“God’s anonymous: Shepherds”
Luke 2:8
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
It’s easy to say that Israel, also known as the “Holy Land,” is one of the most important and most sacred places on earth. It’s the place that three major world religions--Christianity, Judaism and Islam--all call home.
And if you were to visit there, there’s quite a lot to see. Take, for example, the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth as well as one of the world’s most amazing natural wonders. It’s so rich in salt and minerals, you can’t sink, no matter how hard you try! But they say, just be sure to rinse yourself off with freshwater after you take a dip.
Or think of the Sea of Galilee. It’s where Jesus once walked on water and where His disciples, Peter, James and John, once filled their boats with fish.
But probably the most important place of all is the city of Jerusalem. There’s the Temple Mount where Abraham once offered his son, Isaac, and where Solomon built his temple. There’s the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Via Dolorosa, the “Way of Sorrows,” Calvary and the Garden Tomb.
It’s like no other place on earth.
And if you have the time, you could also travel just five miles east of the city of Jerusalem, to a little town called Bethlehem, population 25,000. And among the many sights and sounds to discover there, (like the Church of the Nativity and Manger Square), there’s also a small Franciscan church called the “Chapel of the Angels,” or “Shepherd’s Field Church,” designed by Italian architect Antonio Barluzzi back in 1954.
Now on the outside, there’s not much to see--just a simple, bronze figure of an angel hovering over the entrance of a small, five-sided building that’s made to look like a shepherd’s tent.
But on the inside, there’s so much more, like murals of angels appearing to shepherds, and shepherds celebrating the birth of Christ.
And soaring high above the altar is a dome, made of cement and glass, symbolizing the angels’ great light. And encircling that dome are their words, written in gold: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”
I’ll read the words of Luke chapter 2: “And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger’” (Luke 2:8-12).
All this seems strange if you think about it. After all, you’d think that of all people, shepherds would be the very last ones to hear this good news!
Take the Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example. In his book called, Aristotle’s Politics, written three hundred years before Christ, he said that among people, “the laziest are shepherds, who lead an idle life, and get their subsistence without trouble from tame animals; their flocks wander from place to place in search of pasture, and they’re compelled to follow them, cultivating a sort of living farm.” The book of Genesis says, “Egyptians despise shepherds” (Genesis 46:34).
And that’s not all. Back in 1893, Bible commentator Frederic Farrar said, “Shepherds at this time were a despised class.” In 1924, Strack and Billerbeck said, “The shepherds were a despised people.” In 1992, New Testament scholar Bob Stein wrote, “In general, shepherds were dishonest and unclean according to the standards of the law. They represent the outcasts and sinners for whom Jesus came.” John Butler wrote in 2000, “Shepherding had changed from a family business as in David’s time to a despised occupation.” And in his book, The Christ of Christmas, author James Boice wrote, “[Shepherds] were looked down upon...they were despised and mistreated. They were thought to be crafty and dishonest…so bad was their reputation that they were not even allowed to bear testimony in a court of law. It was assumed people like that would lie.”
Even today, when we think of shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night, we picture them as little more than, as one author wrote, “a bunch of country bumpkins camping out and dozing around the fire on a hillside when some angels appeared in the sky and sang, ‘Glory hallelujah!’ only to have them rub their chins and say, ‘Ya know, Festus, I speck we oughter go down there to the village and see if we can find this here pretty baby.’”
But not so fast!
If you think about it, throughout the Bible, there are quite a lot of shepherds, and never once are they ever described as lazy, dishonest or unclean.
Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, was a shepherd, and so was his son, Isaac, and his son, Jacob. The Bible says they watched over both herds of cattle and flocks of sheep.
Moses was a shepherd. Though he was raised as a son of Pharaoh for his first forty years, for the next forty, he tended his father-in-law’s sheep.
And before King David was ever anointed king, he was first a shepherd who watched his father’s flock.
Five men--all pillars of the Old Testament--and every one of them was a shepherd.
And if that’s not enough, even God is pictured as a shepherd. That’s what He said through His prophet Ezekiel: “As a shepherd looks for his sheep on the day he is among his scattered flock, so I will look for My flock” (Ezekiel 34:12). David wrote in Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1). And when Micah promised that the Messiah would come, he wrote: “And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd My people Israel” (Matthew 2:6).
