Hope for the Humble | 12/14/25
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Micah points to hope coming from an unlikely place. Can you name a time when hope emerged for you from an unexpected person or situation?
How does the image of a shepherd—rather than a warrior—shape your understanding of leadership, power, and God’s reign?
In what ways do comparison and self-doubt keep you from recognizing how God might be working through you?
The sermon emphasizes that hope is born in humility. What practices help you stay open to humility rather than striving for importance or recognition?
Where do you see “small acts of integrity and goodness” at work in your community right now, even if they go unnoticed?
As you move through this Advent season, what is one tangible way you can intentionally carry hope into someone else’s life this week?
Transcript:
The season of Advent would have you believe that the only prophet that really matters is the prophet Isaiah, because all of the good prophecies come from Isaiah, anyway. But did you know that there are other prophets who talk about this Messiah figure—the one who would save Israel from being occupied and subject to another authority? One of these prophets is the prophet Micah, whose messages circulated through Judah, the southern kingdom of what used to be a united Israel.
He was prophesying primarily in Jerusalem, which was the capital city of Judah. All the cool things happened in Jerusalem—trade, commerce, government, education. It was all there. That’s where everyone wanted to be, and a prophet could get the most mileage out of a message in Jerusalem. But that wasn’t where Micah started. He was not a prophet born to a family of wealth and fortune, already heavily involved in the life of a big and bustling city.
He grew up in a small farming village around people who worked very hard, harder than anyone else, just to make ends meet. His upbringing is one of the reasons why his prophetic voice often includes information and hope for people who are poor and suffering, people without power. At the time that Micah penned these words, King Hezekiah was ruling in Judah. The northern kingdom had already fallen to the powerful Assyrian Empire, and Micah saw the writing on the wall.
He knew that this devastation would make its way toward Judah at any moment. And so he offers these words of hope to the people of Jerusalem, and a word of hope to us this morning. Hear these words from Micah, chapter five:
“As for you, Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
though you were the least significant of Judah’s forces,
one who is to be a ruler in Israel on my behalf will come out from you.
His origin is from remote times, from ancient days.
Therefore, he will give them up until the time when she who is in labor gives birth.
The rest of his kin will return to the people of Israel.
He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
They will dwell secure,
because he will surely become great throughout the earth;
he will become one of peace.”
This is the Word of God for us, the people of God. And we say together, thanks be to God.
Will you join me in prayer?
God of all peace. God of all joy. God of all hope.
Speak to us a word of hope now. A word that will deeply pierce our hearts and our minds, that by your Spirit we might be empowered to carry hope into our community. It’s in Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
Could anything good happen from Bethlehem? It was small, unimportant—a podunk, one-horse town just five miles south of Jerusalem. Well, it might as well have been a whole universe away from Jerusalem for how different it was. It was the kind of village that, if you blinked, you would miss it. It wasn’t even worthy enough for a fabulous “Welcome to Bethlehem” sign.
Instead, it got one of those really small green signs that you see on the side of the road as you’re passing an area that just says, “Bethlehem.” It was the Alachua, the Hawthorne, the LaCrosse—that place you have to go through in order to get to where you were actually going. Nothing good was ever going to happen in Bethlehem.
And yet the prophet said, “As for you, O Bethlehem, a ruler will come out of you.” And not just any ruler, but a ruler from the line of David.
You know, when we think of King David, we get this picture in our minds of this mighty warrior, a king seated on a beautiful throne in a palace with so much power. But he used that power with fairness and righteousness. The way he is spoken of through the prophets, the way the stories are told of him through the ancient days, it sounds like the world would simply be a better place if Israel could just go back to life as it was under David’s rule. All hope is thrown into this one basket.
But we often forget that King David did not start out as royalty. Rather, he started out without fancy armor, without a palace lined with gold. David was a small, simple shepherd boy. He was inconsequential—not even important enough for his father to remember on the day that the chief priest Samuel came to Jesse’s house to find the next anointed king of Israel.
Jesse was asked to present all of his sons, but only presented the oldest, leaving David in the fields with the sheep. You see, David was forgotten by his own father. But he wasn’t forgotten by God.
And yet somehow, through the words of the prophets, hope was sparked out of a humble town of Bethlehem, from the humble line of David. A ruler would come who would not conquer with sword or military might, but would stand and shepherd his flock.
Micah said 700 years would pass before anything good would come from Bethlehem. At this point, the prophecies of a Messiah became simply a faint memory, held together with the religious language of Jewish life amid Roman occupation. That line of King David—the one held in such high esteem—was now obsolete, irrelevant, forgotten.
Until an angel of the Lord would come to a small, young, timid teenage girl from Nazareth. Nothing good would come from the small, insignificant town of Nazareth, could it? She was betrothed to a man from this once-sacred line of David, who was now just a carpenter of meager means.
