Sermon: The Shepherds
Text: Luke 4:14-21
On January 3rd, in our first Sunday morning service of the year, I invited us to imagine who the Magi are and what it means to follow the light of the moving star. We saw the Magi as all who are drawn to the light that directs us to the path of new hopes and new dreams. We are still in the season of Epiphany; in this season we reflect on the light of God that is manifested to different people in different places. In our era, light is plentiful; even at night we possess an affluence of lights. The nights in Winnipeg are soberly lit, I would say, compared to some metropolitan cities like Seoul, where I came from, whose nights dazzle with glaring neon signs that stay ablaze until the break of dawn. In the old times (before the invention of gas lighting) ordinary people, the majority of the population - could not afford wax candles. When night fell, it was dark, very dark. We’ve learned how to domesticate the night with artificial light - it’s easy to forget what a spectacle the blazing night sky of the First Christmas must have been.
The Christmas story and Epiphany are burnished with the imagery of light. These stories are filled with light, radiance, luminosity, glory, revelation. We are told that the Magi were guided by the star to show them the way to the infant Jesus. When it comes to the shepherds, they encountered not only the star but also, “The multitude of the heavenly host”, the firmament ablaze with God’s glory; which means that not just the single extraordinary star, but starlight, in its complete brilliant array, met those who were watching over their flocks that night. Then an angel (a being of light) appeared and announced to the shepherds the good news that a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord, had been born for them.
I invite you to wonder with me what is so special about these particular shepherds that the story needs to mobilize all the celestial lights of the midnight firmament to greet them on top of the already astounding spectacle of an angel in a blaze of light. Who do the shepherds represent? Who are they? Compared to the Magi, they sound ordinary, young and naive, multiple and random - anyone could be the shepherds - in other words, they could be anyone.
Who are the shepherds? The shepherds in the Christmas story were from the marginalized peasant class, the people who most acutely experienced oppression and exploitation by Rome and its client rulers. They were the "lowly" and “hungry" in the song of Mary (Mary’s Magnificat). And they are the first ones to hear of Jesus' birth. The Messiah and his mission are focused primarily upon the peasant class, the poor, the despised and deprived. John Dominic Crossan emphasizes that the only city that Jesus ever went to was Jerusalem. Otherwise, he was active in the countryside, in small towns and villages where the peasant population lived.
In these two Gospel stories that are presented in the season of Epiphany, I see a very important theme that links the nativity story of the manifestation of light and today’s Gospel story. The light that fascinates the shepherds foreshadows what we hear today from the Gospel of Luke, which records the first public speech of Jesus after his baptism. In today’s story, in the Synagogue, Jesus declares, citing from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor… He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” The first concern of the Messiah, the Saviour who delivers Israel, is to bring good news to the poor.
Now, the Bible says he "stood up" to read and he chose to read from the book of Isaiah. As he recites the Servant Song, Jesus declares that God has “anointed” him. He is the Anointed One: the King of the Jews, (in the Hebrew Bible, the King is the One who has been anointed.), the Messiah, the Christ, the Saviour (which means the rescuer, the deliverer.) The coming of Jesus gives light to those who sit in darkness; the result is the guidance of our feet to the way of peace, through the rescue, deliverance, liberation, protection and healing of the poor. This vision of peace counters, opposes, and turns over the program of Roman imperial theology and its theory of peace by violence, force, and domination. If Jesus declares that the bringing of good news to the poor is the reason for the Messiah’s coming and the Messiah’s mission, what would be the first thing that we, the followers, need to be concerned about?
Reading our Bible with care enables us to see another very important point: the first public word of Jesus, apart from reading Scripture is, “today”. The first public word of Jesus that was recorded in writing is “today.” “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” “Today” is never allowed to become yesterday, or to slip back into a vague ‘someday’.
We might wonder what are the differences between the movement of baptism that was initiated by John the Baptist and the kingdom movement of Jesus. First, what these two people share in common: both lived in the same matrix of Jewish life, part of a people who suffered immensely under the boots of the Roman Empire and client rulers like Herod. In their faith, God is just and God is in control of the world, but the reality that they had to reckon with was that the world is unjust, particularly for them. Jewish people shared a great anticipation and a desperate longing to see the Messiah coming and turning the world upside down, to see God’s justice establish a totally different, peaceful order to the world. They had the Messianic belief that God would eventually come down and clean up the mess of the world and destroy the evil powers, recover the good order of creation, and deliver Israel from its oppressors. That is what the coming of the Kingdom of God meant to most people.
John the Baptist proclaimed that the Kingdom of God is imminent, which means it is coming, soon - it is near, but not yet here. John taught people how to receive baptism, a symbolic reenactment of the Exodus. He calls the people to come to him and be baptized in the water of the River Jordan; in this way his people relive the Israelites’ crossing of the Jordan River in their journey following the exodus from Egypt. By baptism in the river, they leave behind their sins, which are washed off, forgiven, as they enter into the promised land as a purified people. John believes that as they cleanse their heart, they prepare the way of God’s coming. John points to the future as the point of time when all will happen, the eschaton (meaning the ‘end’) being projected into the future. In the end, and it is very soon, the world will turn upside down, all earthly messes will be cleaned up, all injustices turned to justice; it is God’s work to do, as long as we prepare the way.
Now, what Jesus proclaims is that the Kingdom of God is present; with Christ, in our hearing, as the Word dwelling among people and in our hearts. Jesus makes sure that people understand that there’s no need to point to the future; no matter how soon the future is, ’soon’ can be … just about ‘forever’ when it means ‘whenever.’ John says the Kingdom of God comes ‘at any time soon’, yet it is not the trembling reality of ‘already’ that transforms here and now and each individual. Jesus’ point is clear: the eschaton (the end) is now. The beginning, the transformation of the earth, is also now. The future has no effect on now. It is not only chronologically impossible, but only what is already in being and becoming can have any effect on the future. And the process of new creation is interactive; God won’t do without us and we can’t do without God, today.
The light that guided the Magi, the light that enraptured the hearts of the shepherds shines today. On Jan 3, I was able to identify myself with the Magi as the Gentile, the foreigner, the dreamer, the seeker, one of the divergent people who are drawn to the light. Today, I admit that it is a harder task for me to see myself in the story of the shepherds in the Christmas story and in the real world. Through my life, I have been separated from the poor - protected from poverty and all those who live with it. I grew up within a community of Christians, yet I rarely had the chance to make any meaningful contact and relationship with the life of the poor. Most churches I know and have been a part of are not inclusive of the poor, beyond the point of being a good institution which practices charity. Yet we hear today the kingship of the Messiah, the love of God, is radically inclined to hear the outcry of the poor, the despised and the ignored, in our society and in the world.
Our promise as a church, as a people of God, ought to be that our liberation will be bound with theirs. We will each carry our torch to enlighten ourselves and spark the torches of all lives around us, because, as Gloria Steinem said, ‘Only if each of us has a torch, (to enlighten) will there be enough light.’ So that we, together, create the path of the star and the full firmament of stars that are not fixed but moving now, our dreams echoing God’s.
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