The Truth About Shepherds

Audio Recording of “The Truth About Shepherds” recorded in worship (11:46)
Christmas Eve
Texts: Isa 9.2-7; Titus 2.11-14; 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 cattle 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 2019, the heavenly chorus might appear to a gang of Hell’s Angels.