December 1998 Issue

Titus 2:11-14; Luke 1:26-38

If only the rocks could talk, the rocks on the steep hillsides outside Bethlehem, the rocks that were there for centuries and centuries and centuries. The rocks saw the invasion led by Joshua. The rocks saw the successive invasions of empires across all the millennia since. The rocks heard the angels sing to the shepherds. The rocks heard the Palestinians sing this Christmas of the change again in administration of the land. If only the rocks could tell us the stories they have seen, the glories they have seen, the horrors they have seen.

The particular stories that we would want to hear tonight are the stories of the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks of sheep and goats during the long night watches in the winter. The rocks perhaps could tell us who the shepherds were. The Scriptures only give us the general title of their work; they were shepherds. But who were they? We will never know their names and only know a tiny part of the story of their lives, but we can say with considerable confidence that if they were shepherds in the first century in Palestine, they were at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder of the time. One did not become a shepherd unless one had no other option. One did not become a shepherd unless one had no family connections, no education, no opportunity, and no resources. It was no accident that during his public ministry Jesus talked about the shepherds being hirelings, that is people who were paid to keep watch over flocks day and night, day after day - and paid very little. These shepherds were absolutely at the bottom of the pecking order of Palestine. They were absolutely at the bottom economically, educationally, and even religiously. Proper observance of Judaism in that time involved great efforts in order to attain what was called " ritual purity ". Ritual baths were taken before every great festival to purify oneself to go before God. The shepherds were the unwashed. They could not leave the flocks. They did not have the liberty or the resources to leave the rocky hillsides outside Bethlehem to prepare themselves properly for religious duties. They were the illiterate, the hirelings, the bottom of the social ladder of the times.

One of the great miracles of the story we celebrate this night is that of all the people to whom angels could have come to announce the birth of Christ, of all the grand and glorious, all the pious, all the educated, all the powerful people, the angels were not sent to the priests or the governors or the pious or to the affluent. The angels were sent to the poor, unwashed, unwanted, futureless shepherds. To them this birth was announced. To them the Good News was first declared. To them came first the message: God is with us and Good News is proclaimed to the poor, and peace on earth is breaking out. To them of all people!

On this Christmas, as in all Christmases, humanity longs for the message of the angels to come true in the lives of the nations and of the peoples. Peace on earth and good will toward all is hardly the condition of the world this Christmas, or any in the past. You may have come here tonight, in your own life, needing peace. It seems to me that in this announcement of peace to the shepherds (of all people) comes a bit of the clue for how we might find peace for our hearts and our communities and our world. That clue is in the fact that the Good News, the joyous announcement, the promise of peace, was given to those who were at the bottom. The message is that God's love and care and redemption and forgiveness and salvation are for those at the bottom.

What might that mean for us with all our comforts? We are not, most of us, anywhere near the bottom. At least not in terms of education or social class or opportunity, but some will come to this and other services this Christmas feeling that their life is about as far down as it can get. I want to say to you that peace is found in part when we understand that Christ comes to the bottoms of our lives, to the low points of every life. Some will come to this service tonight knowing that they are in the battle of their lives for their lives. Some come to this service knowing that their households are so tense and divided that they are likely to explode and disintegrate any minute. Some will come to this service tonight having recently lost a person and they cannot imagine how Christmas can ever happen without that person being a part of their family circle and of their lives, Some will come to this service tonight facing an uncertain future. Some will come to this service tonight bearing the burdens of limitation which neither their own effort nor the best efforts of the medical community can overcome. Some will come to this service tonight without any outward obvious problems, but bearing a tremendous load of regret and guilt that burdens their life to such a grief that they cannot face themselves in the mirror. Others will come saddened by things they cannot even understand or describe.

If you are among those who are searching for a bit of peace at the bottom of the story of your life, I announce to you that it is to the bottoms, to the lowest points, to the lowest of the low that Christ comes. Christ does not come to our strength. Christ does not come to our glory. Christ does not come to our affluence. Christ does not come to our education. Christ comes best and most fully and most redemptively to our pains and our sorrows and our guilts and our emptiness and our hopelessness. It is to those places and to people in those conditions - those of us who are shepherds in our souls - that the angels come with the good news that Christ is born for us. Christ is born for our hurts too, for our grief too, for our fear too - and brings a peace that knows, as St. Paul said, that nothing in life or death can separate us from the love of God. In that message to the lowest of the low in our life, from that message, come hope and peace and promise.

Talking about peace can never be limited to the spiritual or psychological or even physical condition of individuals. It is also a matter of community and international importance, I wonder what would happen in our communities and in the community of nations if we came to understand that those whom we consider to be the lowest of the low are the very ones for whom Christ was born. Who is the lowest of the low in your life? What rascal at work? What nasty relative? What social group? What racial group, what religious group, what national group? What individual or group in your eyes constitute the people that we reject and we dislike, that we misunderstand? For they are - this Christmas - shepherds for you and they are the ones for whom comes the promise of peace and of good will. If communities are to ever move beyond the stance of hostilities and mistrust that so much characterizes human relationships, we must begin to see that those whom we reject, those whom we dislike, those whom we mistrust, those whom we do not appreciate, those whom we do not understand are the very people that have the Good News. They are the very people for whom Jesus came. And if that is true, what can we do with our animosities? What can we do with our prejudices? What can we do with our hatreds? Can we set them aside? Those we would single out to dislike, hate, or mistrust are the very people that the angels sing to. They are the very people that Christ came to love and to save and to forgive.

Peace. Good will. We find these things when we come to understand that Christmas is not the story of bells and lights and joy. It is the story of God coming for those who need it the most. When we begin to acknowledge that we need him and that those whom we would reject need Christ too, only then does the promise of the angels begin to have a chance in our hearts and in our communities and in our lives. Only then can we begin to sing with the angels. Out of the depths of our own pain. Out of the depths of our own dislike and hatred and prejudice and rejection. Out of those depths then, touched by the presence of Christ, we can begin to sing, "Peace on earth, good will toward all. " For Christ is come for you - and for your neighbor - and for your enemy - and for all the lowest of the low in this dark, dark world.

Carl L. Schenck