And when the apostle Paul meant to encourage those who lead the church, he said: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock” (Acts 20:28).
Even more, if I could say, these Bethlehem shepherds weren’t just any shepherds, and neither were they keeping watch over just any sheep. They were, after all, barely five miles from the capital city of Jerusalem, the very home of worship and sacrifice.
To put it another way, the hillsides of Bethlehem were, for all practical purposes, a first-century factory farm, controlled directly by priestly temple livestock traders, caring for lambs raised purely for the feast of Passover and temple sacrifice.
So you see, to be a Bethlehem shepherd was pretty important after all.
And it was to them that Christmas came. And it is to us that Christmas comes.
Today, we can’t help but wonder how beautiful and incredible that angelic chorus must have been. Imagine the glory of the Lord that shone round about them. Imagine their brilliant, shining wings.
But Christmas isn’t about angels and their splendor. It’s about the Son of God laying aside His glory to become one with us, to become one of us.
He was born bloody in a manger, to die bloody on a cross. He grew up in a backwoods town called Nazareth, the son of a lowly carpenter. He befriended shame-filled prostitutes and respectable teachers alike. He rubbed shoulders with unschooled fishermen and lofty synagogue rulers. He showed His love to helpless widows and powerful centurions. He knew hunger as well as feasting, laughter as well as grief. He knew loneliness and betrayal and rejection. He became one of us in every way, and ultimately took the sins of a broken world onto His shoulders, and suffered hell on our behalf as He hung on the cross.
He plunged all the way down to the depths of our misery as He bound Himself to our humanity. Then He rose back out of the depths, to lift us up with Him into life with God.
That’s why His coming matters. That’s why Christmas matters.
No wonder then that, just as soon as the angels announced Jesus’ birth, they said in chapter 2: “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known unto us” (Luke 2:15).
And what did they find when they looked in that manger? They found the peace with which He would calm the storms, the bread and fish that would feed thousands, the new eyes by which blind men would see, the new legs with which lame men would walk, the living water bubbling up to eternal life, freedom for a woman caught in the act of adultery, the tears He would weep over Jerusalem, the bread of life and the cup of salvation, the cross that would conquer sin, the words, “Father, forgive them,” and the open tomb of resurrection.
Let me take you back for a moment, to December of 1964, to one of the most memorable Christmas shows of all time, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
You know how the story goes. Sam the Snowman, (played by Burl Ives), tells of a reindeer named Rudolph, who was born with a glowing red nose. But since no other reindeer had such a bright, shining nose, all of his other reindeer friends made fun of poor Rudolph. So not knowing what else to do, he decided to run away.
And as he ran away, he happened to meet an elf named Hermey, who wanted to be a dentist instead of making toys, and Yukon Cornelius, a prospector who was always in search of silver and gold.
And no sooner had they managed to escape the Abominable Snow Monster, they landed on an island called, the Island of Misfit Toys, where they met a pink-spotted elephant, a train with square wheels, a bird that swam, a cowboy who rode an ostrich, a boat that couldn’t float, and an airplane that couldn’t fly.
But as the story ends, with a little help from Santa and a lot of help from Rudolph, thankfully they all lived happily ever after.
Christ and Christmas are still for misfits. They always have been, and they always will be. Think of Mary Magdalene possessed by seven demons. Think of a Samaritan woman at a well or ten men covered in leprosy.
And somewhere on that list, you could add every single one of us too. Yet it is to us that Christ and Christmas have come.
In the words of Joseph Bayly: “Praise God for Christmas. Praise Him for the Incarnation, for the Word made flesh. I will not sing of shepherds watching flocks on a frosty night or angel choristers. I will not sing of a stable bare in Bethlehem, of lowing oxen, or of wise men trailing a distant star with gold and frankincense and myrrh. Tonight I will sing praise to the Father who stood on heaven’s threshold and said farewell to His Son as He stepped across the stars to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. And I will sing praise to the infinite eternal Son who became most finite, a Baby who would one day be executed for my crimes. Praise Him in the heavens. Praise Him in the stable. Praise Him in my heart.”
Gracious Child, we pray, O hear us, from Your lowly manger cheer us, gently lead us and be near us, till we join Your choir above. In Your name we pray. Amen