From terror to joy

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹ An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. ¹¹ Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Luke 2:8-12

My mother was a farmer’s daughter. I remember visiting the farm on childhood holidays, in what seemed to me, born and brought up in London, the backwoods of southern Ireland. A city boy through and through, I’m afraid that nothing of that rural way of life has left its mark on me. So the story of the shepherds and the angels doesn’t strike any particular chords with me.

The farm had dairy cattle anyway – big lumpy, floppy, smelly cows, I remember - rather than sheep. So, probably like most of us, I have to work hard with my imagination to picture these unnamed men Luke tells us about, “living out in the fields” as they guarded their flocks by night.

The experts tell us that probably they were looked down on by their more prosperous neighbours because their work routine prevented them from fulfilling their religious duties – just as in our world there are those for whom standard Sunday service times are simply not possible. (I began my ministry twenty years later in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, a “steel town” which functioned according to a shift system that imposed a sleep pattern quite alien to anything I had known.)

I wonder what that night-shift was like for the shepherds of Luke 2? I picture them huddled up against the cold, struggling to stay awake and longing for morning to come. Then something odd happens: a stranger appears as if out of nowhere. Who can he be? Why has he come? How has he come? A sense of something uncanny creeps over them, but it doesn’t last long, for it becomes apparent that the visitor is a messenger of God himself (that’s really what an “angel” was), and “the glory of the Lord shone around them”. Puzzlement turned to sheer terror.

The angel’s first words are simple: “Do not be afraid…” Then he goes on to tell them about the birth of “a Saviour”, the “Messiah”, in Bethlehem; and just to ensure there’s no risk of mistaken identity, that they will find the child “lying in a manger” (there can’t be too many new-born babies in Bethlehem answering to that description!). Whereupon a heavenly choir appears, filling the night sky with awesome light and the sound of glorious singing. It doesn’t take the shepherds long to agree to visit Bethlehem “to see this thing that has happened” (verse 15). So off they hurry (I wonder what happened to the sheep?). And sure enough…

There’s much to encourage us in these few verses.

First: the first people to receive the message of Jesus’ birth were low on the social scale, on the margins of society. He wasn’t made known to the religious leaders in the temple at Jerusalem, or to the political leaders like King Herod in his palace. His parents were nobodies - and the news of his birth came first to nobodies.

What does this have to say to us in the church today? I speak as a pretty “middle-class” Christian belonging to a pretty middle-class church. Well, to be middle-class is no sin! But there’s something to ponder here. We only have to read through the New Testament to realise that the early Christians were, many of them, slaves – lower in status even than those shepherds.

So thanks be to God for Christians who have heard his call to make his love known to those at the bottom of the pile, and have rolled up their sleeves for serious action! – whether we look back to people such as William Booth and his Salvation Army, or in our own time to those who serve as Street Pastors, or who run food banks, or who sit with drug addicts and alcoholics in our city centres, or who establish little Christian communities (churches in embryo?) in run down parts of cities.

Lord, forgive us if we have come to value respectability, correctness, even doctrinal precision, rather than the practical outworking of love!

A second encouragement: the first word of the angel to the shepherds was “Do not be afraid”. Isn’t that precious! Certainly, a heavenly vision of angels is likely to result in a need for a bit of reassurance. But I fished out my heavy Bible concordance a little earlier to discover that this same exhortation, or something very like it, occurs more than 100 times throughout the Bible in all sorts of different situations.

“Religion” has often been used to instil fear in people – Am I good enough?... Am I doing enough?... Am I measuring up?... Might God be angry with me?...

There is, no doubt, a time and place for such questions - sin certainly needs to be “called out”, to use a current in-word. But let us never forget that the first word is one of love and reassurance: “I bring you good news that will cause great joy…”

Am I living a life of good news? Is my church a community of great joy? If not, are they worthy of the description “Christian”?

We never meet those shepherds again in the Bible, so we have no idea what became of them. But perhaps a day will come when we will meet them in heaven, and they will tell us their full, joyful story…

Father, thank you that your great desire is not to crush us but to lift us up, not to condemn us but to forgive us. May even my everyday life convey something of the good news and the great joy which can be ours in Christ. Amen.