We all know the Christmas story. In fact, it’s so familiar that we can fail to see how strange the story is. We think we know it inside out, from top to bottom; yet in some ways we hardly know it at all.
The story is strange in its focus. You might expect there to be a strong and lingering focus on the birth itself, given how momentous it is. Yet the account of the birth could hardly be more laconic. We are told simply: “[Mary] gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger”. Then you might expect the camera, as it were, to linger long and lovingly upon the newborn child. This is what you find in the more fanciful apocryphal Gospels which didn’t make it into the New Testament. They linger long at the birth-scene, with heavenly light shining from the newborn babe, the whole scene aglow with wonder and awe, glittering with the baubles of fancy.
But that’s not how it is in the Gospel of Luke that we have heard. There we are told of the birth as simply and briefly as possible before the camera switches unexpectedly to the dark fields where the shepherds are guarding their sheep. The baby is left in the manger. The question is, Why the switch? Why turn from the baby and focus on the shepherds instead? The answer is that Luke is less interested in the physical birth than in the human response to the birth and the different kind of birth that entails.
This is true in the way he presents Mary. We are told precisely enough when Elizabeth conceives John the Baptist, but we are never told when Mary conceives. It’s often presumed that she conceives in her womb when she says yes to God’s invitation to be the mother of the Messiah. But we aren’t told that, and we can’t be sure. This is because Luke’s focus is elsewhere. He’s less interested in the physical conception than in the different kind of conception that comes once Mary speaks her word of faith, her fiat: “Let it be done to me”. Mary conceives in her heart before she conceives in her womb. She conceives in her heart when she speaks her fiat; and we are told exactly when she does that. The physical conception is a privilege unique to her; but the conception in the heart that comes with faith is open to all. That’s why Luke focuses on the conception which is spiritual rather than physical, open to all not just to the mother who is full of grace.
So too with the birth. The focus is not so much on the physical birth as on the human response to it. Hence the switch to the shepherds out in the fields. Shepherds are a very unlikely choice as the first to hear the news of the birth. They are poor men out on the margin, ritually unclean because of the work they do and therefore religious pariahs. They are nobodies out in the middle of nowhere. But it’s around them rather than the newborn child that there shines the heavenly light, the glory of the Lord; and it’s to them rather than to religious insiders that the angel first brings the joyful news for the whole people. This turns the world on its head, as the real Christmas always does.
The question then is, How do the shepherds respond? At first, we’re told, they’re terrified, and you can hardly blame them for that. But once they’ve seen the angelic host and heard their song, they leave their fear and their sheep behind and go to see for themselves what the angel has announced; and they find it just as the angel has said: “a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger”.
They then announce to Mary, Joseph and whoever else was there what they have seen and heard out in the darkness. The shepherds become angels, the messengers of God. That too turns the world on its head, since they would seem the least qualified for so exalted a role. And just as the angels return to heaven after their proclamation and song, so too the shepherds return to their fields and their sheep after they have passed on the message they have received.
We are told nothing of what happened to the shepherds or what they did after this extraordinary encounter. Their story is unfinished. That’s because it’s up to us to finish their story in our own way and in our own time. Luke’s focus is on the human response to the birth – not just Mary’s or the shepherds’, but our response as well. That’s why Christmas is never “once upon a time”. It’s here and now. We are called no less to listen and to say yes, to see and to believe. However unqualified we may feel, we too are called to become angels, messengers of God who understand what we see and hear at Christmas and share the joy of it with the whole people. It’s not just for us; it’s for everyone.
The physical birth of Jesus happened once long ago. But his birth from the human heart will continue to the end of time. That birth is made possible only by faith; and the conception comes once we like Mary and the shepherds speak the word of faith, “Let it be done to me”. Once Jesus is born here and now, then glory rises to God and peace comes to the earth, as the angels announce in their song; and in an inglorious and unpeaceful world that is quite something. It’s why Christmas matters.
In the midst of our ordinary everyday life with all its cares, just watching our sheep like the shepherds, immersed in the darkness of the world, the glory comes upon us out of nowhere here tonight and a song bursts from the stillness, turning the silence of death to a hymn of life, turning all the world’s tears to the merriment of heaven, because a child is born for us, not just born but born for us and for the whole world. Amen.