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Bethlehem - Outside the City, Inside the Heart of God

The entrance to the Church of the Nativity
Bethlehem, Israel
Have you ever wondered why God chose Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus?  There were other more appropriate places that would have been just as pleased to go down in history as the place the Messiah made His debut.  There were more logical places even. Just ask the wise men... when they saw the Star in the East they came to worship the promised one of Israel by making their way to Jerusalem to find Him.  Jerusalem was the hub of religious activity for the Jewish people - the place where they made their way for their sacrifices and for important holy days.  Jerusalem was a place of rich history for the Jewish people and the home of the Temple with its "most holy place".  So why wouldn't Jesus have been born at the epicenter of such an important city?

Many would argue for Bethlehem simply because it was the place identified in prophecy as the birthplace of the Messiah.  It was also the land of Jesus' ancestors - the line of David, Israel's greatest King.  None of these reasons are wrong at all.  I just think though if we accept these, we stop short of a powerful truth about Jesus' life and Jesus' calling - a deeper truth about His heart for people.

Doesn't it seem that to have been born in Jerusalem would leave people with the impression that Jesus was for deeply religious people?  Those who came to Jerusalem knew how to look, how to act, what to do.  They planned their life around the schedule of feasts and remembrances.  And if Jesus had come there as a baby, we might always believe we would have to clean ourselves up to come to God.  But no one ever cleans themself up to go to a barn.  By being born in Bethlehem, Jesus established that God does a clean up on us after we've entered a relationship with Him, but any effort to clean ourselves up on our own, any desire to be good enough to impress God with our piety or charity is futile apart from the leading and help of a compassionate and empowering God.

By choosing to be born in Bethlehem, Jesus established an important truth about Who He was.  He would be among the outcasts.  He could be found outside of the religious establishment in places no one would expect to find Him.  He began at the outset to be someone who loved sinners and tax collectors,someone who spent time with the lonely, the disenfranchised, the vulnerable; and He would be someone who challenged religious stereotypes.  Jesus demonstrated that He liked people who were utterly unlike Him; and in return, people unlike Jesus liked Him.  Throughout His life, Jesus would be found outside of the religious system and opposed to the religious norms.

Hebrews 13:11-13 teaches us that a complete ceremonial sacrifice began in the Temple, but was not finished until it had been burned outside the city.  That's why Jesus was crucified outside of the city walls of Jerusalem.  Outside the city walls is where you would find the unclean, the trash, the sick.  People who could not live inside the walls were vulnerable without the protection of the city walls and were completely cut off from their families and from their ability to make a life.  I submit that as a sacrifice for the sins of the entire world, Jesus not only had to die outside the city, He also had to be born outside the city.  From the cradle to the grave, Jesus' life would be defined by His association with the broken, hurting, and cut off members of society - people who had no hope of being good enough to enter the most holy city on their own.

"So let us go to Him outside the city", the passage charges us.  Did you catch that?  Don't go into all the world.  Don't go seek out people who are hopeless and without God.  Go, instead to Jesus.  You'll find Him outside the city!  Yes, He's in our safe little walled communities of faith, but He is also in the broken places of this world where humanity is waiting for a reason to hope.  Don't go to the broken people of this world... instead, follow after Jesus and you'll find yourself where He loved to be - surrounded by doubters, try-ers, outcasts and vulnerable people.

George MacLeod said it this way...

"I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the centre
of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church.
I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles,
but on a cross between two thieves; on a town garbage heap;
at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek.  It was the kind of place where cynics talk smut and thieves curse and soldiers gamble;
because that is where He died; and that is what He died about;
and that is where church people ought to be and what church people ought to be about."  

God never commanded the world to go to church.  He did, however, command the Church to go the world; and when we do so, we'll find Jesus there - on the outside looking in, surrounded by the people who needed Him most.  Go to Him outside the city and let Him be birthed again in places most unexpected.