[Excerpt from the Christmas Eve Sermon given by Rev. Meyer. For the whole sermon with the Children’s message see video attached]
Why does God choose shepherds to announce his coming as Jesus the Messiah?
We know the story in Luke 2:
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them,
“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
The Angels coming to Shepherds reminds us that everything and everyone is holy and set apart for relationship with him. No one is unclean, less than, or an outsider. Throughout scripture He embraces the outsider:
-Cultural outsiders in the Good Samaritan
-Gender outsiders at the time in the woman at the well
-Sinful outsiders in the adulterous woman about to be stoned
-Greedy outsiders in the tax collector – zacheus
-Contagious and sick outsiders like the Lepers and the lame
He, himself, was an outsider by being born into a family of a common carpenter who on the night of his birth was laid in straw put there for cows to eat. In the first years of His life his family would become exiled and an immigrant seeking refuge in Egypt. There was no silver spoon, no extraordinarily fortunate circumstances. Everything about Jesus’ family and life seemed ordinary on the outside. This makes the ordinary – holy – Because God himself embraced it.
Bishop Jeff Bailey put it well in an email he sent out this season:
The Son of God, who is by nature one with God, becomes one with humanity in the incarnation. And as we, through baptism and adoption, are joined to Christ, we participate in Christ’s divine nature, making union with God possible. The profound division between God and his creation is bridged in Christ’s incarnation.
And because of this everything becomes holy.
When Jesus started his ministry he didn’t look to hob-knob with the socialites and the successful, but spent a lot of time restoring people to health, freeing peoples minds of demonic thoughts and spirits, and walking them into a life of forgiveness. He called to his inner circle of friends – uneducated fisherman, greedy tax collectors, and after his resurrections – a murderer of Christians in Paul.
Healing wasn’t just like Jesus tossing out scraps to a beggar on his way to the real work of the cross. No, this restoration along the way, was part of the work. It was most of his earthly ministry. The coming of the Messiah meant the restoration of all things including you, me, and all the outsiders.
This restoration was secured in the cross, for sure, but demonstrated daily through treating the common as holy, the broken as healed, and the oppressed as freed. By embodying the common and the ordinary, He honored and made holy all men and women made in his image.
So with the Shepherds we see that there is beauty and holiness in watching animals. When Jesus spoke of a despised Samaritan, we see there is equality. When Jesus gave grace to the prostitute and the tax collector, we see there is unlimited forgiveness. When touching a leper, we see there is more regard for others than yourself.
God himself, the second member of the trinity, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, but made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant. (Phil 2:6,7)
He did this so that you and I could be made whole and be in relationship with Him. This Christmas, may God give us the grace to understand the holiness that comes with Jesus embodying the ordinary and the outsider.
Blessings and peace,
Rev. Todd