God’s grace, peace and mercy be with you.
My sermon today is entitled Selection, Shepherds and Sending, and my focus is our
Gospel (Luke 2:1-14) Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I
rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Now
that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we
listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply
as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
Selection. Anyone
vaguely familiar with my sermons knows that I usually start each point by
defining the topic. No less today. I chose to open this Christmas sermon with
select because of its significance not only for lovers of Christmas, but also
for lovers of college football. Today, the College Football Playoff is a
postseason event to determine college football’s national champion on the
field, while emphasizing the significance of college football’s unique regular
season where every game counts. If you are really interested on how teams are
ranked, how playoff teams are chosen, who governs the committee and so on, you
can read all that on the Selection Committee’s website.
The word select
means chosen from a number or group by fitness or preference; of special value
or excellence; or judicious or restrictive in choice, or discriminating. The
Latin word selectus comes to us from two smaller words: se
meaning apart or away, and leg meaning to collect or gather. From all
that we gather, we set aside the best. From all the vegetables I grew in my
garden this past year, I select the best plants for next spring. Now, what does
selecting the best garden vegetables or gridiron teams have to do with
Christmas?
To understand the
Infancy Narratives, those passages in Matthew and Luke that deal with the birth
and human origins of Jesus, we need to know that these are not fictional
accounts of the Evangelists. They are ways of understanding the roots of our
faith.
Matthew opens his
Gospel with a genealogy and then writes, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ
took place in this way.” Luke dedicated the opening chapter of his
Gospel to narrate the birth of John the Baptist. Chapter two begins with an
historical setting, telling us that “a decree went out from Caesar
Augustus that all the world should be registered.”
Both Evangelists
tell us how others found Jesus. In our Gospel today, angels announce the birth
to shepherds in the region, who became the first eyewitnesses of Christ’s
birth. In Matthew, wise men from the East sought Jesus by following his star.
After consulting the chief priests and scribes who knew the prophecies, Herod
directed them to Bethlehem, a town 26 miles south of Jerusalem. Upon finding
the newborn king of the Jews, these eyewitnesses worshipped the baby and
offered him their extraordinary gifts.
So, here we have
two separate accounts of eyewitnesses recounting how the birth of Jesus Christ,
King of the Jews, occurred, and for centuries people accepted the accounts as
Gospel. Yet, over 100 years ago, European Biblical scholars who began relying
upon archeology, anthropology and comparative religions started to say, “Not so
fast!” Their self-appointed task was to weed out supernatural mythological
elements to discern the historical kernel beneath the elaborations around
Jesus, particularly his origins. This became known as form criticism. Form
criticism so influenced faithful Christians, including many pastors, to seek
not the Jesus of the Apostles, Evangelists and early Christian disciples, but
what the modern scholars sought – the historical Jesus. Today, many “Form
Criticism Christians” sadly separate the “historical Jesus” from the Jesus of
Faith.
For now, I am
going to leave that, and tell you another story of a child named Lhamo Thondup.
He was born on July 6, 1935, in Tibet. Today, he is known as the 14th
Dalai Lama, the symbolic leader of the Buddhists. Here’s the question: How do
Tibetan monks know which boy to select when seeking the new Dalai Lama?
When a Dalai Lama
dies – or even before his death – a successor is found. Traditionally, senior
Tibetan monks conduct an elaborate quest to find a child who is the Dalai
Lama’s next incarnation. The search involves consulting oracles, interpreting
visions and reading spiritual signs.
The senior monks
find clues from the deceased body of the Dalai Lama, such as the direction it
faced or its posture. Dreams are also an important guide. The monks wait for a
vision or insight into the whereabouts of the Dalai Lama’s rebirth. Once these
visions and signs have been followed up and a potential child has been found,
there is a series of tests to verify the rebirth. The child is presented with
artefacts, some of which belonged to the previous Dalai Lama. If the child
identifies which objects belonged to the Dalai Lama, it is taken as a sign.
The current Dalai
Lama was found at the age of two after a senior monk saw his village and house
in a vision. The boy – then named Lhamo Thondup – was able to pinpoint
artefacts that belonged to the previous Dalai Lama, including a drum used for
rituals and a walking stick. He reportedly said. “It’s mine, it’s mine.”
My point is that
many educated people admit that it is acceptable to consult oracles, interpret
visions and read spiritual signs to select the leader of Buddhists, but
question the validity of the eyewitness testimony of wise men and shepherds
regarding the birth of Jesus Christ, true God and true man. This eyewitness
account piqued my interest as I was reading an article on Biblical form
criticism and Bethlehem’s shepherds.[1]
Hence, my second
point, shepherds. The article’s author discovered that the shepherds were
important to St. Luke for a simple reason: They were the primary eyewitnesses
of the events in Bethlehem on the night of Jesus’ birth, and they passed down
the story through established methods of oral transmission. The author did not
discover this by sitting home reading books or surfing the web. He spent months
in Jerusalem speaking to Jewish scholars who for decades lived in Palestine observing
Bedouin culture and observed and recorded how the Bedouin or nomadic Arab
tribes pass on their oral traditions. The Bedouin pass on their history using
narrative poetry, which is very formal and must be memorized, and they rely on
genealogies that must also be memorized. We find these genealogies in both
Matthew and Luke. In addition, they use prose storytelling, essentially an informally
controlled oral tradition, which has some flexibility and allows for personal embellishments
– adding humor or characterization. However, these additions or elaboration do not
alter the basic content of the story.
