The Truth about Shepherds

Delivered at Agnus Dei Lutheran Church. Christmas Eve.
Text: Lk 2.1-20

“The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” We’ve all got a mental image of these shepherds. For most of us, it’s probably the kind of picture that we so often see portrayed in Christmas cards and Nativity scenes: gentle men with beards and crooks, dressed in humble robes, maybe one of them is carrying a lamb over his shoulders. For a baby born in a camel stall, they seem the perfect visitors. Their presence completes the scene of Jesus’ humble birth among the noble livestock in the stable. The reality of shepherds, however, is a bit different.

In the time of the Bible, shepherding was not a respected profession. Shepherds were stereotyped as liars, degenerates, and thieves. Shepherding was the work you took when you couldn’t hold down a respectable job. Because they spent all their time out in the fields with sheep, not only did they stink, but they also lacked the manners and etiquette of polite society.

The testimony of a shepherd was inadmissible in court because they couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth, and many towns had ordinances barring them from entering the city limits. Luke tells us these shepherds were watching their flocks by night, which is to say that they were guarding their sheep from theft by other shepherds, probably while armed.

The religious establishment took particular exception to shepherds. Because of their profession, they were unable to keep the Sabbath, and were ritually unclean and therefore unable to enter the temple. The Pharisees considered shepherds the scum of society, as bad as prostitutes and tax collectors.

These were not the meek and gentle folk we have represented in our children’s story bibles. They were frightening, dangerous, and unpredictable. If Luke were setting this story in 2014, the heavenly chorus might appear to a gang of Hell’s Angels.

Elk Hunting and the Coming of Christ

Delivered at Agnus Dei Lutheran Church. Advent 2, Year B.
Text: Isa 40.1-11; 2Pet 3.8-15a; Mk 1.1-8

“The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness.” The Church has been waiting 2000 years for Christ to return, and today we are still waiting. Considering that the Church in the time of the New Testament believed that Jesus would be coming back in their lifetimes, this is an awfully long time to wait. Yet, to date, Jesus has still not returned; and yet, we continue to celebrate Advent, where we prepare for his coming as if it were going to be at the end of the month.

It’s easy for us to consider these last 2000 years of waiting and come up with other explanations. Maybe Jesus isn’t really coming back; it was just a joke, or a story to make us feel better. Maybe he’s already here, and we just don’t know it. Maybe his return was metaphorical, and he is constantly coming back in small, subtle ways. Maybe his return is sacramental, and he comes down from heaven to be with us every week in the meal. On some level, all these are true (well, probably not the first one), but “do not ignore this one fact, Beloved, that the Lord is not slow about his promise:” Jesus will return, in person—whatever that might look like—to judge the world and complete the work of creation by fulfilling the kingdom of heaven on earth—where righteousness is at home.

In an age of reason and pluralism, the promise that Jesus will come back in the flesh is especially hard to grasp. We want to spiritualize it, to sentimentalize it, to domesticate and simplify it. In short, we want to transform it into something that makes sense to us; but in doing that, we almost always take away its power and its importance and reduce it down to clichés. “Do not ignore this one fact, Beloved:” the Lord is coming back.