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December 14, 2003
The Gift of the Shepherds
The Gift of the Shepherds
Psalm 30 / Jeremiah 31: 10-14
Luke 2: 8-20
December 14th, 2003
This morning we will be ordaining deacons and elders to serve the Lord specially here at Faith Church. It is a good time to remember the shepherds, the first human beings to report the story of Jesus. Jesus, the first deacon, was “the good Shepherd.” You who become deacons and elders today are shepherds beside me. I am a shepherd, a pastor. It is important that shepherds be faithful. It is vital to have shepherds who are grateful, who have not forgotten the wonder of the Gospel. In becoming a shepherd you become a part of a remarkable story.
Anyone who reads the Christmas story in the Gospel of Luke is fascinated with the role the shepherds play. At first, all they do is get excited when the angel startles them at night, and then show up at the manger. Then they do what most of us do when we see something that grabs us, they went and talked about it. So, what’s the big deal about that? Somehow, we think there is more to the shepherds. And I want to explore this a bit in the coming minutes.
We don’t know how many shepherds there were. Walter Wangerin suggested there were three, one named Simon. Why three? Well, three is an important number in the Bible. You know. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three in the Christmas story, Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus. Three wise men. Three kinds of animals--sheep, donkeys, and oxen. So, why not three shepherds. Pretty nifty, a motif!
But this is the kind of subtlety that literary folk look for. You and I are touched by less subtle things. Here are some of the reasons why I think shepherds were there when Jesus was born.
First, we remember that King David, in whose family line Joseph was born, began life as a shepherd. The prophet, Samuel, anointed the shepherd boy to be king of Israel. Thus he honored shepherds at the start of a story that was much bigger than the life of David. David wrote the beloved shepherd psalm, no doubt in wonder, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
Second, we remember that the prophets of Israel were referred to as shepherds. Long before Isaiah and the classic prophets, Moses was a shepherd. He was tending sheep when God spoke to him from the burning bush, telling him to lead his people out of Egypt. When he got them out, he chose seventy under-shepherds, like deacons and elders, to help care for them in the wilderness. Israel was Moses’ church. He was pastor. Israel was like a flock of sheep. The church is a flock of sheep too.
The 95th Psalm reminds us “we are the people of God’s pasture, the sheep of His hand.” Isaiah the prophet reminds us how ordinary sheep we are. “All we like sheep have gone astray.” It was the prophets who were God’s under-shepherds to keep and often to bring back the straying sheep of Israel. No wonder then that shepherds knew first about Jesus.
In our OT reading this morning, the prophet Jeremiah reminded us of this great theme. God “will keep Israel as a shepherd keeps his flock.”
Jeremiah echoed the sweet promise of Isaiah, “God will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms, he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.” Over and over again the Bible reminds us of shepherds.
Maybe this is why shepherds at Christmas. Maybe this was why shepherds were the first to tell that Jesus was born.
We think of all this when we ponder the place of shepherds in the Christmas story. But shepherds had lost their luster in the time that Jesus was born. This is a third impression of shepherds.
When we look at the cultural climate when Jesus was born, shepherds were no longer seen as little replicas of the Lord, or of Moses, or of Israel’s great King David, or of the prophets. They were seen for what they were, dishonest fellows as apt to rip you off as anything. A little piece I read in a recent Christian magazine reminded me that shepherds were near the bottom of the heap in social status. They often tended flocks belonging to someone else, and would steal newborn lambs or kids. The rabbis forbade buying wool or goat’s milk directly from the shepherds because you’d probably be buying stolen goods. They weren’t allowed to testify in court because their word was not trustworthy. What a change from the glorious image shepherds once had!
Why shepherds then? Don’t we try to up-date our illustrations as we go along? Maybe God was redeeming, buying back the shepherd profession by choosing them to be the first to see the baby Jesus. They would have pride of place in the Christmas story, as Mary Magdalene gets pride of place in the Easter story.
For reasons I don’t know, Mary Magdalene got a reputation in the Church of being a pretty bad woman before meeting Jesus. Maybe you read the Newsweek article a couple weeks ago that challenged this view of her. But something happened in her life that made her stand out in her love for Jesus above everyone else. Maybe Jesus trusted her when others did not trust her. Maybe Jesus accepted her when others despised her, and she never forgot. Maybe she was forgiven much, and she realized it, and so she loved Jesus much because of it. Everyone else failed Jesus—all his disciples, his closest friends. But Mary Magdalene stuck closer than a sister.
Mary saw that Jesus was more than an interesting and unusual rabbi. Maybe when she met him, her life was in a tailspin. When Jesus cared for her, she found her life coming together again, and she was grateful. Without gratitude Christianity dissolves into a system, just a religious system. Mary Magdalene became a model of gratitude for all of us who are apt to forget that gratitude is rightfully the first response to Jesus. Mary was there last at the cross and she was the first at the tomb on Easter morning. She immediately told the disciples.
Maybe God did for the shepherds what Jesus did for Mary. He honored what they had been and what they could be by entrusting them with the Good News of Jesus first. They would be grateful because they knew they were needy. The trust God placed in them lifted them above the place to which they had fallen. Trust is redeeming. Gratitude is transforming.
