Marginal Messengers ~ Luke 2:8-20

This isn’t some Disney tale and it didn’t look like this. 

 

The region of Bethlehem was mostly desert, so there were no grassy hillsides. Grazing sheep in the desert meant constant movement to find adequate food and water. Shepherds had to cope with the fierce sun and then very cold nights. Since water is scarce, most of what they found was used for drinking (by both sheep and shepherds) leaving little for hygiene and even less for the ritual washing practiced by many faithful Israelites (cf. Mark 7:1-5). Not surprisingly, shepherding was considered a poor and lowly occupation in this world.

It was also dangerous. They had to watch over the sheep “by night” when desert predators roamed a great physical as well as economic threat because a lost sheep could mean lost wages.  Shepherds would have been illiterate. They were probably dirty and smelled like animals. They were houseless - “living out in the fields nearby.” 

If I asked you to describe a shepherd from this world, you would probably describe an older man. However, in the ancient world both genders tended goats and sheep, and many were children. The New Testament scholar Amy Lindeman Allen points out that often it was “children [who] participated in the welfare of their households through shepherding.” Even scripture bears this out. Several children in the Hebrew Bible are described as shepherds such as Rachel (Genesis 29:6–9) and David (1 Samuel 16:11) So the Bethlehem shepherds were near the bottom of the social and financial pile. 

 

Luke, more than any other Gospel writer, portrays Jesus focusing on the plight of the poor and salvation as a reversal of the social status quo that had economic impact in real time and not simply some heavenly afterlife. In the Magnificat, Mary’s incredibly uncomfortable, prophetic song about what God is going to do through Jesus, she sings:
He has shown strength with his arm;
       he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
       and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
      and sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:51-53) [Side note: You need not literalize the rejection but you should take it to heart because this is what the poor often experience – being “sent away empty.” There must be some reckoning for that.]

The Christmas story of the angels announcing Jesus’ birth to the lowly, dirty, shepherds is the first sign in the story that Mary’s song is happening now. It is not simply in Jesus’ death that God redeems the marginalized and oppressed; it happens even at Jesus’ birth. For Luke, the Christmas story is one of turning tables on the inequity of the world. How is this being done? Two points and one question: The marginal are 1) invited to participate and 2) partner in good news. But, is this good news for all?

The marginal participate in good news. 

Howard Thurman, the African-American pastor, known for teaching and mentoring Martin Luther King, Jr., once said: “I do not ignore the theological and metaphysical interpretation of the Christian doctrine of salvation. But the underprivileged everywhere have long since abandoned any hope that this type of salvation deals with the crucial issues by which their days are turned into despair without consolation.” This is a sad and strong indictment precisely because the Christmas story announced to shepherds invites them to participate in the good news of great joy and peace in the present.

The basic fact is that Christianity at its infancy, was an invitation first given to underprivileged, children working the night shift, that a savior-king born in a stable had come to bring good news, cause great joy, and ensure peace, without ever stating that it could only be had in the great by and by – always for the dead but never for the living as if the songs of the nativity belong in funeral homes.

Friends, we need to hear the good news from marginal people so that we can be reminded what the gospel of Jesus actually is – that God glorified himself in Jesus Christ to bring all-encompassing peace. Peace in the Bible was not some absence of war or conflict. Shalom was the Hebrew word for “peace” in the mouth of every prophet that refers to a state of delight, wholeness, and universal flourishing. It referred to a promised activity of God, offered to human agents, to remake the world into a social, economic, psychological, and spiritual blessing. It was the very thing that Jesus taught us to pray for daily – that God’s will would be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” The shepherds would want us to remember that in a world often filled with oppression, worry about being harmed, getting something to eat, finding somewhere to sleep, children being abused, that that message and action of Christianity must always include the angelic cry of “Do not be afraid” and “shalom” today. Church at the Park is here today and has many opportunities for you to participate with our neighbors who are struggling and on the streets so that we can hear them say, “I’m terrified,” and we can say, “Don’t be afraid” and “shalom” and mean it. 

The marginal are empowered to partner in good news.

But the marginal in our story are more than recipients of good news. They are also invited to be active partners to share it. Funny enough, the first people they are sent to are Mary and Joseph. In fact, Mary will be left pondering and treasuring their message, we’re told in vs. 19. Imagine the chaos of young, dirty teenage girls and boys filling the stable with excitement where the new parents where trying to sleep. It was these rowdy, poor teenagers who were “spreading the word concerning what had been told them about this child.” They were the first participants of divine amazement. 

This is also what I love about Church at the Park and what should guide us as we seek to be good news agents of God’s glory and our neighbor’s good – we must let them teach us and share good news with us. We must let go of our parental sensibilities that always have us at the head, in the lead, in the know, with the power. We must stop telling the poor and marginal that we always know what’s best but actually come to believe that they have divine news themselves. When we recognize that – we will discover that the glory of the Lord that terrified them at first becomes what they might do to us. In vs. 20, shepherds are the ones who take up the terrifying song glorifying God that the angels sang and everyone else becomes a shepherd. We will we listen and share as well or will we run away – afraid? And that brings us to our final question.

Is a marginal gospel good news for “all”? 

I was brought up short this week by Luke 2:14. You knew Luke 2:14 before this sermon, before I brought it up. You’ve heard it, whether you knew it as Scripture or not, from the lines "I heard the bells on Christmas Day, Their old familiar carols play, And wild and sweet, The words repeat, Of peace on earth, good-will to men!" 

The carol is based on a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It describes the narrator's despair over the Civil War and the idea that "hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men". The carol concludes with the bells ringing out a message of hope, "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep" and that "peace on earth, good-will to men" will prevail.

And that’s what we heard in our First Nations version, that’s what I grew up hearing in church. That’s not what I heard this week, reading the NIV and a few other translations that said something different: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” Do you see the difference?

By the way the difference between the two is a difference of one Greek letter. The first is εὐδοκία and the second is εὐδοκίας. The second translation has caused some interpreters to say that God’s peace isn’t for all but only for those whom God likes or chooses. Both versions, with or without the sigma, that little “s,” are old, both can be found in the earliest Christian commentaries, though, admittedly the “on whom God’s favor rests” seems to trend a little older. Lots of ink has been spilled on this controversy and I found myself knee deep in an argument over that one little Greek letter and its theological significance. And you’re probably expecting me now to tell you which one is right, which version of Scripture you should listen to, which interpretation is correct. And I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to tell you whom God’s peace is for because you have to decide that for yourself and act accordingly. You’re going to have to do your own study, your own praying, your own theological meditating, and make your own choices of shalom, because, in the end, you’re going to have to determine which good news you intend to live – for some? Or for all? And while you ponder which interpretation is correct, I hope you hear that heavenly choir. I hope you see the shepherds’ amazement. I hope you discover that beautiful baby and listen to the angel say whose solo precedes that heavenly chorus (Luke 2:10), “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all people.” I hope as you ponder like Mary that you carefully listen in amazement to that. Amen.