Speechless shepherds
Category: Christmas
Speaker: The Rev. John Shellito
Sermon December 25, 2015 Rev. John Shellito
Holy Spirit, let your gracious love be incarnate in my words and in all of our lives, as we celebrate the birth of the Word among us. In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Inspirer. Amen.
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us."
Shepherds were the truckers, the security guards, and the armored car operators of the ancient world. Their job was not for the faint of heart. They were tough. And, they were also stunned into silence at what the heard and saw on that fateful night. They didn’t start speaking until after the angels had returned to heaven. Speechless shepherds is in itself its own image of surprise. And yet. How many times has a particular moment of truth or grace or beauty or generosity has left you without words? It has happened for me hearing a portion of Handel’s Messiah last night. And that is only the most recent instance.
Luke’s stories surrounding the Incarnation include several other moments of pregnant silence. Earlier, in Luke’s Gospel, Zechariah the Priest had lost his ability to speak after doubting an angelic message he received in the Temple, prophesying of how he and his wife Elizabeth would give birth to a son in their later years, and that this son would be a prophet like Elijah: his name would be John—John the Baptist.
In Luke’s version of the story, we don’t hear much from Joseph. He could be silent, or he could be beyond the scope of Luke’s attention. Relative to the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph is hardly mentioned in Luke’s account. Elizabeth and Mary are the ones who voice their praise in response to the good news. The story is told from their perspective. In our Gospel today, after she gets the news, Mary “treasured all these words, and pondered them in her heart”. She is the protagonist of Luke’s story, putting together the pieces from everything that has happened—processing the news that her son is the long-awaited Messiah—and planning for the future.
Mary pondered silently in the stable of an inn without vacancies—a displaced person in a family without even a room to call their own. In Matthew’s account, her family would soon be fleeing violence as refugees in Egypt. Of all the potential places where God could have chosen to join us in our humanity, God chose Mary, and God chose one of the most difficult of circumstances: an unmarried woman, probably a teenager, who was part of a marginalized people group, and who was on the road, without even have a proper room in which to give birth. And yet, Mary made do with what she had. The challenges she faced didn’t negate the promise given by the angel, but it certainly could have invited her into a more mature faith, a deeper trust, especially when she didn’t know how everything would unfold. She was doing the best she could under the circumstances, and it was enough.
Mary’s valuable intelligence from the shepherds confirming and expanding upon her son’s transformative identity was received in a marginal space. And the information was conveyed to and by a group of people whose work consisted of care and protection for creatures. After all, we all are creatures of God, beloved and called to embody God’s care and protection in a world that can be difficult and painful. God cares and God invites us to care, and to act. The shepherds were working the night shift—they could have been tired, or bored, or distracted under the inky darkness scattered with stars. But they were doing their jobs faithfully, and responded when the angels arrived.
After the terrifying majesty of the heavenly host lighting up the night, the sign promised was not a divine fireworks display, but rather that a swaddled child would be found resting in a common feeding trough for animals. The unusual accommodations for the Messiah are the primary sign given to the shepherds—the only directions aside from the more general news that the child is born in the City of David. The shepherds themselves knew that the City of David was Bethlehem. They remembered their tradition. But there isn’t the shining star to guide them as there was for the Magi in Matthew’s account.
The story of the shepherds searching for the Christ child that night reminds of the scene in the movie Love Actually, where the Prime Minister rings a hundred or more doorbells and introduces himself to each household on a long London street. He was going door-to-door in search of one particular person—aware of the street and neighborhood where she lived, but not knowing her exact address. I imagine the shepherds going door to door in the middle of the night in Bethlehem, looking for a swaddled newborn lying in a feeding trough.
The makeshift bassinet was an adaptation to circumstances— a surprising choice for a royal cradle: As if it wasn’t enough humility for the Creator of the universe to come down and join us in the limitations of our humanity. The promised child of God chose to be born in an unfamiliar and vulnerable place, a displaced person far from home.
In these circumstances, the innkeeper’s offer can be a source of inspiration, to share that which was available. This Christmas, we are invited to make space for this newborn Christ in our hearts and lives. I think it is not unusual for us to feel like an innkeeper these days—that in our overstretched, overfull, and perhaps overwhelmed lives, maybe a manger feels like it is all we have to offer. And, Christ will join us in the space that we have. Welcoming a newborn isn’t usually convenient or tidy—but what it can be is utterly transformative.
Being involved in church, like raising a child, is signing up for a practical theology class on what it is to be human. Giving space for the baby Jesus can be a step towards deliberate space in our lives and hearts and relationships for Christ to be present with us—even if it seems like all the available “rooms” in our lives are already occupied.
If we take a moment for silence, to take a few deep breaths in order to reflect on the many good gifts we have received, I think we may realize, as those shepherds did, that the most important things in life are often not glamorous, or powerful. Sometimes the most important things can be as beautiful and as peaceful as searching for and finding a child, swaddled and surrounded by love. Maybe in our moments of silence we can find ourselves guided to those places where we can see that faith, hope, and love are already here and growing—indeed, they are born among us this day. Merry Christmas.
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us."
Amen.