God’s plans make sense. Broken people who are made whole are grateful. Grateful people tell of their gratitude. God chose despised shepherds for a reason. That chilly night, when the lonely shepherds huddled together, taking turns keeping watch, God interrupted their ordinary, miserable little lives by honoring them first. God’s order of things is opposite ours. We check out the credentials first. That’s not God’s way. He chooses people we would not choose. He honors people we would not honor. Either God or we are mixed up.
God wanted the neediest people of all to hear first that a Savior was born. Only those who know they are needy find interest in the term “Savior.”
“Savior” has become a religious term for a lot of people today. It is possible to say “Jesus is Savior and Lord” and have it mean less than to say, “Abraham Lincoln was president.” Lincoln evokes such beloved images in us—his humble birth, his Gettysburg Address, his Emancipation Proclamation, his tragic assassination. He did so much to shape what is best about the idealism of being American. While to say “Jesus is Savior” may evoke very little in you. Unless you think you need a Savior, what does it matter that Jesus was “Savior?”
Maybe the Shepherds didn’t know what this new-born baby would save them from, but they had a lot of things they hoped he might save them from—from their dangerous hard job, or from the oppressive Romans. They didn’t like being typecast as dishonest, grubbing out a living in a way that made people despise them. How good to find a Savior!
The shepherds were the first ones to spread the word about Jesus. Sometimes they are thought of as the first missionaries—just before the Samaritan woman, another despised person who wondered at Jesus’ kindness to her. At the beginning the shepherds did what Jesus told his twelve disciples to do at the end—“Go into all the world and proclaim the Good News.” Why did God chose the least believable kind of people to tell such important news?
We make important announcements where it will have most effect. Let reporters from the Journal and Courier be present when a large gift is announced to Purdue’s building program. Let reporters from the Indianapolis Star be present when I announce I’m running for governor. Let the cameras of CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS be present when I announce for the presidency. Why? Because these will get the message out, and their stature as the media’s big guns will call attention to my importance.
Why start with dishonest shepherds to get an important story going? We probably wouldn’t have, but God did. And people listened. Luke says that everyone who heard wondered at what the shepherds told them.
What does “wondered” mean? Maybe people wondered because it seemed odd for shepherds to show up in the market place excited about the birth of a baby. Excitement for whatever reason attracts attention. They were not public speakers, but they spoke with animation, and people wondered that maybe it was really true that angels appeared to them the night before, and that they’d seen a newborn baby of extraordinary significance.
The response that should come whenever people hear the Gospel is wonderment. How strange the Gospel is. A baby born to a virgin mother? A loving Jesus, beloved by thousands of common people tortured to death by crucifixion? He didn’t deserve that. Imagine this Jesus becoming alive again on the third day afterward! Imagine this Jesus coming again to reclaim a broken and fallen world? What a strange set of ideas! If you and I tell this story right, it has to produce wonder. If you and I tell it matter of fact it will produce no wonder at all. It will be less interesting than about anything you could say because what is more boring than religion?
Religions in all their variety are a hodge-podge of superstitions perpetuated by people on the make, hoping to build a private empire, or to goad folk to fork over their hard-earned money. One of the earliest Christian documents written after the Twelve Apostles died warns that if anyone comes around saying he speaks for Jesus and then asks you for money, have nothing to do with him.
What the shepherds said had no mercantile interest to it. In amazement they said, “We heard angels tell us a Savior was born in Bethlehem. We went there. We saw the child. A child was this savior! Seeing this child struck us like we’ve never been struck before.” There was excitement in their faces. There was joy in their hearts. There was conviction in their voices. People wondered at what the shepherds told them. Maybe the shepherds’ wonder, their amazement was the gift they brought to the world. They offered their wonder at the manger, where we imagine the only gifts were the gold, frankincense and myrrh of the Magi.
We never hear of the shepherds again. I don’t even know legends about them. The church was very creative in its legends, but they didn’t make up any about the shepherds—that I know of. We don’t know how their lives changed after the first Christmas night. Did they change as Ebenezer Scrooge changed? Did they become honest, starting the transforming of their profession? That would make a good story.
All we know is what the shepherds did that night, and this is enough. Poor shepherds heard, were amazed, went to see, then went to tell. They produced wonder in all who heard them. You are my friends, my fellow Christians. Hear the story as though you’ve not heard it before. Be amazed. Come closer to see. And if your heart is stirred, when you say anything about it from your heart, people may wonder at what you say. Wonder is so productive and so rare. It is how God begins the work of changing the human heart.
You who are elders and deacons, and who will be ordained to this shepherding task, join with your forebears in the Christmas story. You who have heard the story, join the shepherds. Come, see the thing that God has brought to pass, and the babe, lying in the manger. Be amazed. What you see will still produce wonder if your heart has been stirred that all of this was for your sake, because you need it. Gratitude and wonder are a potent mix, a terrific potion for healing a wounded soul.
Let us pray: O Lord God, thank you for the birth of Jesus that first Christmas night. And thank you for letting the shepherds know first. And thank you that telling what they saw produced wonder in those who heard. Help us to wonder too. We pray in the name of the infant Jesus’ name, who then died, and rose again for us. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at December 14, 2003 09:30 AM