So there we were...me and my little sister, sitting there around the fire, yapping about nothing mostly. The weather, wolves, latest schemes, schisms, thieves and robbers; anything to keep us awake. It seemed like we had been out there forever, doing this stupid job nobody cared about until something went wrong and a few of our father’s sheep got stolen. Day in and day out, digging stupid sheep out of the dumb places they constantly got into, fighting with the sheep, briars and each other, trying to keep the herds at least a little bit together, sometimes almost wishing something dangerous or exciting would happen just to break up the monotony! Being a shepherd wasn’t exactly a high profile job back then. No sir, not very high profile at all! To tell you the honest truth, it was pretty much a bottom of the barrel, no account kind of job – if you could even call it a job. I don’t really understand why...but being a shepherd means you’re pretty much a worthless person. You may have heard we shepherds had such a lousy reputation we aren’t even allowed to speak up as witnesses and give evidence in court...not that anyone has ever asked me to vouch for them. Who would care what I think?
Who would care what we think about anything?
I suppose part of our bad reputation was deserved; I’ll be the first one to tell you there are some less than honest folks watching the sheep herds around here. But not all of us, my younger sister and I are out here just because we were the youngest kids in the family; there are a lot of daughters and youngest sons out here anonymously watching sheep at night. I guess somebody has to make sure the thugs and hired men don’t steal all of my father’s flock…
But nobody really thinks much of us. Nobody thinks much about us. Nobody notices us much at all – unless something’s missing, of course!
Sometimes the nights out here are almost impossibly long and sad. It isn’t that the work is so much worse than anything else; its just knowing you’ll never be good enough for anything else. Once you’re just “a shepherd boy,” once you get enough of this sheep stink into your clothes and sheep soil on your sandals, it seems like there’s no way you ever quite get shut of it. Sometimes I think care more about their stupid sheep than they do about us…
Anyway, just after most of the lazy hired men and the younger ones had fallen asleep on that particular night, we were sitting around, my little sister and I, trying to stay awake, minding our own business, making idle conversation, when, all of a sudden, BLAM!!
The feeble, flickering light from our little campfire was swallowed up in a blaze of white perfection that seemed to explode before our eyes! There was this … man, or something like a man, standing in front of us glowing. Huge. Overwhelming. Terrifying! On fire and yet not on fire. Violent, overpowering spiritual noise and yet no real physical sound. I couldn’t tell if I was seeing and hearing all this bombastic stuff with my eyes and ears or just with my mind. I found myself immediately on the ground, not knowing how I got there. I wanted to scream, but I had no voice. I wanted to cry, but I had no tears. I wanted to say, “I’m sorry!! I don’t know what I did, I don’t know where I did it, but, whatever it is, I’m sure its really bad for somebody like you to come all the way here to punish me...so I’m sorry!! For whatever...I’m not such a bad person, just a lonely and stupid or something...! Oh, please don’t hurt me!! I’ll do whatever you say! I’m sorry for whatever dumb thing we did! If you’re going to kill me, do it quickly, but please oh please don’t hurt me!! Please don’t hurt me! I’m sorry, I’m sorry…I’m sorry!”
But then...I heard this voice, as sweet, pure, clear, lovely and strong as any voice I’ve ever known, speaking softly to me – a voice running down over my head like warm, sweet cream butter over a fresh, hot biscuit. I heard a voice without a shred or slightest hint of anger in it. A voice without any of the disregarding, dismissive tones we’re so used to hearing around here. Terrifying and yet a voice I think I could have happily listened to for the rest of my life. “Don’t be afraid,” the voice said, “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people.” I peeked up from the ground just a little, realizing somehow I was still alive and breathing; listening more intently than I have ever listened to anything or anyone before. The voice continued, “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 the baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
And then, just as I was beginning to calm down enough to really listen to this man or whatever he was; just as my eyes were finally beginning to come back into focus, the heavens exploded, the hillside erupted into one great singing, speaking, shouting mass of uncontrollable, immeasurable, indescribable, Northern Lights, Borealis angel song joy! I couldn’t breathe! I couldn’t stand the unbelievable goodness of it! I’ve never been around so many happy, joyous, squirming people at one time! I thought I was going to die from the sheer pleasure of it all...
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to those
on whom his favor rests.”
Next thing you know, I found myself standing there, arms outstretched, tears streaming down my face, every part of my body bathed in a wonder, saying those words over and over and over and over again to myself. Glory to God in the highest! Glory to God! Glory to God! Take me with you! Oh please, take me with you! Glory to God! Glory to God! Glory to God!
I don’t know how long I stood there like that, it could have been moments – it could have been hours or days for all I knew, but when I opened my eyes again, I looked around and the whole crazy thing was over – no sign of them. There was no burned grass. There were no footprints in the dirt and, amazingly, no scattered sheep. If anything, it seemed the sheep were actually clustered around closer in order to hear the angels just like us! But other than that, there was no evidence whatsoever that these clouds of angels had ever been there.
