About those Shepherds: a Christmas Mini-Sermon
by: Amanda Udis-Kessler on December 25th, 2010 | 11 Comments »
“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8)The shepherds make for a nice presence, don’t they, both in Luke’s nativity and more recently in countless nativity pageants the world over. In Luke’s version of the nativity story, the shepherds are the first to receive the good news of Jesus’ birth.
The shepherds matter to my understanding of Jesus – of Yeshua ben Miriam – because of where they stood in the social hierarchy of their day. So who were the shepherds? Peasants at best, and therefore marginal figures. There is some possibility they even belonged to the outcast class, according to writings from after Luke’s time. They were not people with power or status. Who would they be in our time? Poor kids who are lucky to get fast food jobs, maybe. If they really were outcasts, perhaps undocumented immigrants. We have plenty of shepherds today. And we know who they are.
What would constitute “good tidings of great joy” (luke 2:10) for the shepherds of Judea, circa 4 BCE? Maybe the announcement of a particular birth: the birth of a man who would, as an adult, go into the synagogue and say that God had anointed him to bring good news to the poor. And especially in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus had a lot of good news for the poor. He said they were blessed. He said the Kingdom of God was theirs. He ate with them and healed them and invited them to walk with him along the way. What an incredible experience that would have been, to be a marginal figure in society and suddenly to find oneself in relationship with a God-intoxicated prophet and teacher.
Why did Jesus do these things? Because he encountered God as utterly compassionate, welcoming and loving, and he brought this message of God’s nature to the people in his world, who tended to be, like him, on the lower end of the economic spectrum. In a sense, it doesn’t matter what season Jesus was born in, or whether there were actually shepherds there. The shepherds are part of the truth that transcends fact: If the holy is recklessly and wildly compassionate and inclusive, who better to get the good news first then a bunch of poor people?
What would constitute “good tidings of great joy” for today’s shepherds, for the destitute or the devalued among us? I can think of two things: utter inclusion in the meaning systems of our society, and the resources to thrive and live joyously. And I think the good news for today’s shepherds is that all spiritual progressives could make a commitment to supporting such a program. Unitarian Universalist minister and singer/songwriter Amy Carol Webb has said, “God has no hands but ours.” It’s easy to treat Jesus as a kind of miracle. It’s much harder to be Jesus, but that is the miracle that is given to us to carry out today: to feed the hungry, heal the sick, bless the poor, and then build a society in which no one is hungry, no one is sick due to poverty, and no one is poor. Jesus is gone. If there is to be a Kingdom of God or a Commonwealth of Humanity now, who can bring it if not us?
The beautiful carol “In the Bleak Midwinter” includes the lines, “What, then, shall I bring him, empty as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.” We, and all people, are the sons and daughters of the holy. It is our turn to bring lambs to the shepherds, to acknowledge our human connection with the poor and despised among us and then to bless their lives in all the ways we know how.
The shepherds were also the first evangelists, according to Luke, for they “made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child” (Luke 2:17).May our lives be our own spiritual progressive evangelism today. May our deeds shine our light brightly and widely, bringing peace and good will to all, today and all other days.
Beautiful, touching and so relevant to us all. Thank you.
Thanks for the kind words, Shira.
I have a question? You mention undocumented immigrants – as being some kind of Lost children of God – How-ever when we look back across the genocides committed by the Spanish – there for-fathers – can one really proclaim them to be – the lost??? Or have they over populated again – and are trying to once again force Gods hand into giving them things – they are not intitled too.
After all they were the ten horns of europe that wrecked havoc upon the world – deeming themselfs – as rightfull heirs to the truth -
Well, we may just see things very differently, but you have actually succeeded in making my point for me, I think, so I thank you for that. Your images of, and stereotypes about, undocumented immigrants are exactly the kind of perspective that I believe Jesus rejected in terms of the “illegals” of his own day. One of his points, as I read it, is that we are not “entitled” to anything – that everything we have is God”s good gift to us and we must not begrudge it to anyone else, even if – perhaps especially if – we disapprove of their behavior. I am particularly reminded of the parable of the vineyard owner who paid those who only worked one hour for him the same amount he paid those who had labored all day (Mt. 20:1-16). More broadly, biblical scholars are generally in agreement that most of what Jesus taught was in contradiction to the conventional wisdom of his day, which raises the question for me of how we who either follow or even just honor Jesus should think about today’s conventional wisdom – which includes its own version of who should be welcomed and who should not be.
Immanuel Kant makes the argument that the only unconditional good is goodwill. So the message of the angels to the shepherds, “Peace on Earth to those of goodwill” is a promise more than it is a gift. Plato in the Republic tells us that knowledge of the Good is a gift of the gods. So take one promise and mix it well with one gift and realize that it is goodwill that holds together all that we cherish. I like that song.
Thanks, Rex – appreciate your interesting reply.
Oh, that Christians would endeavor to understand and put into practice Yeshua’s teachings. “Love God with all your being. Love your brother as yourself. Judge not, lest ye be judged. Resist not evil. If thine eye be single, thy body will be filled with light. The kingdom of heaven is within you. As you do to the least of my brethren, you do onto me.” We don’t get to decide, on our own, who is worthy and entitled. It is only our conditioned minds that create separation and to look out upon the world with the eyes of duality, with the knowledge of good and evil, as if these exist as absolutes, is to prefer the prison of false certainty to the freedom of the unknown, of the Divine Mystery. We must empty ourselves of all concepts, every idea of God before we can even begin to understand that our limited human mind can never experience the Infinite. Only our whole being is capable of this experience and judging another as less than yourself in any way, shape or form, blocks the light which would illuminate your life.
Thanks, Randall. That is beautiful. I could not say it better myself.
A lovely reflection, and right on, I believe. I have long thought it an act of presumption and of some temerity for Christians of privilege and comfort, people like me, to identify with the shepherds or to sing with Mary the glorious revolutionary hope of the poor in the Magnificat (another gift from St. Luke) but have likewise believed that our imaginative entry into that identity is intended to shape within us, in “the imagination of our hearts,” a different consciousness of our own world and a different solidarity for our choices.
One thing that struck me was Amanda’s citing of the contemporary songwriter Amy Carol Webb as the source of the thought of God having only our hands. That was perhaps where she first encountered it, or whither she wanted to direct her readers to learn of a worthy artist, but the thought itself was most famously stated more than four centuries ago by Theresa of Avila:
Christ has no body but yours,
no hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
John, thanks very much for writing in. I am grateful both for your comments and for your pointing me to the Theresa of Avila “original.” I am happier knowing about both versions than only one (though I still commend Amy Carol Webb to you, as the music is lovely if you like folk). I am made a better person by encountering social justice Christians who invite me (as a Unitarian Universalist) to recognize the powerful and humane impact of Yeshua ben Miriam on his own time and still (in some counter-conventional-wisdom quarters) today.
I am sorry but cannot but recoil at the notion of the Jesus paradigm. As I near the end of the bobbin, 77 years worth, my only regret is the loss of the perceiving self. Total extinction does not include a final genuflexion before a tattered tapestry woven of many topoi common to overlapping religious conceits.
As in elementary linguistics the sign is totally arbitrary. The arabesques necessary in motivating the sign are “de trop.”