Shepherds and Angels: Odd Couple?

 

Reading the nativity story in Luke's gospel again this year, it occurs to me that first century people understood what a shepherd meant symbolically in a way that we have lost today. Keeping flocks was a lowly profession, relegated to hired hands, or children who would inherit no property, or nomadic herdsmen too poor to afford good land to raise crops. It was roughly equivalent to working the midnight shift at a convenience store along a country road. You’re so bored you begin to hope somebody will rob the place. Or, in shepherding imagery, you start wishing for a wolf or two in the darkness.

Mind you, it is hard work. And relentless. When I was serving in Germany as a US Army Chaplain, I drove endless miles to visit troops in isolated bases, often down narrow country roads through forest and field. One afternoon while passing a Bavarian meadow I saw a German shepherd (no pun intended). I was ahead of schedule and there was no traffic, so I parked my car on the side of the road and stopped to chat. I speak enough simple German to make it clear that my name was shepherd--Schäfer in Deutsch. He chuckled and we chatted briefly. As his flock was munching on green grass, the schäfer asked how many sheep there were. I guessed three hundred, and he laughed and told me "Acht-hundert!" (eight hundred). He liked his work, but he never got a day off. The sheep always needed care, and he was the only one tending them.

 

(Not the actual European shepherd I saw, but a good likeness.)

When Luke chose these ordinary, hard-working people as the ones to whom the angels announced the birth of Jesus, he was making a powerful statement. Not to kings or to the wealthy, who lived in warm mansions with servants waiting on them. To a class below peasants, flock-keepers—down-and-out men without land, or children without inheritance, or men too old to work the fields, and hired hands trying to earn enough to eat in a world without social security or a safety net for the poor—working their herds along the hard scrabble hills in the cold of a desert night.

To these the angel announced: “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

You can almost imagine one of the young shepherds saying, “Dude, are you sure your GPS is working right? Shouldn’t you be down there hovering over Herod’s palace, or in the Temple?”

If I may continue the fantasy, the angel might have replied, “No, man. That’s in Matthew’s version. Now, will you shut up? Can I please get this done? It’s cold up here!”

Luke was writing for the masses, but he was also writing to a Roman world. The message of the angels is “great joy for all the people” and is a radical statement. The Romans understood that the gods favored whomever they chose. Could it be that the One God of Israel was branching out, favoring all men and women, Jew and gentile, slave and free? It was a cry of equality in a world where millions of people were held in bondage. Two thousand years later, we are still trying to make the vision of equality an everyday reality.

Which brings us to the key question.

What does the story of the shepherds at Bethlehem say to us today? I like to think of the angels’ announcement as light in the darkness. Hope for a troubled world. And lord knows we always need that. It’s a sad day when elementary school children are gunned down and politicians say the solution is more guns. When protecting the wealthy is more important than avoiding a new financial crisis that could lead to an even greater recession than the one we are now climbing out of. When North Korea—that haven of moderate behavior and ration thought—unveils a long range missile capable of striking the USA. When people worldwide cannot get basic health care or enough to eat or put an end to war. It’s tempting to look around at this weary world and wonder whether it might not be better if the Mayan calendar HAD predicted the end.

But not so.

 And now have to get up from this slump and take up our task. Watch over the sheep. Keep the wolves at bay. And listen for the brush of angel wings. Behold,I bring you good news of great joy for all the people. The Christ has come. God with us. God within us. All things are made new. The lowly and the mighty are equal. Peace is possible; love is possible. We actually can learn to beat our swords into plowshares. This is not a cold and heartless cosmos. This is a Universe bound together by Divine Love, regardless of appearances to the contrary. This night, let us claim the message the angels sang to our shepherding ancestors:

 

Come to Bethlehem and see

Him whose birth the angels sing;

Come adore on bended knee

Christ the Lord the newborn King.
 

Jesus the Wayshower has come. And the world is a different place when we remember the way. Christ dwells within everyone. Listen, the angels are singing for YOU.