But then I turned to my right and to my left and saw this was not a dream; all my friends were still standing there as stunned and overwhelmed as I was. Tear-stained faces, and wide eyes. Arms up into the air and giggling like a bunch of babbling kids or something! We stood there for a moment, still shaking from the incredible intensity of the moment and then, it dawned on us simultaneously what we had all just been told. We were so overwhelmed by the incredible experience we shared, we hadn’t really paid much attention to exactly what we had been told. But suddenly, it all occurred to us...everyone started talking at the same time...
“Oh my goodness, did you just see what I just saw? We couldn’t all be out of our minds at the same time, could we? If this thing we just saw really happened, then what about this baby the guy spoke about? Could it be that the Messiah, the Christ has actually been born? Could it be that the King has really come? Could any of this possibly be true? And, if so, why would anyone bother to telling us? Nobody is ever going to believe all this! Especially coming from us! This is nuts! This is crazy! Aw, who cares what it is…let’s just go see if it’s true!”
And so we took off for Bethlehem as fast as our stumbling feet, fleeting breath and excited chatter could carry us. (I don’t even rightly remember now exactly what we did with the sheep!) Sure enough, we found the baby there, just exactly as we had been told he would be. We found a kid lying in a manger, nobody much around but his simple parents and some stable folks. The somewhat frantic innkeeper’s wife would pop in now and again for a moment just to see that the girl was doing okay. But she didn’t seem to really care about maternal things; nobody seemed to notice what was going on. Who cares about yet another dirt poor baby kid? Nobody seemed to think much of it. Everybody else had their own problems to take care of. With the census going on and everything, Bethlehem had its mind on other things.
All we could do was stand there, jostling each other for a better view – and wondering.
Could this scrawny kid possibly be the prophesied Messiah? Could this poor, cherry-nosed newborn lying here in this dirty stable, this anonymous, poor kid...born just like so many shepherd kids like us are born, could this unknown kid possibly be the one destined to save our nation and our world? Could this possibly be the Messiah King destined to set us all free?
We looked around to see what other people were coming to see Him; other people to whom the angels had appeared. You know – important people who got the announcement. We kept waiting to get shoved out of the way at any moment. We expected it. Certainly, if this was really the great Messiah of all our dreams, the choirs of angels would have made the announcement to cleaner, more reliable, acceptable people. Certainly a fancy delegation from the Temple would be here in a moment to take Him out of this sloppy, God-forsaken place. Certainly the King or at least the procurator had been told what was going on; or at least one or two of the smarter scribes or somebody sent to at least get a proper record of things.
But nobody came. How weird is that?
Eventually we figured out the angels hadn’t talked to anybody but us. Wow! If this whole thing was really “good news of great joy for all people,” then why hadn’t the good news been given to somebody who mattered? Why had the good, the greatest Gospel news been entrusted just to us? For a moment, we stood around wondering if we were all just crazy or something. We asked ourselves and each other if what we saw on the hillside was true. We all immediately agreed it was; we could still feel our hearts warm and pounding feverishly in our chests! Fellas like us don’t leave our flocks and go running into town like we just did for no reason. We all knew what we saw, but standing here alone crowded into a dirty stable, we couldn’t help but wonder why hadn’t this good news been given to somebody who mattered?
Or maybe, just maybe, the good news was...we do matter!
Maybe we do matter…
Maybe that’s the good news the happy angels were chattering on about. Maybe that’s the whole glorious point! Wouldn’t that be something? Maybe the good news of great joy the angels sang about was that this kid was going to grow up someday and make us all joyously matter! Even shepherds, little sisters and youngest brothers. Maybe we were the ones who received this announcement because broken, bored and ignored people like us are precisely the ones He came to save! Maybe we’re the very best ones to tell this joyous story...
In any event, we haven’t stopped telling the story since!
We went back to work that night and have not stopped talking about Jesus since!
No one could ever fully describe in mere human words what our experience on that hillside and in that humble manger was like, but a doctor named Luke a few years later came pretty close. Strangely, the good doctor Luke was the only one of the Gospel storytellers who seems to have remembered us much. The birth of this baby Jesus, the events of that particular night, were so uneventful, so boring, so completely unremarkable in the eyes of most people at the time, that even the great Matthew, Mark and John don’t bother to discuss them. But Dr. Luke, who made a point of researching all this stuff, who seemed to be particularly interested in our side of the Gospel story, told the story of that shepherd’s night pretty well...
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at 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 on whom his favor rests.”
Are you one of us this morning? Are you a shepherd too? Are you a forgotten person looking for the same things we were? Have you heard the angels? Have you heard the Song?
“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.”
Go check out the stable, go see the Baby Jesus and see for yourself if what I’m telling you is true. I wonder if Almighty God is trusting you this morning with this good news of great joy for all the people just like He trusted us all those year ago. So go check out the stable. Go looking for the Baby. And if you find Him, if all this makes sense to you, if all these things are true, then I suggest you go back to work tomorrow and tell somebody about it all…
Tell some other shepherd who matters every bit as much as you do.
Amen.
