Shepherds and Angels

A sermon for Christmas Eve
December 24, 2024, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Luke 2:1-20

Just about every year I was a shepherd. I imagine parents fought over whose children would get to be shepherds at the pageant. The costumes were easier. A bathrobe for the tunic, a bath towel for the headcovering, a stick, and you’re set. Every year, dressed in my bathrobe, I would stand there as one of the teenagers pretended to be the Archangel Gabriel, announcing good news, usually without much conviction: “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” 

Now that I’m older, I think there is something especially appropriate about being a shepherd. I think that’s where you and I find ourselves in today’s story. If we’re not careful, we can romanticize those shepherds, or we can dismiss them as just supporting characters. Either way, we miss our connection with them. They become more like Precious Moments figurines or children dressed in bathrobes, than real people with concerns and struggles, joys and dreams. 

Yes, I think we find ourselves today with the shepherds in the fields keeping watch over the flocks by night. We find ourselves in the fields of the world, seeking to be faithful to the task we have been given. We seek to be faithful in our families, in our friendships, in our work. We tend to what God has given us to care for the best we can. And like those shepherds, we keep watch. What are we looking for? We’re keeping a lookout for danger. We are afraid of vulnerability, afraid of hurt; we want to preempt the threat before it gets to us. We keep watch because we expect the worst. On guard, we hardly expect waterfalls of angels streaming in from eternity. But that’s what the shepherds get. That’s what we get, too, if we are prepared to see. 

The shepherds, humbly tending their flocks, in the ordinary course of things, expecting the worst, instead hear the good news: Christ has come. God has come in the flesh. God has come to live and die like us in order to reconcile us to himself. Christ has come to form a bridge, and because Christ becomes like us, we can know God, and all of our hurt and pain, sorrow and grief, can be healed. It will be healed in the end. That’s what the angels say.

Christy heard the angels once. She was tending her flock by night. She worked at a church as a children’s minister, and Christmas was especially busy. She put on the church Christmas pageant, and that meant costumes. She got everyone ready. They had a large crew of shepherds that year. They had one of the easier parts (no lines), so all the extras went there. It was no surprise, then, that Susie was a shepherd. Six years old and going through chemotherapy, she hadn’t had the time or energy to make it to rehearsal. 

All the shepherds showed up in their bathrobes, like I did once. Some of them had walking sticks. They had their bath towels on their heads. Everyone except Susie, anyway. Susie, completely bald headed, had forgotten her bath towel at home–or so her mother said, very apologetically. Never fear; Christy to the rescue. She grabbed one and quickly went to put it on Susie’s head. But Susie stopped her, grabbing her arm. “I don’t want that towel on my head,” she nearly yelled. Christy bent down and said, softly, that it was part of the costume. She knew she had forgotten hers, but this one was clean and would match her bathrobe. “I didn’t forget the towel,” Susie said. “I don’t want a towel on my head because I want Jesus to see me. I want to make sure he remembers I have cancer.” 

What Susie didn’t know, what no one knew, was that Christy had been diagnosed with breast cancer the week before. She couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone, not even her husband. She didn’t know why. She was just trying to make it through the next day, keeping watch over her flock, trying to be faithful but expecting the worst. And here was this angel of a girl, this messenger from God, sent to shake her up. 

Christy broke down. She told Susie that she had cancer, too, and that she hadn’t told anyone. With the maturity of someone decades older, little Susie hugged Christy and said, “Don’t be afraid, Ms. Christy. You can tell Jesus. He always listens. And if you’re a shepherd like me, you can stand next to me, and we will go to Jesus together.” 

“Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” The angels said that to the shepherds once, and they have come to tell us the same thing, pouring in from the realms of glory and caverns of eternity. In the middle of our fields, expecting the worst, the angels pour in with good news: “Fear not.” We don’t have to be afraid because God in the flesh is among us. He comes into the midst of our suffering and the suffering of the world, and he sees it. He knows it. He walks with us through it. And he promises that one day all things will be made new and whole and right. 

Don’t be afraid to bring yourself, your real self, with everything you carry, with all the flocks you tend in the fields of the world–don’t be afraid to bring it all to the manger throne. For there you will find a king who is not so far off, not so distant, not so removed that he cannot sympathize with us. There you will find a Savior who will help you bear your burden. There you will find a Messiah who comes in promise: a promise that all things will be transformed in the light, and love, and grace of God. 

Merry Christmas.