Christmas Eve 2007

This evening’s Scripture reading is Luke, chapter 2, verses 8 through 20.
I invite you to listen for the word of God.
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks by night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men and women on who his favor rests.”
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in a manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
The word of the Lord
Thanks be to God.
Sermon
I’ve only met one shepherd in my life. She was quite a person. I met her in a really interesting place; a place that was foreign to me, though it was only miles from our house. I met this one shepherd in a maximum security prison. To get into this prison I would first show my identification, walk through a metal detector, then maybe get waved with the metal detector wand should I set off the regular metal detector, then pass through a series of gates – and as I passed through one door it would immediately close behind me, and only then would the next door open. It was a scary place to be; a place full of walls between the inmates and the outside world.
In the women’s prison there is one program that really does something to help people get rehabilitated. This program where the women train Seeing Eye dogs to help the blind was the place that really made me feel hopeful. I ended up spending a lot of time in their building because they seemed to have a hope that life could be better – that upon release they could make a new life for themselves – that they would leave these prison walls behind them. I used to love that hope, because here was this one place where I didn’t feel so obligated to offer something, to say something, or to do something. This was the place where I could just be, or just listen. Every where else I was trying to say the thing that God would have me say, but in this one bastion of hope and rehabilitation I could just watch the good things going on.
It was in this place that I met a shepherd, an inmate who told me how she raised Catahoula Leopard Dogs before she was incarcerated. This woman told me about how she would be called out to farms when the cows had gotten out. She would release her dogs, and they would run out into the woods, chasing and corralling whatever cows were still running amuck, chasing them all back into the fenced area. She told me that she remembered a time when a particularly rough bull finally came out of the woods, but with one dog clamped to his side, this dog had bitten down so hard on the bull’s side, she refused to let go and just hung on to the bull until it had been corralled to safety.
She told this story with pride, for her dogs were so well trained that they would never give up – even risking their lives to do their job.
The shepherds mentioned in Luke’s gospel, just like this shepherd I met in a maximum security prison who raised Catahoula leopard Dogs, are not the kind of people who church going folks are used to hanging around with.
In our society, maybe you saw them early this evening in the nativity scene here at church, you might see shepherds, but these shepherds were little boys and girls dressed in their father’s bathrobes; something completely unlike the shepherds that are mentioned in Luke’s Gospel. At the time Luke’s Gospel was written, Shepherds weren’t well thought of. If you were an ancient Roman citizen you might walk into a wealthy person’s backyard and see a grotesque statue of a person with no teeth and shabby clothes.
These statues often depicted shepherds for they were considered to be a homely addition to any well manicured garden – an effigy of a person who worked on the outskirts of society, living in huts rather than houses, tending flocks in their fields rather than participating in the life city people considered normal.
At the time of Jesus, the Pharisees believed that if we follow the law to the letter then the Kingdom of God would come, that if we are stringent enough with our Sabbath observance, or are clean enough, or are devout enough in our worship at the Temple, then the Kingdom of God will surely come.
However, the shepherds of the day would never have been able to live up to any of the Pharisees’ standards. How could they observe the Sabbath fully by giving a full day of rest when their animals needed to be fed – there are no animals that only need to be nurtured six days a week after all? They weren’t clean either, rarely having time for baths or brushing their teeth, as ancient documents tell us that most shepherd’s teeth were black, and how could any shepherd make it to the temple when their vocation mandated that they live and work in the prairies and valleys where their flocks could roam.
They were surely not viewed as good enough by the standards of the time, surely viewed as having nothing much to offer, surely a group in need of help or guidance or charity.
When I think of such a people I feel pity in the pit of my stomach, and I feel responsibility bearing down hard on my shoulders. I feel guilt for all that I have, and I feel obligation – thinking of the things that I could do to break down the walls of injustice and inequality – hoping for a day when the wall of privilege that insulates us would fall to provide for those without enough.
If I could sit on Santa’s lap this Christmas that is what I would ask for. I would ask for justice, I would ask for peace, I would ask for hope.
But this Christmas I realize this gift is not one in Santa’s bag, but is a gift that the shepherds have brought.
For on the first Christmas Eve – long, long ago, God told the shepherds of Jesus’ birth. The most important event of human history was not broadcasted on the evening news, not announced to the president or emperor, but told to the shepherds in their fields.
The first ones to get the news were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And the angel of the Lord said to them, “Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”
These shepherds, these unclean, these seemingly dangerous, these illiterate, these virtually homeless, these poor were entrusted with the most important – the most vital information. It was from their unclean lips, from their missing, broken, or black teeth that the good news was first uttered for the good of human kind.
I am used to thinking that it is my job to say it, but here I know that I am to hear it, realizing what God has done and what the shepherds were able to bring.
We worry so often that the good news of Christmas will shrink to a whisper as political correctness encourages us to be respectful of the many faiths that now surround us, and so we say Happy Holidays or Seasons greetings rather than Merry Christmas.
We worry that our children will miss out on the meaning of this great day because it becomes a morning of presents and not a morning of celebrating the birth of Christ.
And we worry that this day may not turn out the way it is supposed to because the turkey gets dry, someone has more to drink then they should, nobody likes the new girlfriend or boyfriend, and everyone ends up arguing instead of getting along around the dinner table in their holiday sweaters.
But tonight we hear this good news – and it is not even our job to make sure that it is heard. Tonight we celebrate God’s message that we will hear, not because we say it, but because we go to the people who can tell us about it.
We are led to the prison, where the walls are so high and so real – but we go and hear the gospel from our sisters who refuse to give up, hanging onto life with a will that defies explanation, living with knowledge of hope that inspires and encourages us to never give up.
We sit at our Christmas feasts, realizing that our table looks less like our ideal and more like our reality but we are led to the manger, where the smell of animals offends our senses, where our class bids us not go, but where we hear the words of the shepherds leading us to the place where we find Jesus, forgiving us our sins, affirming our humanity, biding us together as one.
-Amen.