It always fascinates me as we read our way through the Bible in church,
Sunday after Sunday, how different the gospel stories are. Anyone who is a
literalist could get tangled up in the whys and wherefores of what appears in
Luke’s gospel and doesn’t in Matthew’s. Or tangled up in what is in John’s and
Mark’s gospels and what is only in John’s gospel. If you’ve done any
comparative Bible reading yourself, or if you’ve stayed awake in church, then
you know about some of these differences.
Some people seem bound to wrestle with what the facts are. They are determined
to somehow reconcile all these inequities. As if we could somehow remove all
those discrepancies so everyone would agree.
What most folks seem to miss about this
is that just like today, the original tellers and writers of scripture had
their own ideas about how to express the heart of God made human in Jesus
Christ.
Things were left out or inserted into the text to tell a better story,
to more fully explain the heart of God so others hearing the story would get
the point.
The point of all this is that when we
read scripture, when we study scripture, and when we speak or preach about
scripture, we should be looking for the essential truth. Not simply the facts. And
those essentials are designed rather than as intellectual truth, but instead as
things to sink into our hearts and become part of us. Those essential truths
are those things on which our hearts thrive and by which we live.
In Matthew’s gospel about Jesus’ birth, there are no shepherds, just the
birth. In Luke’s gospel the shepherds appear. Why spend a lot of time agonizing
about who was or was not there. Does it really make a difference?
What does make a difference are the truths the gospel writers were interested
in having us know. Luke had more to say about Jesus spending time with the poor
and the outcast from his beginnings. In Luke’s gospel that we hear tonight on
Christmas Eve, Luke gives the shepherds pride of place to make his point about
Jesus and the poor and outcasts.
We like to think that because King David was a shepherd and all the
wonderful Old Testament or Hebrew scripture imagery and stories about shepherds,
that shepherds were beloved by all in Jesus’ time. Quite the contrary, and that
is Luke’s truth in his recording of Jesus’ birth. Shepherds were considered the
worst of the worst. Often shepherds were marked out as thieves since they sometimes
grazed their sheep on ground not belonging to them.
Shepherds were seen as dirty and careless simply because they did not always
have access to water for washing. They tended to smell like their sheep, and if
you’ve ever been around sheep, well... you know how they smell, and it’s not
exactly refreshing. And finally, worst of all, out in the field as shepherds
were, they could not make the necessary religious observances and sacrifices.
This made them religious outcasts in a religiously observing society.
And yet, society was dependent on shepherds, just as we are dependent on
garbage collectors. Do any of you remember the New York City garbage collectors
strike some years ago? Or have you lived in a place where an ice storm or other
bad weather prevented garbage pick up for a few days? Then you know how
necessary garbage collectors are, yet how many of us consider them no better
than the shepherds were in Jesus’ time.
The elemental truth Luke is telling us
about Jesus is that from his birth,
Jesus was surrounded by the cast-offs of society. This truth from the beginning
of Luke’s gospel tells us much about Jesus’ life and death. The rest of Luke’s
Gospel about Jesus includes those who were outcasts and sinners from all levels
and places both in society and outside society. Luke’s story of Jesus tells us
that no matter how or where we are; the good news is that Jesus welcomes us to
the manger.
When you come up for Communion, take a
look at who is at the manger with Jesus tonight. At the 5 pm service the
children added some of those who would normally be excluded. They added some
animals and cartoon characters, and even some enemies and villains of the super
powers. Everyone is welcome into Jesus’ heart. And all were welcomed to the
manger where the heart of God was lying, waiting for us to join Him at his
birth.
In Luke’s gospel those first to find a
place in their hearts for Jesus were the shepherds and the outcasts. For us
this means we too are welcome; Jesus has a place for us. Jesus has a place for
us at the manger. Jesus still longs for us to open our hearts and let him in.
AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2016
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