Reading: John 10:14-15 (NRSV)
Song: Shepherd’s Watch (lyrics here)
Reflection
For this week, we will be looking each day at a person or group that plays a key part in the Christmas story. Today we consider the shepherds, the first to come visit the newborn King.
The shepherds of Bethlehem are definitely in the running for my favorite people in the Christmas story. I know…Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are the central figures, but I have a lot of affection for these simple caretakers who were suddenly thrust into salvation history on that first Christmas.
Think about it for a moment: this is the most significant event in human history up until that point. God has come to earth! The divine has stooped to dwell with his creation! As Michael Card puts it, eternity has “stepped into time.” There is no greater happening since the very creation of the cosmos! And who become the first to hear the news directly from the angels?
Lowly shepherds. The bottom rung of society.
As one Biblical commentator has put it:
“That the message came to shepherds first, and not to the high and mighty, reminds us that God comes to the needy, the poor in spirit. Shepherds were despised by the ‘good,’ respectable people of that day. According to the Mishnah, shepherds were under a ban. They were regarded as thieves. The only people lower than shepherds at that particular time in Jewish history were lepers.” —R. K. Hughes
This is an image I need every Christmas. I need to be reminded that God comes to the outcast and rejected of our world. Jesus would go on to echo this truth in the Sermon on the Mount, where the usual standards of society are flipped completely on their head.
This is the same message the prophets proclaimed—God is for the “least of these.” Despite our efforts to claim him for ourselves and make him a mascot for the privileged, the God of the Bible always shows himself instead as the champion of the oppressed. That is a central part of the Christmas story, and it’s one we often forget.
As we meditate on the role of the shepherds, how might God be stirring us to pray for the marginalized of our world? And how might he be calling the church to echo the angels, going into the midst of those cast off by the “good, respectable people” of our day and proclaiming:
Do not be afraid, I've good news of great joy
Your Savior is come; He's Christ, the Lord!
Spend some time in prayer before God for those who feel like outcasts in our world today. Ask the Holy Spirit to bring to your mind people in your own circle of influence who are needy and poor in spirit to whom you can be a bearer of glad tidings and good news.