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Advent series Part 3
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2:Welcome to church, everyone. My name is Bobbie, and today is the third Sunday of Advent. And this is our first Advent season in a pandemic. We're halfway through with Advent that is not so sure about the pandemic, so how are you feeling? In some ways, this really could be our best Advent.
Speaker 2:When have we ever felt such waiting, such longing, such hope for deliverance? And granted, our deliverer will come in the form of a vaccine still, the Advent themes, they are here in neon. Back in 2018, Fleming Rutledge wrote, Advent is out of step with our time. It encroaches upon us in an uncomfortable way, making us feel somewhat uneasy with its stubborn resistance to Christmas cheer. Advent holds space in dark places, trusting the light to come.
Speaker 2:Advent doesn't rush us to sing if we are silent. Advent is this container for your longing, and you can bring your longing to it every single year. Bah humbug, says Advent. You don't need to be happy all the time. Our Advent series is called Enough, and you've heard how Mary has enough wisdom and courage to guide her through an impossible task.
Speaker 2:And you've heard how Joseph has just enough information to adapt and to usher the Holy Family from one place to another, doing his best. And today, we'll see that shepherds are enough to be included in the story of Jesus, even without respect. Now, if you take notes in your journal, your outline is this: Part one, politics of shepherds. Part two, circle conversations. Part three, manger layover.
Speaker 2:And part four, back where we started. But before we set out, let us pray together. Loving God, we take a moment to breathe and be still. And the setting of our story today is nighttime in a field. So we think about the symbolism of this scene.
Speaker 2:Like what in our lives feels dark, cold, heavy? And can we imagine you there somehow too? And what in our lives feels like a big echoey open space? What do we feel when there's hardly anything else around? Creator, create in us something new in this dark night.
Speaker 2:And Jesus, surprise us with your nearness. In spirit, encircle us with wisdom, we pray. Amen. So Luke chapter two starting in verse eight. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.
Speaker 2:An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord.
Speaker 2:This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. For our purpose today, on the third Sunday of Advent, we trace the story of the shepherds, These hardworking characters from society's periphery get pulled into the center of Luke's baby Jesus story. Shepherds out in fields, keeping watch over flocks at night. Now we are trained with our cutesy LEGO nativities and our cartoon crush scenes to see this as a peaceful diorama.
Speaker 2:It's not. It's not peaceful. Peaceful. You see, the chapter begins with politics. In two verse one, Caesar Augustus is lording over the entire Roman world.
Speaker 2:This is not the kind of politics voted on to take care of people in a nation. Caesar was not about the common good. This is the politics of empire where kings are propped up like gods, and enemies are defeated in battle, and the poor are exploited for the rich. So even this wide open field is political. A field is not the center of power.
Speaker 2:It's hardly the center of anything. So when an angel zooms down to make a special announcement, we look around for the important people, like where are the religious leaders? Where are the power brokers? Where are the yes men to governors? They aren't there.
Speaker 2:They're noticeably absent, and that's the point. So let's talk more about the shepherds. All kinds of people say all kinds of things about these shepherds, but Luke says surprisingly little. You can't cleanly crack the code on these guys and what they mean to the story, and I love that. The shepherd's refusal to be fenced in.
Speaker 2:Sure. The shepherds are around Bethlehem, the town of David. But more than link the story to the past, the shepherds signal the work of the divine in the present. Shepherds are a part of an agrarian society, and in any traditional agrarian society, peasants compose 90% of the population. First century historian Josephus said Galilee was devoted to agriculture.
Speaker 2:So the shepherds represent ordinary people, but still of low status in the general population. You could think of them as temporary foreign workers in the way that they go about important tasks, but you rarely see them come or see them go. They certainly don't track what the census demands like Mary and Joseph. And while Jesus himself will take on the title of the good shepherd in John 10, and Paul will tell some elders in the early church to follow in Jesus' shepherd footsteps mostly, Here in the infancy story, shepherds are hilarious. There is no way that the first visitors to a savior, Messiah, Lord should be shepherds.
Speaker 2:I mean, what kind of deliverer gets noticed by nobodies? Shepherds are the butt of a joke. Did you hear the one about the dishonest shepherd? Turns out he's a bit of a crook. I totally made that joke up, and I'll definitely be keeping my day job.
