why we celebrate it with such delight and why we sing with such joy.
Hear the paraphrase of these verses of the carol:
O little town of Bethlehem, you seem so still tonight,
almost as still as the night sky itself.
You’d never know that the Eternal has come to you tonight
and that the One on whom history, eternity and every human life depends, has just come to you.
For Christ is born tonight of Mary.
But if you don’t know it, the angels certainly do.
They are watching this work of God with a profound sense of wonder.
O angels, proclaim this birth and sing God’s greatness and his goodness to us!
Just as God gave Jesus to the world so quietly, almost slipping him in,
so God gives Jesus to a person’s life just as quietly.
You won’t hear his approach but even in a world so sinful all it takes is the humble request of a person who knows they need a Savior and Jesus moves in.
O Jesus, whose birth we celebrate in these days, let this not just be a remembrance of an event from days of old,
but let your forgiving and purifying presence be a reality in our world, and even in my heart on this day!
We hear the proclamation of the angels, that a Saviour has come.
Do come, God with us, always.
AMEN.