Joy: The Shepherd Candle

Silent Reflection

After reading the Scriptures for this week, take some time to pause and reflect before proceeding to the remarks.

Remarks

"And when [the shepherds] saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them."

Luke 2:17–18 (ESV)

I live in a community that is an intersection of academia and agriculture. University students and professors talk a lot because they have many big ideas to articulate and explore. Presenters and teachers have the job to explain and persuade. Farmers and tradesmen, though, speak in a different way. They speak of the things of the earth. They tend to speak plainly, not because they’re not intelligent, but because it suits the concreteness—the groundedness—of their work and lives.

In the ancient world, there were academics and intelligentsia, diplomats and envoys, and people whose whole job was to make compelling speeches.

Shepherds were not among them. Shepherds spent all day talking to their sheep and goats. They spent their lives away from towns, out with their flocks, bathing daily in dirt and rock. Perhaps they made friends more easily with animals than with other people. They certainly spoke to animals more often. And when they did, they didn’t pontificate or hypothesize to their flocks. They hollered and jabbered at them, as much to say “I’m here with you” as to get them moving in a certain direction. Sometimes, they threw rocks to keep them on course.

The angels first delivered the news to these folks. The Lord made it known to them, Luke says. God decided to transmute the message of heavenly speechmakers (that is, angels) not into the earthly eloquence of courtiers but rather into the plain speech of shepherds.

I sometimes wonder about those who heard the news from the shepherds first. When Luke tells us that the hearers “wondered” at what the shepherds told them, I wonder if their wonder was as much at who was telling them as it was at what they were being told.

“Really? This is the day that Christ the Lord, the Savior from the City of David, is born? And we’re hearing about it from shepherds? I wonder if they drank a little too much sour goat milk out in the desert…”

God seems to have a thing at both ends of Jesus’s story for choosing messengers, which audiences are predisposed to be skeptical of. (See also the first messengers of the resurrection.)

Of course, it’s also possible and likely that the wonder the audiences felt was at the content of the message. “Good news of great joy for all people,” they were told. Did they wonder because, in a world full of the bad news of wars, theft, and taxes, they barely knew what good news could sound like? Did they wonder because, in lives that are made so dull, monotonous, and flat by either boredom or struggle, they hardly knew what great joy could even feel like? Or did they wonder because, in our world fueled by competition, they’ve come to believe so deeply that good news can only be good news for some if it’s bad news for others—that the idea of good news for all people is simply unbelievable?

But if shepherds are saying, “Great joy for all!”—shepherds whose daily lives are full of hard toil and wandering in the exhausting heat—then maybe they really have heard something. After all, wouldn’t we expect this “good news of great joy” political talk from Herod’s or Caesar’s royal heralds? Might we hear it as hollow nonsense on the lips of those on high? “Everything is fine. Keep calm and carry on. You are a valued customer.”

Joy is a gift; we receive it when the news that God is for us and with us all sinks deep into our hearts. The thing is, though, who knows when that will happen? Many of us have come to expect this news in a particular way, like in a sermon from a preacher on Sunday morning, say. But, whether because we are bored of hearing it there or because the preacher is bored of saying it there—if we’re being honest—the church version of the good news of great joy often fails to electrify our hearts.

But what if the news of God being for and with us is being proclaimed at other places and times than the church on Sunday morning, unexpectedly as an angel appearing to shepherds in a field at midnight?

Frederick Buechner says this about moments of joy:

They come when they come. They are always sudden and quick and unrepeatable. The unspeakable joy sometimes of just being alive. The miracle sometimes of being just who we are with the blue sky and the green grass, the faces of our friends and the waves of the ocean, being just what they are. The joy of release, of being suddenly well when before we were sick, of being forgiven when before we were ashamed and afraid, of finding ourselves loved when we were lost and alone.

We can learn to keep our eyes peeled and our ears open for other places carrying the angels’ message. We can look to be surprised. We can learn to recognize when God is using not only the preachers but also our lives and experiences and anything in creation to suddenly tell us good news of great joy. Would we believe it even from the mouths of shepherds, the ones from out there with dirt on their faces?

May we learn to perceive with our hearts, and may we come to hear even in unlikely places the news that to us a savior is given, and so on earth peace to all us beloved, scattered fools who could not get ourselves together—and so then may joy explode into the darkness in every direction like a heavenly host whose praises fill the night sky.

Silent Reflection

Take some time to pause, reflect, and listen.

Response

Return to this week's Scriptures each day as you respond throughout the week.

• Is there an unlikely someone you suspect may have good news of great joy for this Christmas?
• Is there an unlikely someone you suspect might have good news of great joy for you this Christmas?
• Share a time you were surprised to receive the good news of great joy: that a savior has been given to you.