A Sample Chapter: The Shepherds
A few weeks ago I announced my most recent book, One of Us: Christ and the People of Christmas. For those interested, below is a sample chapter of the book, which looks at the birth of Christ through the shepherd’s eyes. If you enjoy this, please buy a copy at the bookstore or on Amazon. I may send another chapter out on Christmas Eve.
PS: I’ve got ten free copies of the book to give away. If you’d like one, share this post on social media and send me a screenshot of it at david@shrevebc.com.
The Shepherds
Luke 2:8-16
“And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.”
——-
Pause on that first sentence for a moment. Before you bask in the shining glory of the Lord and envision the night sky filled with a celestial choir, let that first sentence set the scene. “There were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.”
Out in the hills a group of blue-collar guys laid down for the night, their backs resting against trees and rocks for beds, against their own woolly flock for warmth. To pass the time some told jokes and swapped stories, laughing and heckling each other from across the field. Others sang songs, some holy and some profane. Those off duty for the night passed around a skin of wine to pass the time. They weren’t exactly a despised and shameful class of people.[1] Yet neither were they held in honor. Picking ticks off their sheep, dirt caked under their fingernails, they were likely illiterate, unpolished in speech and social grace. A mixed bag spiritually, there were some who kept the commandments and some who had not been to synagogue in months, some who rejoiced morning and evening in the covenant love of the Lord, and some whose entire flock ought to be sacrificed to atone for their sins. A mixed bag, indeed, but either way a bunch of nobodies in the eyes of the world. But what does that matter? We’ve already learned with Mary that nobodies are often God’s favorites.[2]
Just a stone’s throw away, perhaps a bowshot, God was up to something. Something greater than the exodus was here, but God kept it secret from the experts in the Law of Moses. A heavenly rebellion was beginning right under Caesar’s imperial nose, but it was hidden from the Jewish revolutionaries. The greatest event thus far in human history was at hand, but the greatest humans were not permitted to know of it.[3] God would keep the secret for a good thirty years. And yet - as you know if you’ve ever been burdened with a terribly good secret - he had to tell someone. The news was too good, the secret too wonderful to keep to himself. Who could he tell?
Not Caesar, who would have laughed in disbelief and shouted at the angel for wasting his royal time. Not the priests in Jerusalem, who would not have stepped foot in the stable, uninterested in a Messiah of such humble origins. And certainly not Herod who, threatened by the news, would have ordered his archers to fire upon the heavenly host. So then, who would receive it, believe it, rejoice in it as the good news it really is? If you had good news that was supposed to stay secret and were allowed to tell only one person, wouldn’t you choose someone who would feel just as you feel about it? You would tell someone who would understand its goodness. However they might respond - concussed in wonder, weeping aloud in relief, dancing a jig – the important thing was they “got it.”
And that’s why God chose the shepherds to be the first recipients of the gospel. They were not too full of themselves to take the angel at his word. These shepherds were not scandalized by the odor and squalor of the stable, they probably didn’t even notice. In fact, the shameful circumstances may have drawn them to the Child all the more. They had no reason to feel threatened by the Child, for what did they have to lose? Thus, God chose the shepherds to be the first human beings to hear the good news: “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
The glory of God filled the atmosphere like a fog. The sheep stirred restlessly, the sheep dogs whined, the hairs on the back of everyone’s necks stood up. Every shepherd in the field felt it - the weighty, awesome presence of a Holy Being. If the angel hadn’t said, “Fear not,” when they appeared, their minds would have broken under the weight of glory, but because the angel told them not to fear, they were able to enjoy the goodness and beauty of the Presence. How strange - these ragtag shepherds, clothed with glory. The angel’s holy spotlight shining down on these unclean, ordinary men. The only stranger sight is the sign they were given to recognize the Savior: “And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
As far as Luke tells us, the shepherds didn’t stumble over the word “manger.” Anyone else would have, but not the shepherds. Who knows, maybe some of them had used mangers for the cribs of their own children? The term has been so romanticized in the centuries since, we would do well to stumble over it a little. The equivalent in our day is something like, “You will find the Savior in a fish tank,” or perhaps, “wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a laundry basket.” If that is offensive to you, so be it. There is meant to be a sting to it, because there truly was a sting to it: this Being had traded in his heavenly throne for a bed of hay.
But before the shepherds were allowed to go and see it for themselves, the angel who announced the good news was joined by his friends, “a multitude of the heavenly host.” The term “praising” in the New Testament often refers to singing,[4] and given the poetic form of the verses that follow, it is safe to assume that what followed the announcement was a worship service. Can you imagine? Throughout all the pages of Scripture, did anyone get to hear the song of angels, much less a celestial choir? I know some saw such things in visions, and others heard angels’ voices in dreams, but I don’t know of anyone else who got to hear the music of heaven on earth. Was it an a capella choral, with bass and tenor and soprano harmonizing with one another? A worship jam band with a gnarly guitar solo bridge? Was it anything like Hark the Herald Angels Sing? It was probably like nothing we can imagine. And who got to sit in the audience with front row seats to this private concert? People my mother would have called “big fat messes” and my grandfather “funny faces.” Punks, dorks, jerks, creeps. Hot-heads, knuckle-heads, trouble-makers. Misfits, weirdos, goofballs. In sum, a bunch of nobodies.
What I hope you see in all of this is the collision of the common and the holy. Heaven and earth are finally coming together, but not exactly as we would have expected and not in a way that is very comfortable. Heaven’s glory is falling onto earth’s ignominy like a mortar shell into a bunker. Our unworthiness and foolishness are getting exposed at every step. Everything is getting turned upside down by the Child’s arrival. Mountains are being laid low and valleys raised up. The way of the Lord is being prepared, not in the cathedrals and palaces, but in the wilderness. The angels had to go out to the highways and hedges to find people who would receive the good news. And the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head but a filthy manger.
This is the heart of the Incarnation. He couldn’t come in power and glory, not if he were going to bring peace on earth and good will to sinners like you and me. He couldn’t come in beauty and luxury, not if he were to bring “good news to all the people,” including funny-faced shepherds. That night, after the shepherds had arrived and told Mary and Joseph about the angels, the Child looked up out of his crib on exactly the kind of people he came to redeem. A desperate father. A worn out mother. A bunch of goofy, bawdy, can’t-get-right shepherds. And if you include the three magi who came later, foreigners. Whether anyone said it I don’t know, but I know they were all thinking it: “He’s one of us.”
————-
[1] Stewart, R. A. (1996). Shepherd. In D. R. W. Wood, I. H. Marshall, A. R. Millard, J. I. Packer, & D. J. Wiseman (Eds.), New Bible dictionary (3rd ed., p. 1093). InterVarsity Press.
[2] Deuteronomy 7:7; see previous chapter entitled “Mary”
[3] Matthew 11:25
[4] Swanson, J. (1997). In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament) (electronic ed.). Logos Research Systems, Inc.
