Christmas-2018
Luke 2:1-20
Marian Free
May the child in the manger open our eyes to see God’s presence in unexpected places and in unlikely people. Amen
Our Christmas cards and our imaginations give us a romanticized view of shepherds in first century Palestine. This view is enhanced by images of God as shepherd, and of David as the shepherd king. The reality was in fact quite different. In the time of Jesus shepherds were social outcasts, classed together with ass drivers, tanners, sailors, butchers and camel drivers. Theirs was an occupation for which there was no respect. They had no land of their own and their work kept them away from home at night which meant that they were unable to protect the honour of their wives and daughters (if indeed they could afford to have a family). What is more, because they grazed their flocks on land that did not belong to them they were considered to be thieves. In fact many of them were thieves. They were at the very bottom of the social hierarchy – dishonored and despised – certainly not the sort of people you would welcome into your home or seek to associate with. Yet it was to the shepherds that God revealed the birth of Jesus, it was the shepherds who were the first to respond and to see Jesus and it was the shepherds who were the first to spread the good news of Jesus’ birth.
Extraordinary as all that is, it is consistent with Luke’s view of the world that God would chose a woman of no social status or wealth to bear God’s son, that the son of God would be born in a stable and that God would reveal Godself to a disreputable group of shepherds with no social standing whatsoever. What is even more extraordinary and inexplicable is that, despite the cacophony of a multitude, an army of the heavenly host and the glory of the Lord that attended them, no one else saw or heard anything.
The townsfolk of Bethlehem might be excused for not noticing Jesus’ slipping into their midst, but how could they have been blind and deaf to a sky illuminated by the heavenly host singing praises to God? It almost defies belief. In this instance, God’s presence is not subtle or discrete, but bland at and obvious. Even so the presence of God goes unnoticed by all except a bunch of disreputable shepherds, who not only notice but who act on what they have seen and heard. What is more, having seen for themselves that the what the angel had told them was true, they spread the word and caused amazement to all who heard them.
Christmas is layered with sentimentality – the hay in the stable is clean, the shepherds are respectable, Jesus is worshipped. Beneath the sentiment however, we find rejection, apathy, blindness and even outright hostility (if we add Matthew’s version of events).
Only the angels greet Jesus with the appropriate fanfare and even then no one notices. The great irony of the gospel is that God is fully present among humankind and only a few people (and then not the ‘religious people’) even recognize that God is there.
It is easy for us to fall asleep, to allow ourselves to be complacent– satisfied with our relationship with God, confident that we know right from wrong and certain that we would know Jesus when he returns. The problem is this – if we fail to pay attention, if we stop noticing what is going on around us, if we begin to take God and God’s presence for granted we will find that we, like our first century brothers and sisters are blind and deaf to what is really happening around us. We will miss God’s presence in the unusual, the underestimated and even in the disreputable. We will fail to see God in the manger and God in the cross,
Let us not be like those who, not only through Jesus’ birth, but who failed to be stirred to wakefulness by a whole choir of angels.
Tags: blindness and deafness, Christmas, shepherds, sleep
Swallowsrest 