Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, December 16
Throughout the season of Advent, we have been looking at various characters in the Christmas stories. Today we will look at the shepherds. The text for today begins,

“And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.”
Luke 2:8

Imagine you are a shepherd, alone on a dark and starlit night, keeping watch over your sheep. All is calm and all is bright. You feel small but included in a larger whole that you can never grasp but always trust. This larger whole is not a star among the stars; and yet all the stars are enveloped in its sky-like embrace. Sometimes we know the most about God, when we know the least about God.

God doesn’t come to us because we are faithful, smart, articulate or deeply committed. We yearn for and we experience the divine because we are human. Whatever shape, form, or personality we attribute to God- this Christmas story reminds us that the Divine is always breaking into our world – OUR world.

The text continues:

15When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

If there were an attitude that characterized the shepherds it seemed to be “travel now, ask questions later.” Is there a journey we are being called to that involves trusting that the questions will be resolved, the uncertainties made clear, the anxieties relieved – maybe not in our time but in God’s time.

Catholic priest and theologian Richard Rohr has written that when he was young, he wanted clear answers. As he has grown older, he writes, “religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity. “Hints and guesses,” as T.S. Eliot would say…The more I am alone with the Alone, the more I surrender to ambivalence, to happy contradictions and seeming inconsistencies in myself and almost everything else, including God.

Like these shepherds, he writes, “People who have really met the Holy are always humble… People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.

(This) is a litmus test for authentic God experience, and is — quite sadly — absent from much of our religious conversation today.”

While I believe these birth narratives are most of all parables, I was struck, when in Bethlehem two years ago, at how close the “shepherds’ field” is to the Church of the Nativity (the spot of Jesus’ reported birth). A 20 minute walk? 30 minutes? I always thought of it as a long journey – maybe not as far as the magi – but more than a walk to the grocery store.

I suspect that these shepherd’s fields were first identified by the “visitor bureau” of the early church. Was it so pilgrims and tourists wouldn’t have to walk far? Or did they know something even more profound – that the walk to “see the child” is never that far.

I think this walk itself is a great parable for our own lives – it is so easy to focus on the need for big action, big hopes, all encompassing theology. In fact, it is the short excursion, the close at hand, the already understood – that can guide us. Life, God’s gift to us and promise to us, is here among us.

What are we waiting for? Why do we hesitate when we feel spiritual nudging and calling? How can we clear the clutter of our spirit enough to respond with honesty and integrity to that which we feel inside? What is holding us back? What pre-conceived ideas prevent us from “coming down out of the hills.”

Whether we see the promise of Christmas as the liberation of those peoples living in lands dark as death or to that inner liberation that comes by the discipline of grace, the story reminds today is the day we start the journey to find this “child of hope.” Luke tells us where hope will be found: in history, among us, with us. Not out there in some wishful scenario of the future, but in a date nailed down in time.

17When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them… 20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Imagine you are one of the shepherds who did make your way to Bethlehem to see this child, and when you looked into his eyes, you saw your own reflection.

You realize that you were present in the baby even before you arrived, and he in you, too. You suspect that when the baby grows up, he may feel called to help people understand this, to understand just how connected we all are.

Eventually you make your way back home. You are standing again in the field, keeping watch over your flock. The night is calm and bright. A friend walks up to you and ask where you’ve been. You say: “I was in Bethlehem.” She asks: “What did you see?” You say: “I saw the world’s best hope.” She asks what it looked like. You say: “It looks like you and me.”

Another way to say this was offered by a pastor named Mary Ellen Kilsbury, who once wrote, “the best thing I ever did was to take the newest baby in the congregation on a Sunday near Christmas ( I had my chance last week) when no one is interested in the sermon, but the STORY says something to us . . . in some deep way.

She said, “if our story says to us that God comes to us in the form of a baby, then what does this baby say about God . . . and our relationship with God?” And we get it.

We get answers like: tender . . . need to take care of each other . . . not almighty but compelling…

When we listen to our children sing, as we will in a few minutes, or watch them get baptized – how is this revealing our God to us?
When we go to a funeral or memorial service a eulogizing a decent and good man or woman, young or old – how are we seeing the work of the Spirit in the very act of remembering and celebrating?

When we watch a group of our fellow members give their heart and soul to a song that proclaims the truth of God’s love – how are they embodying the love and grace of Jesus, the mystery and awe of faith – in and through their music?

At some level, as Kilsbury said, “we get it.” God is close at hand.

This is a story of inspiration – remembering the divine is forever breaking into our lives just as we are yearning for the divine.

It is a story of action – in which simple shepherds remind us that sometimes the longest journey is a short walk down the hill.

It is a story of simplicity – God comes to us in ways that we understand, we appreciate and we respect. To behold simplicity is not to diminish mystery -

Where are we looking for, or listening to, the divine in our lives?
Where is it time for us to gather courage to say, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about?”

Amen

Text for this sermon

Luke 2: 8-20

8And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ[a] the Lord. 12This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14″Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
15When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.