Mary’s future—her power—was wrapped up in someone else’s decisions, someone else’s plans for her life. And yet, from this woman, this woman of such lowliness, this woman of such powerlessness, from a line lost to irrelevance, from the small, unimportant town of Bethlehem, comes the hope of the entire world.
Friends, in the world that we live in today, when we go to bed hearing one bit of really devastating news and wake up to yet another, with all of the things that we are bombarded with day in and day out, the stress of just making it day after day, I wonder how many of us feel small, insignificant, powerless, irrelevant, inconsequential—too young, too old, too simple, too messy—for God to use for anything good.
How often do we play that comparison game with ourselves? “Oh, I can’t possibly do enough to help. I don’t have enough faith. I don’t have enough talent. I don’t have enough resources. I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough to make any difference in the world or to contribute to the community in any way that could even carry a glimmer of hope, to make hope even a smidge tangible.”
And yet, the prophets and the Gospels alike, time and time again, remind us that hope is born not in a palace, not in a hospital, not in an institution of higher learning—not even in a church with lots of beautiful Christmas trees and fancy lights and really good music.
Hope is not born in an inn or a house—not even a white one. Hope is born in a stable, to an unwed teenager, the lowest of the low. Hope is born in humility, within the people and the places that the world sees and deems absolutely worthless, unimportant, irrelevant.
And if hope can be born and carried there, well friends, hope can be carried by you too—maybe in ways that you feel are unexpected, insignificant, small, and unimportant.
When I think of hope being carried in those small places, I think of the witness of Dr. Melba Padilla Maggay. In 1972, before she had that fancy title of doctor, she was a young adult living in the Philippines. She had just graduated from college with a mass communications degree and was really excited to start work at the Manila Chronicle as a cub reporter.
One day, not too long into her brand-new career, she went to the office to discover that it was closed. The Marcos regime, which was in power at the time, had instituted martial law. And for the next eight years, under the rule of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the Philippines would experience widespread human rights abuses, corruption, extreme poverty, and censorship. Anyone who was willing to stand up against the regime would be thrown into jail.
So in response to this crisis, Melba and another colleague began what they called the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture in 1978, to help strengthen the church’s witness in this crucial moment in their history.
As that organization grew, they, along with another Protestant organization, were some of the first to join that human barricade in 1986 through the People Power Revolution that blocked the movement of military tanks and troops loyal to Marcos. Over the four days of that peaceful, nonviolent protest, the barricades succeeded in uniting the people and the military personnel, who were beginning to see a different side of reality from the one they had been ordered to believe.
That shift of the tide eventually led to the downfall of the regime. In an article that Melba wrote about this defining moment of Philippine history, she likened the hope experienced during those four days to the birth of a baby. She said that hope did not come out kicking and screaming, but rather charmed soldiers by offering flowers.
This protest wasn’t a success because of one big, monumental act, but because of the combination of many small acts of shared humanity, linked arm in arm. People stood together and offered literal flowers in the face of military might. And it’s that act of hope—those small acts—that carried hope in a way that changed the momentum of history.
In the years since, Dr. Maggay has become a powerful writer and theologian, using her experience and understanding of both Scripture and that moment to put a framework around what hope looks like in our world today. And she says this:
“So this we believe: a kingdom of justice and righteousness has begun, and it is making its way into people’s lives and denting structures that continue to oppress and dehumanize. Such work is seldom done in the corridors of power, nor in the halls of the great. Often it is in the many small acts of integrity and goodness that many faceless men and women do every day. It is this daily practice of hope which keeps most of us going.”
Hope is not carried through the corridors of power or in the halls of the great. No—it is carried by you. It is carried by us. It is carried by the small acts of goodness that seem inconsequential or unimportant or irrelevant to the moment.
It is the small acts of kindness, even when you don’t feel like you are doing enough or anything at all. Hope is carried in the small act of simply remembering someone’s name. In the small act of taking a meal to a family who is really having a hard time right now. Hope is carried when you remember the widow you haven’t seen in quite some time and give her a phone call just to see if she’s okay.
Hope is carried in the small amount you might give to a mission focus, or the coffee you might pick up for the mom who is running on fumes, or even in a smile—or a “have a nice day”—as you walk past someone going into the grocery store.
Hope is carried when you are serving food at Circles Gainesville, or at a Wednesday night dinner, or serving coffee at our welcome center. It might seem small. It might seem insignificant or unimportant or irrelevant or inconsequential. And yet it is everything.
Because one small act, combined with other small acts, can make a mighty difference in the kingdom of God. And that is where hope is born. That is how hope is carried right here and right now.
Because friends, if the Messiah—the Savior of the world, the hope of the world—can be carried by a small, insignificant teenage girl from the podunk town of Bethlehem in a stable, no less, then hope can and will be carried by you too.
Amen.