Speaker 2:Today, we lit the third candle in the advent wreath, candle of joy. And the Greek word for joy here is karah, and it means calm delight. The angel says to the shepherds that the baby is the occasion for joy. But this is not like a skip through the fields with flower in your hair of joy. This is joy as resistance.
Speaker 2:Now I get that some of us have lost track of joy in this pandemic. We've been anxious, and we've been so angry, and we've been sad. And unless you're taking tips from the introverts around you, this is a hard, hard time. But here's the deal. The politics of shepherds means that no exterior circumstances fates you to joylessness.
Speaker 2:Joy came for shepherds in a very strange place, but it was joy nonetheless. Joy can be found in a moment where you feel anything but free. Audre Lorde talked about an open and fearless capacity for joy, and she did this as a black woman in America. Joy and the pleasure that she felt in her body was her resistance to every force, every system that worked to keep her down. And the joy we center in Advent is resistance joy too.
Speaker 2:The kind that says delight can be found on a very cold, dark night. And when you get a hint of where joy is hiding out, you set off to find joy. But before we arrive at the manger, let's see what the shepherds have to say about heaven's message in the field. When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, let's go to Bethlehem and see the thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about. Verse 15.
Speaker 2:After the company of angels appear and sing of God's glory, they disappear, and the night turns back to dark. And really, from here to the end of the story, Luke's language is less vivid and descriptive, and some translation scholars say that Luke means to flatten the tone. So even if we're just kinda rolling through the last part of the shepherd story, I love the detail where shepherds discuss the matter together. When I was in high school, I was not a part of any winning sports teams, well, any sports teams for that matter. I wasn't a part of student council, but I was a part of a group called Help in Teen Support.
Speaker 2:And oddly, that acronym is HITS. Don't think too much about it. In in the last couple of weeks, I got thinking about this teen support group because something in the shepherd scene reminds me what I liked about HITS. Every time we would meet, we'd go around the circle and just check-in. And I'm not sure if it was every week or once a month, but the check-in time was really important to me.
Speaker 2:For one thing, we were all really different. Cool kids, not cool kids, loud kids, quiet kids, like mature grade 12 kids, immature grade nine kids. There were artists and athletes, and everyone had a voice. And we always turned towards each person when they spoke so that we could listen to what they had to say. And the shepherds, they do this for each other.
Speaker 2:They take a moment to talk amongst themselves, to take seriously their own authority and observations. And I picture the shepherds, like, leaning into the relationships they always lean into, the ones that they have with each other, bonds formed from fighting off predators and making food together after a long day on their feet. In their conversation, the shepherds used the Greek word gnorizo to say that God spoke to them through angels. God revealed mystery to them. And the scholar Richard Horsely makes the point that when ordinary people know they are valued by God, they learn to value themselves, and they have agency to shape their own lives.
Speaker 2:It's powerful to sort out profound experiences together. Now just because you don't have thousands of followers on Instagram or YouTube or your life is so simple, you don't think anybody would care about what you think about this or that. Or just because your job is unglamorous or your day to day life feels dull doesn't mean that your story doesn't matter. Your story is important. It's important to the people around you whom you work alongside of and pray alongside of and raise kids alongside of.
Speaker 2:When you have a transcendent moment, a moment of awe and mystery and beauty, and you share it with others, you contribute to collective transformation. Love that goes further and deeper and wider because it is shared. And so the shepherds check-in with each other before they head into town to find this baby. Whatever is next for them, they will go there together. They will only ever get where they need to go together.
Speaker 2:So back to the story. The shepherds hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what the angels told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. Okay. You have got to notice this.
Speaker 2:Like, look how little Jesus is talked about here. The shepherds find Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in the manger, and then they just leave. And it's like end scene for little baby Jesus. So let's back it up. Who's the baby?
Speaker 2:Well, the angel gave three names, savior, messiah, and lord. And all three of these titles for the baby are drawn from the community Luke writes from. It's a community of early Christians making sense of their faith after the resurrection of Jesus. And one scholar says the titles are pressed back to the very beginning of Jesus's earthly existence, but the titles are more than names in a worship song. They are there to challenge power.
