January 1, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Numbers 6:22-27 + Galatians 4:4-7 + Luke 2:16-21
…….”they made known the message” and they returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told them.”
These words and this behavior described by Luke fail to capture our imaginations since CNN and FOX News have taken over the role announcing significant events. But at the time of Luke’s writing, great and news-worthy events were announced in public places and concluded with words of praise for the monarch, or God, or the official issuing the news. The task was an honorable one performed by great orators or celebrated poets. We have a fragment of that history in our national tradition of having a celebrated poet read at an Inauguration. People my age may well remember the stirring image of Robert Frost standing on the steps of the Capital at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. I was young then. Somehow I find myself not so sure the tradition has continued since then with such class; but perhaps my own memory or imagination has not been so powerfully stirred.
None the less, this is exactly what is going on here in Luke’s second chapter. He wants to capture our imagination by having these shepherds assume the honorable role of being the first to announce important news concluding, as always, with acknowledgment and praise for the source of the news. The point of course, is that it is Shepherds. Our cultural equivalent might be maids, janitors, or garbage workers: in other words, someone doing work that no one else wants to do. Or even perhaps prison inmates, since shepherds were often people who lived outside the law trespassing and poaching off the grass and water of others. By specifying that these were the first to see, report, and then glorify God for the birth of Jesus, Luke was, in dramatic effect, declaring that Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled: “The lowly shall have the good news proclaimed to them.”
This detail and implications of it are a problem for us, because we are anything but lowly and shepherd-like. The consequence is that we are left to be spectators and remove ourselves from this divine activity, since this news has little to offer us. We have very little need, and no one ought to call us poor in this country or in this city. For shepherd-like people this news comes with comfort and brings hope. For us, it brings challenge and questions and an opportunity to look again at ourselves and recognize the poverty of our lives in the midst of our riches.
When we assemble here with each other week after week, we cannot afford to stand back and look nor be comfortable as spectators in the divine work of salvation and redemption. The Gospel we proclaim in this place is not for entertainment which is why we do not produce pageants. It is the stirring, powerful, effective Word of God.
It speaks to us in our poverty.
It speaks to us in our helplessness.
It speaks to us in our fear and our sadness.
It speaks to people who cover their interior poverty with pretence and power.
It speaks to people who hide the pain of their loneliness with drugs and excesses of every kind.
It speaks to people whose shame burdens them with anger and resentment.
It speaks to people whose lack of forgiveness fills them with revenge.
It speaks to people whose own self doubt and fear leaves them intolerant and impatient.
We are impoverished.
We lack the gift of peace because we have too little lived faith.
We would rather trust in guns, power and force.
We lack the gift of Joy because we have too little hope.
So we fill our days with trivial stuff that breaks and wears out in a season.
We lack the gift of Trust because we do not keep our promises,
and we quit in the face of sacrifice.
We lack the gift of Love
because we think it’s about feeling good, looking good, and all about us.
Yet, once we see our poverty, the news from these shepherds is more than a nice story to tell at Christmas time.
It becomes an option for change, a hope for peace, a cause of Joy, a reason to trust, and the source of Love.
In her own poverty, helplessness, and fear, Mary heard many things said of her son and heard all of what he said. It never says she understood them.
It simply says she kept them in her heart and pondered them.
But by never dismissing them as impractical, impossible, or simply “theoretical”,
she remained full of grace, and in the end came to understand what she held and treasured and reflected on in her heart.
Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it. (Luke 11:28)