Between Christmas and New Year
the television does lots of retrospectives. We are invited to pause and
reflect. But the story that is told depends on the editor. Which pictures to
use? Who to interview? Which bits of the past to recall? Whose vision of the
future are we looking to? And, crucially, what to leave out?
Luke tells us the story of a
birth in Bethlehem. And it’s one that we’re very familiar with. Too familiar,
perhaps. It’s become a kind of retrospective. We are used to Christmas card
images of a picturesque middle eastern town, under a starry sky, dusted with
glitter, with Mary in her robe of azure blue and pious looking shepherds
kneeling in adoration before the Child in the manger. We are so used to that
image that we have become comfortable with it. We don’t see what Luke leaves
out. And so we are not startled by what Luke includes. But we should be.
Let’s then read the story with
fresh eyes and ears, and allow ourselves to be startled.
The first startling thing is
that Jesus is born in Bethlehem and not in Nazareth where his family lived. And
this is because of a decree from the Emperor Augustus that caused upheaval and
movement of populations on a huge scale. Even before Jesus is born he belongs
to a people living under foreign occupation, with their rights severely
restricted, subject to the arbitrary decrees of a distant political power.
Then, in Bethlehem, once born,
he is laid in a manger, because there was no room, not actually in an inn, the
word is more general than that. There was no room in the lodging places where
people would normally stay, which was mainly with distant relations.
So, no place for him. And this
is the next startling thing. The Messiah is born as a member of a people who
are outsiders to the political power of their day. And once he is born he finds
himself an outsider yet again, to his own people. He is on the margins of a
marginal race.
But, never mind, God is going
to intervene to tell people about this. He sends angels from heaven to announce
the birth of the Messiah and saviour of the world. Who to? Jesus’s family?
Other than Mary and Joseph, who were there at the event, no. The townsfolk of
Bethlehem, in the streets and houses round about? No. The mayor and
corporation, the town councillors? No. The local Rabbi, or the priests in the
temple in Jerusalem, only a few miles away? No. The Roman authorities, then,
the centurions and tax collectors, perhaps even the Emperor Augustus, the ruler
of the world? No.
So who are the angels sent to?
Shepherds. This is the next startling thing. You can forget the sanitised
images of shepherds from Christmas cards. Shepherds were rough people of poor
reputation and very low social status. If they came into town respectable
people would lock their doors and try to stand upwind of them. But mostly they
didn’t come into town, except to the markets. They stayed outside, in the
countryside, living rough among their sheep.
The Messiah is born, on the
margins of a marginal people, and the only people who are told are those who
are even more marginal. The birth of the Messiah happens on the outside, where
people don’t look, where people don’t notice what is going on. But Luke does
notice. The outside is where God is at work, and that is therefore the centre
of his story. And what people normally think is the centre doesn’t feature at
all.
It’s a bit like looking at
Oxford Street in the Christmas sales, all glittering lights and crowds
staggering beneath the weight of designer label shopping bags, and seeing only
the people who sleep rough in the doorways of the stores at night.
But the shepherds, those on the
margins, respond in faith. They have been told that the Messiah, the Saviour,
the Lord, is born for them. To you is
born this day, says the angel. This is good news for all the people, but it is
made known to those who are most on the outside. And so they go with haste,
they rush to Bethlehem to see this child. This is an act of faith, and with it
their whole world has changed.
They have left behind their sheep,
up to now the centre of their world, and gone to seek instead a baby who is, in
fact, the centre of God’s redeeming work, the true Lamb of God who takes away
the sins of the world. They see the child lying in the manger, in the feeding
place. The unlikeliness of the scene does not put them off at all. They have
heard the heavenly message, and they believe. Faith shows them what the outward
senses cannot. And they return glorifying and praising God.
From being on the margins,
outside, the shepherds have been brought into the centre where God is saving
the world in Jesus. And the centre of their own world has been blown open.
Faith in Jesus has opened to them the relationship with God for which we are
all created.
Notice that their response is
immediate, and simple. Faith is not a state of mind we have to work ourselves
up into. Faith is not screwing up our eyes and holding our breath until we can
believe six impossible things before breakfast. Faith is simply being open to
receive a gift. And the gift that God wants to give us is himself, in Jesus.
Luke is such a good
storyteller. At the beginning of his gospel the shepherds come to see the baby
in the manger, the feeding place, and by faith they recognise the Messiah, the
Saviour, the Lord. And at the end, after the resurrection, those two disciples
on the road to Emmaus talk with a stranger on the road, but then, at the supper
table, the feeding place, as he breaks the bread, their eyes are opened and
they recognise him.
So the shepherds bring us to
the altar, our own feeding place, where Jesus still makes himself known in the
breaking of the bread. For us, as for the shepherds, faith sees beyond outward
appearances to the inner vision. For us, as for the shepherds, this changes our
lives. In the Eucharist the marginal and the outsiders are welcomed into the
centre where God is saving the world. In the Eucharist we come to see that we,
too, have been outsiders to what really matters, the love of God in Jesus. And
faith opens our hearts to the relationship for which we are created, so that we
can return glorifying and praising God.
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