Does this mean
that St. Luke met the shepherds and heard their story? It is not impossible,
but we must remember that Luke wrote fifty years after the events. It is more
likely that the shepherds shared the story of their experiences that night, and
that their method of oral tradition kept the story fresh within the Bethlehem
community. It was from the next generation that Luke heard the tale. So, did
local shepherd families keep the story alive? Well, we know that in the
mid-fourth century when the Empress Helen[2] discovered the birthplace
of Christ, the site was identified because the local people remembered where
the Christ was born.
An interesting
note about these shepherds is that they lived outside of Bethlehem, which is
south of Jerusalem, and the animals found in between these cities were often
used for Temple sacrifices. Hence, some considered them to be especially sacred
shepherds.[3]
Now, after the
announcement of the Savior’s birth, they hastily went to the manger. Hastily
indicates their obedience to God’s message, and echoes Mary’s obedience as
well. The shepherds were about two miles from where the manger was located.
They knew the location of the manger because they fed their animals there. From
my house, I know that if I travel two miles, I would be at the Mt. Pleasant
Presbyterian Church or Montgomery Dam Road. So, it would not take hastily
moving shepherds more than fifteen minutes to arrive at the manger.
When the shepherds
arrived, they saw symbols: the manger, the wrapping and the animals. Most of us
know that a manger is the feeding trough for animals, but in this manger in the
City of David, God sustains man. The swaddling clothes are a sign not of
poverty but rather one that shows Israel’s Messiah was properly received and
cared for. In Scripture we read, “I was nurtured in swaddling clothes,
with every care. No king has known any other beginning of existence”
(Wis 7:4-5). Finally, the animals reflected what was foretold in Isaiah, “The
ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand” (1:3). At last, it dawned upon the
shepherds that now God’s people could begin to know their Master.
Folks, there are
many more details about the shepherds that are not going to impact how we live
our faith. Therefore, I am going to move to my third point, Sending. Those who
have studied the Prophet Isaiah know that there is a call to come to Mount Zion,
that area of Jerusalem where the Temple is located. Over and again, we read “the
ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion singing” (35:10;
51:11). The point Isaiah and other prophets made is that the true presence of
God on Mount Zion will be like that of an irresistible magnetic force drawing
not only God’s chosen people, but also Gentile peoples of various races,
religions, cultures and tongues because they too recognize the one true God and
how His teachings best suit how men and women are to live. All people come
seeking the Truth because they know the wisdom of the God of Abraham, Israel,
Moses and David.
We recognize the
Truth of God’s Teaching, God’s Law and Gospel that comes to us through the one
true God in the Person of Jesus Christ, Second Person of the Trinity. It is why
today, Jews and Gentiles are drawn not only to Mount Zion, but also to
Bethlehem. People long to see what the shepherds and wise men saw – where God was
born and dwelt. And thanks to the imagination of St. Francis of Assisi, people who
cannot make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land are drawn to manger scenes in their
local churches – recognizing that the true presence of the Living God is an
irresistible loving force.
As Christians, we
are called to come not to Mount Zion, but to Jesus Christ. Not only did Jesus draw
men, women and little children to Himself to be His apostles and disciples, but
He also taught that the way to the Father is through Him. We come to Jesus
because we know that the Holy Spirit is in Him (Luke 4:18); and so, we who are
burdened and weary come to Jesus (Matt 11:28). We who are hungry and thirsty
come to Jesus (John 6:35; 7:37). We come to Jesus, assured that He will never
reject us.
So, now, we are
drawn together here in this space, where Christ is present to us in Word, Body
and Blood, but soon you will be sent. For the Jew, the command is to come; for
the Christian the command is to go. Immediately after Jesus called together His
Twelve Apostles, He sent them into the world as lambs among wolves (Matt 10). In
his high priestly prayer, Jesus said to His Father, “As you sent me into
the world, so I have sent them into the world” (17:18). His Great
Commissioning included the command to “Go and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you”
(Matt 28:19-20).
My friends, as you
go from here with the sending that concludes our worship, go not so much to
celebrate Christmas by exchanging gifts with loved ones, but rather to make Christ
known to all – that their souls may be saved. If we fail to do this, then the
message of Christmas has been lost on us, and we might as well observe Kwanzaa
and call it a day. But we won’t. We will go from here with hearts filled with
joy and love. We will go from here like shepherds, not as original eye
witnesses, but as witnesses of the living faith. We will never see the newborn
Christ, but we have seen the risen Christ joyfully alive in one another’s
hearts. That in itself is enough for us to say to one another, “Merry
Christmas.” Amen.
[1]
Dwight Longnecker, “The Secret of the Bethlehem Shepherds,” The Imaginative
Conservative, October 15, 2022. https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2022/10/secret-bethlehem-shepherds-dwight-longenecker.html
[2]
Commemoration is observed May 21. file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/Commemoration%20Biographies.pdf
More information is on this page: http://ourredeemernewark.org/emperor-constantine-christian-ruler-and-helena-mother-of-constantine-commemoration/
[3]
Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy
Narratives in Matthew and Luke. New York: Doubleday (1979), p. 421.
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