I think the presence of the shepherds has to be one of my favorite parts of the Christmas story. They don’t say much. They don’t do much. But it sure was important to God that they be there for the birth of Jesus. And that says a lot. When the time came to tell Zechariah about the birth of John the Baptist, God sent one angel. When the time came to tell Mary about the birth of Jesus, God sent one angel. When the time came to announce the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, he sent a whole sky full of angels.
If you were planning to launch a political campaign, a new business or a new product line, who would you plan to invite first? It would be people who have money or power. And that’s sure not shepherds. I bet if you asked people in the first century who should be invited to the coming out party for the Messiah the list would start with the high priests, some religious scholars. A few might say King Herod. He was the king after all, but he was a really cruel king, so I think that if he ever made it onto an invitation list it would have been only temporary. He would have gotten scratched pretty quickly. But who got the first invitation?
Shepherds, shepherds who had been sleeping outside. Can you remember ever sleeping outside?
In recent years whenever we have camped out the campgrounds have had good showers and a good, hot shower always feels good. But I remember some campouts when I was a kid, especially in boy scouts where there weren’t any showers and boy did it feel good to get home and get the dirt and the smell of the campfire smoke off and really get cleaned up. And that was just after a couple of days, and we were sleeping in a tent. We don’t know how long the shepherds had been camping out. And if they had any tent at all I’m sure it didn’t have a sealed floor like our tents today.
I’ve been part of a lot of Sunday School Christmas programs over the years and I’ve seen how the moms or teachers care for our shepherd robes. They are hung up carefully all year. If a little boy takes his off and throws it on the ground it gets picked up right away and it might get ironed. But if we really wanted authentic shepherd costumes for next years’ Christmas program, we should have the kids sleep in their robes for a week and then drag them around the barn yard a few times. Drag the robes, I mean, not the kids.
And it was shepherds who got invited right into the makeshift nursery to admire that little baby who was the newborn Son of God.
When the angels told the shepherds their good news they said it was “good news of great joy for all the people.” And if the shepherds were included, then it really was for all people. And if they were included, then there is room for us, too.
If we translated the story into our modern economy, well we don’t have many shepherds around. To whom would God have sent the angels? Maybe to Mexican immigrant workers, maybe to someone who has been laid off and unemployed for 6 months, maybe to someone who is new in town and a stranger to everyone. And if it’s good news of great joy for all the people, then there is room for us, too.
That’s the kind of God we serve. I’ve just finished reading through the Prophet Isaiah in my own personal devotions and one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible is Isaiah 57:15: “For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” That’s the God of the Old Testament. He loves the humble.
And Jesus is just the same in the New Testament. He started his life about as humbly as you can, in a manger in a stable. He always seemed to end up with the blind and the lame, the lepers and social outcasts. He even touched lepers. Nobody else did that. He wasn’t above doing the dirty work himself. He got down and washed the feet of his disciples, even when they were having stupid arguments about who was greatest.
God loves humble people. And that’s a message for our time when so many things are tilting for the rich and the poor are falling farther and farther behind. This Christmas, remember that God has a special place in his heart for the people who are on the bottom. That’s a message about what our God is like for this Christmas morning.
And there’s a message for what we should be like, too, as we look at the shepherds.
First, they listened to their message from God. They don’t get a lot of credit for that. If I saw a sky full of angels in the middle of the night, I’d take notice, too. But God speaks to all of us in so many ways, in little nudges to do good, in a quiet voice of comfort when we are stressed. I’ve had so many people tell me that they just knew God was reaching out to them in that painful time when they were grieving the death of a loved one. I’ve had so many people tell me that they heard something said by a friend or on the radio and they just thought it was God speaking to them. God speaks to all of us. Be on the alert. Listen.
And second, the shepherds took the next step to find out if it’s true. They followed the sign God had given them and they rushed into town to see the baby for themselves. That step of follow through is where a lot of people fall behind. They met the savior because they listened and obeyed God’s guidance. We can meet our savior when we follow through by studying our Bibles to see if this message makes sense or not. We can meet our savior by being in church every week, listening for what more God has to say to us.
I know that many people are held back from faith because they have big questions about the ways that things just don’t work out well in this world. If God is so good and strong, why is there still so much suffering in this world? If God answers prayers, how come I’ve had so many prayers that don’t get answered? If God has a plan for everyone’s life, how come I don’t have a clue of what his plan is for me? And there is so much evil, so much suffering in this world, will there ever be justice done? Where is God in this world?
If those are struggles for you, I encourage you to join us in worship starting the second Sunday of January and I’ll talk about those issues. Sometimes Christians give answers to those questions that just don’t make sense, but the Bible itself is full of people who wrestled with living in this fallen world and who did find that God was there. My prayer is that all of us would be like the shepherds, take the step of checking it out, looking for ourselves, and that together we would find that the way God operates in this world has a lot of wisdom.
You should find in your bulletin a little golden card. Take it home as your reminder to come back for this sermon series. Give it to a friend who might appreciate an invitation to learn.
And that brings us to the third thing that we can learn from the shepherds. They didn’t just huddle together and enjoy the blessing they had for themselves. They went out and they told everyone. Those shepherds were the first evangelists. They didn’t have a theological education. They didn’t know the whole story. But they knew that God had spoken to them. God had touched their lives. And they wanted others to know. They just told what God had done for them.
God has given us a wonderful gift, too wonderful to keep to ourselves. Many of us have seen and tasted God’s goodness for ourselves. Let’s dedicate ourselves to learning more. Let’s watch for the opportunities to share it with others this Christmas season. AMEN
