With Haste
I have always wondered why they are a part of the story. They are mere shepherds. And although shepherd imagery runs throughout the Bible, we are not told that any of Jesus’ immediate family worked as shepherds and they don’t have a particularly starring role in the birth story. They aren’t even there when he is born. They are out in the fields doing their thing, when an angel startles them in the silence, with news of the birth. Unlike the other angel pronouncements giving Mary and Joseph a heads up, the shepherds get the news after the fact. Obviously they don’t have family or relatives or shepherd colleagues from whom they might receive an update, so they get the message from an angel.
But why did the angel even bother? Shepherds do not have an especially elevated status. In Jesus’ time they would have been left out of much of local life. Remember that by virtue of their profession, shepherds would have been literally unclean. In other words, they wouldn’t have been able to observe Jewish Law given their job and the amount of time spent with unclean animals. Being a shepherd meant living literally on the fringe.
On my pilgrimage to Jerusalem last spring, I saw shepherds in the fields keeping watch over their flock. They are prevalent on the drive from Jerusalem to the region of Galilee but when I saw the olive skinned man with bright cloth on his head, I smashed my face into the bus window like a kid approaching her first Disney character sighting and shouted, “Shepherd!”
They are probably just as lonely now as they were then. There is not much to do but tend to the baaing babies and search for water, making way through the dusty hills until a spot of green is visible over the next mountain. They might hang out with other shepherds if their herds can be handled together. And they probably survive the heat of the day and the hours of pounding on their feet, knowing that the cinema of stars that awaits them when the sun goes down will make it all worth it.
So imagine their surprise in the dead, deep dark of night when all they can hear is a bit of munching and some bugs buzzing and the presence of silence lying over them like a blanket and then…an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and of course, as anyone would be, they were terrified. Apparently angels are frightening because they manage to scare pretty much anyone to whom they decided to speak. It becomes necessary for the angel to say, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people…”
The shepherds are startled and frightened. The one who was awake, Saul, shakes his head in confusion. “Wait a minute, can you say that again? Hey Samuel wake up! Someone is talking to us. Excuse me, um glowing light, can you say that again?” “Sure, I know it by heart. I am bringing good news of great joy for all the people.” The shepherds were just a bit confused. The two of them look around. “Are you talking to us?” Now at this point the angel is getting a bit frustrated. She had made an extra effort to find these two shepherds since they were outside of her usual route. With a bit of smugness she said, “Do you see anyone else here?” And the shepherds equally frustrated respond, “Well no, but do you know who we are you?” “Yes of course,” said the angel of the Lord. “I do my homework before following God’s instructions.” “Okay then, who are we?” “You are Saul of Nazareth and Samuel of Yafa.” “Well then you know that we are just shepherds.” The angel knew that she needed to call in some reinforcements so just then a multitude of angels appears. The angel says to them with her arms gesturing toward the crowd of angels hovering around them, “That is the point; this news is for you too! This is something different; this is about a life available for all people this is for all of us. God is breaking all of the rules and boundaries and barriers and blockades that you human beings have managed to create. God is breaking down the walls that you all have built in order to make room to offer abundant life to each and every hungry human heart.” The shepherds are speechless with the angels hovering around them. The angel goes on, “This baby is going to tell us how this all works, so we will have to wait a while until we know exactly what this means. But God told me to tell you that you don’t have to be on the outside anymore. There is a new thing happening and it includes all of us.”
The shepherds had nothing to lose. They were always the ones on the outside, they lived outside of the hustle and bustle of life, they lived outside the Temple walls, and they thought that they were also on the outside of the grace of God . They had nothing to lose and so the Gospel of Luke tells us that they went with haste. There was no time to waste, not a minute to lose.
So why them? Why were the shepherds in the field, so far from the heart of the Good News breaking into the flesh, among those who heard of the birth from an angel? Why would the angel make a special trip to announce Jesus’ arrival to lowly shepherds?
The shepherds have a small part in the story of Jesus birth, but I think they are included not because they were royalty or religious leaders or anyone special in the eyes of thee world around them, but because they weren’t. The shepherds are a part of Jesus’ birth because their story, their role in the nativity of our Emmanuel, is our story. Few of us can find a place in the rest of the people who heard the news of Jesus’ birth. Few of us can join the announcement of the virgin birth, or would have praised God for such surprising news, few of us can say that we would have done what Joseph did, few of us would have followed a star on a feeling or whim or a small voice whispering, but all of us, each and every one of us have been a shepherd. We each have found ourselves on a hill alone wondering where God is. We all have circles where we find that we aren’t quite welcome on the inside. We have places where we feel unclean or unfit or unready. We show up to find that we don’t belong.
The shepherds are a part of the story of Jesus birth because they are all of us. And the birth is a something like a holy way of deconstructing all that we have spent our whole lives building, all of the ways we create worlds and decide who is in and who is out and God knocks them all down. God wants to get to all of us, God wants to love all of us, and God wants to heal each and every one of our wounded hearts. On that night when God broke through to us in human flesh, God said, I want you, yes you, no matter who you are, or where you have been, no caveats or conditions, if you have been living outside, on the edge, welcome home, welcome in. Come to me, with haste, there is no time to waste, not a minute to lose. Amen.
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