Speaker 2:And maybe you've heard this, but just in case you haven't, titles like savior and lord are in the story to challenge Caesar. It's like a good, like, who wore it better face off. And throughout the ancient world, there are Greek inscriptions of Augustus as savior of the whole world, and the Greek word kurios was used for Caesar as supreme lord of the Roman world. So it's like it's outrageous that after being told the baby has the same name as Caesar, shepherds find this baby in a manger, a trough, wrapped not in royal robes but in strips of common cloth. But guess what?
Speaker 2:That's all we're given. We're not told if the baby's eyes shine like stars. We're not told of a golden halo. We're not told if the baby smirks or slobbers or sleeps. Whatever this baby has come to do, he's not doing it yet.
Speaker 2:Theologian, Husto Gonzales, says that salvation in its fullest form happens when liberation, healing, freedom from sin, and the promise of everlasting life are realized. So what if this part of the story isn't about the baby? I mean, okay, of course it is, but it's kind of not. The pericope, this section of Luke's infancy narrative, isn't revolving around the baby in Bethlehem. The baby is but a blip, at least for now.
Speaker 2:For now, there's all this room for us. The manger is a layover on our way to encounter who we really are, and every bit of ourselves, our real selves, is welcome here. You are welcome with your questions and your frustrations and your impatience. You are welcome with dirt under your fingernails and hair unwashed and toothpaste down your sweatshirt. You know, the one you've hardly changed out of in 2020.
Speaker 2:You are welcome with your sloppy devotion and your honest to goodness fear. It's okay if you're you aren't sure of what to do when you get to the manger. In fact, you might not even stay very long. But as you walk away, you'll feel your heart grow bigger with the story that's just getting started. You don't have to rush this story.
Speaker 2:There is time for faith to grow. Every year, our Advent journey reminds us that it is okay to go back to where we started. So we end with this scene. The shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. So our shepherds go back to their fields blabbing about the baby all the way home.
Speaker 2:And notice that now the shepherds, they actually sound like angels, the same angels that filled the night sky glorifying and praising God. And Luke loves to mix together glory and lowliness. His is a gospel, a message of good news that is honest about human struggle and systems of oppression and poverty. But Luke never stops there. He has this eye on what the future looks like when God and humanity meet up and each person responds with their own act of faith.
Speaker 2:Mary, she treasures the story of holy motherhood in her heart, and shepherds hurry to meet the savior and magi will march across the East with precious gifts. This is a chapter in a story just getting started, but don't go thinking the story hasn't always been at work. God gets mixed up in the dirt of ordinary lives. So maybe you're wondering, what does God want me to do in this pandemic, in the face of my need, with all that I long for? Well, for starters, this, go about your life.
Speaker 2:Don't worry about where God is or isn't, how to prove that you are worthy of angels on a dark night. In fact, the more you move forward with your mundane tasks, the more likely your work will be prefaced to a transcendent moment. You can't earn the respect of heaven. So go wash the dishes, shovel the snow, cut up an acorn squash, fix a hole in your shirt, walk to the bookstore, stare up at the stars, pay your bills, paint a fresh coat, hug your partner for ten whole seconds, hug yourself. Count sheep.
Speaker 2:And when it's time to visit the manger, to seek love, to respond to divine surprise, you will know. You will know. Then if you are like me or like these shepherds, you'll probably end up back where you started. And that will be enough. Joyful, even just you wait.
Speaker 2:Let us pray. Loving God, No matter how much we think we are separate, we are wrapped up in the world that we live in with the systems that keep some people down and raise others up. But in the story of the shepherds, we are reminded that you delight in our ordinariness. You draw near to us when we aren't even aware that we're waiting for you. So Christ of our hearts and of the cosmos, as we prepare for Christmas, and this is a Christmas that we'll be missing so many of the things that we love about this time of year.
Speaker 2:God, will you help us to see ourselves on this journey to the manger, to encounter what you have for each one of us this year. So spirit of the living God, present with us now. Enter the places of disrespect and dissatisfaction and where we feel unsure. And will you heal us of all that harms us? Amen.