Christmas for Shepherds
What could be stranger? God in a manger...
Some shepherds riding herd on an Israeli hillside one night two thousand years ago saw light flood the sky.
Born to you this day is a Savior: Christ the Lord.
These men living close to nature, spending their days and nights watching livestock, were alerted by the armies of Heaven to the arrival of God.
The glory filled a dark night sky and disappeared, extinguished in a moment, the lonely Judean hillsides silent again, returned to a cold, dark night, the shock settling in for these shepherds whose lives are constant in the monotony of their low-wage work.
No sound but the sheep bleating. Perhaps these were Temple lambs, raised for sacrifice. But the final, the true Lamb of God is here, the angels were saying. Go and see Him.
“The manger is no place for a king, but a Lamb.” Francis Bonhoeffer
The word used for “inn” could be “guest room.” Maybe the pregnant, unmarried woman and her fiancé were not turned away from a booked hotel as is the traditional impression, but a rejection even more personal: outcast and shamed by family members in Bethlehem, relegated to the barn with the animals.
And so in some barn or cave or stable in Bethlehem, God entered time. Many babies have become kings but only once did a King become a baby. Coarse and cold, in damp and mold, no picturesque warm lighted place, but dark and rank, perhaps a flickering candle lighting the face of infant Messiah. Rejected by His family, visited by shepherds.
What could be stranger? God in a manger.
This is Christmas: God took on our condition. Born to this life of trouble, He lived to die for us, because that was the sentence for our sin. He served it Himself.
Born that man no more may die.
He draws near to the humble. He visited shepherds in the dark, His mother an anonymous daughter of Nazareth. No man or woman is too poor for the riches of Heaven; only pride keeps us from the manger.
For our metrics of poverty and wealth are grasping and thin compared to the glory of Heaven from which we are all as far removed as it is possible to measure. The wretched state of His birth is nothing compared to the demotion He already accepted. He announced His presence to peasant shepherds and educated rulers alike because all men suffer the same fatal condition. We are all spiritual beggars. The canyon between Earth and Heaven is too wide for any man to forge.
Christmas splits history in two. This is the anniversary of the great armistice between Earth and Heaven. Here in a stable, God made peace.
But as the men and women in town slept warm and comfortable and self-righteous, two teenage sinners saw the face of God. Some tenders of livestock sleeping in the cold saw Heaven break open the night. No religiosity or display of righteousness earned an audience to the arrival of Emmanuel. You cannot make peace with God until you know you are at war with Him. He left Heaven to enter the camp of the rebellion. God came down to rescue sinners, blessed are those who know they have sinned. God came down to heal the sick, blessed are those who know they are sick. God came down to seek and save the lost; blessed are those who know they are lost.
The shepherds of Bethlehem lived exposed to the elements, unsheltered from the cost of wickedness which causes the planet to groan and requires the blood of innocence.
Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the world’s sin.
And so they were called to see the atoning sacrifice. Here, men of nature, close to earth, raising the Temple lambs, saw prophecy fulfilled. The shamed, the outcast, the poor in spirit, called to the bedside of an infant Christ, where the spectre of the cross falls over the manger.
For God so loved the world, He gave His Son.
