Micah 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.”

A prominent theme in the Christmas story is that God uses underdogs.  From the beginning, scrounging the bottom of cultural hierarchies for heroes has been God’s modus operandi. Consider God’s message to the nation of Israel early in their history, in Deuteronomy 7:7  The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.  There’s even a cool story of a warrior named Gideon, found in the book of Judges, who was called to go to war with a fierce and overwhelming army of Midianites.  Gideon started out with twenty two thousand men. God told him to dismiss all the fearful ones and his numbers shrank to ten thousand. God kept having Gideon create conditions that eliminated Gideon’s army until he got down to three hundred men.  Only then was God satisfied that Gideon’s army was small enough. Yikes!

We’re usually worried about having too little to be successful but, have you ever stop to consider that God likes to take little and multiply it.  The cliche’ “less is more,” really applies when it’s you and God.

The prominence of underdogs in the plan of God continues in the Christmas story.   The heroes of the Christmas story are almost all social nobodies. Mary the teenager and Joseph a carpenter from Nazareth had a leading role.  Years later, a disciple would ask, “what good thing can come out of Nazareth?” Zechariah and Elizabeth were a senior citizen couple who would become the parents of John the Baptist.  Shepherds were on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder in those times. Simeon and Anna were unknown outside of a small circle of people who saw them praying in the Temple. The Magi would have had the most social significance of all the Christmas characters but even they had to turn their back on the advantage that doing Herods bidding would have brought materially and politically.

Now the idea that God hates rich, prominent and successful people is a dangerous and totally false accusation.  Having said that, social responsibility toward the underprivileged and underclassed is an important conversation and one we should have; however, let’s not miss those moments when God wants to use our disadvantage for our good and his glory.  

Most of us sometimes feel disadvantaged; we’re not the best looking, don’t possess the quickest mind, we need more money, we’re not the best at making friends, have precious little political power and often struggle to make intimate relationships work.  But we all have a choice to make and that is whether we are going to curl up in the fetal position and let life pass us by or face life as though the armies of heaven are on our side.  Where we are advantaged we should be good stewards of that advantage and help the least among us, where we are disadvantaged I give the following counsel, based on the underdog Christmas narrative:

• Don’t glory in being disadvantaged, change your status when you can.

• Don’t despair at being disadvantaged, put your hope in God.

• Don’t get bitter over your disadvantages. Bitterness will turn you into a person you will not want to be.

• Don’t miss the divine plan that God has in making underdogs unlikely heroes.

So who are you in your own Christmas story this year?  If you’re feeling really powerful like Herod then quickly get humble, if you’re feeling small and insignificant like Mary, be confident because you’re most likely to be the central character with a starring role in the drama of compassion and salvation he is playing out on the earth.

Additional underdog passages:

1 Samuel 9:21 Saul answered, “But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me?”

Matthew 13:31-32  He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field.   Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”

Isaiah 60:22 The least of you will become a thousand, the smallest a mighty nation. I am the LORD; in its time I will do this swiftly.”