12-24-2023 CHRISTMAS REFLECTION 2023 Luke 2:1-20

The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III

Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus is the most comprehensive of all four of the Gospels. Mark and John say nothing about his birth. Matthew has eight verses about the birth itself and then focuses on the visit of the Magi. The story, as we typically tell it, is from Luke.

Notice something in Luke’s account. After the first seven verses, in which we are told that Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem because of the census, the narrative takes an interesting turn. The focus is on the shepherds. It’s almost as if Joseph, Mary, and Jesus are tableaux in the background. Luke reflects upon the shepherds — abiding in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night — and the call to them from the angel. Why does this matter? What makes this so unique? Nothing. Nothing at all. That’s the point.

The shepherds were common folk — less than common, if you want to know the truth. As I said in a recent reflection, you would think that when God came to the earth as a human being, that he would first appear to kings and courtiers, to people of the highest status imaginable. Nothing of the sort. Shepherds were the lowliest of the low. They were uneducated, and they probably smelled like cattle. Not exactly a royal welcome.

But these were the ones whom God chose to hear the message first. As a footnote, that is one of the reasons why some scholars feel as if the story has to be real. If writers in the first century made this up, they would make it believable. In other words, if this was fiction, then the announcement of the Messiah’s birth would have been in a royal court with a flourish of trumpets and dozens of “Hallelujahs!” breaking forth. No one who made up a story like this would put shepherds on the top of the guest list.

So, why shepherds? There are many reasons. One is that God chose to become a human in a humble form among the humblest of people. But the deeper question is why does God reveal himself to them in this way? Is there are reason for it? My favorite twentieth-century theologian, the great Neo-Orthodox thinker Karl Barth, says that there is. Barth reminds us that the shepherds “become the first human witnesses of what has taken place…we are told that the glory of God, the revelation of His glory, majesty, and power, shone round about them…It is the light of God which in this form breaks into the darkness of earth and illumines them.”[1]

The shepherds are illuminated by God’s light. God illumines them. This does not mean that he increases their intelligence. The shepherds do not become theologians. They do not get an Ivy League theological education and write long tomes on the meaning of the Incarnation. They are spiritually illuminated. They are the first people in the history of the world to witness this birth. This birth. They see God in the flesh.

At first, they are filled with great fear, because the angel tells them that the long-awaited Messiah has been born. But we must remember that when the word fear is used in the Scriptures, it has a dual meaning. It means to be “afraid” as in “scared,” but it also means to have “deep reverence.” I think it is the latter, because, as Barth mentions, they choose to go to Bethlehem to see what the angel told them to go and see: the baby lying in a lowly manger with Mary and Joseph. Again, not just any baby, but the Word made flesh, God incarnate, Immanuel, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the Prince of Peace. It didn’t look the way artists depicted it in porcelain nativity scenes. It wasn’t a pristine, crèche carved into wood or stone. A manger is where cattle feed. It is, suffice it to say, filthy. Fear of what they saw did not drive them away, just as the fear they felt upon hearing the angel’s call didn’t send them running for hills.

Luke tells us that “they made known the saying they had been told concerning this child.” They couldn’t contain themselves. The passage we read tonight ends, “And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” They are the first ones to run through the streets filled with zeal to tell others what had happened, what they saw with their own eyes. They did not write Gospel accounts. We do not even know their names!

But it isn’t their names that matter. It’s Jesus’ name. He is the one who came to save us from the rift that millennia of sin caused between us and God. He is the one who bridged the gulf between us and Our Father Who Art in Heaven caused by the wretched sinfulness of humankind. We mainline Christians do not like the phrase “wretched sinner.” It’s the adjective “wretched” they despise. It’s too…wretched. As a student minister, I was cautioned about using that term when I was a supply preacher at a local church one Sunday. I’m not sure why they thought I was going to come into the sanctuary shaking my finger and yelling, “You wretched sinners, you!” It was Paul who said it first in his Letter to the Romans: “What a wretched man I am!” (7:24).

God came to save us from that wretchedness. We couldn’t do it. As technologically advanced and scientifically astute as we may be, we cannot bridge that gap.

Only God can do that, and he did so in, through, and as Jesus. Of course, there’s more to the story than this. It starts here on this silent, sacred night. Don’t keep the joy to yourself. Go forth like the shepherds and declare what you witnessed. Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Amen.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: Index with Aids for the Preacher (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1977/1932), 280.