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Foundry United Rev. |
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Birth Announcements: To Shepherds Sunday, December 10,
2006 |
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Luke 2: 8-14 Rev. |
Saint-Saëns begins his oratorio with the shepherds. Historically,
in biblical times, there had been no more honored profession than to be a
shepherd…no higher compliment than to be called a good shepherd. It was
almost godly work. “The Lord is my shepherd,” the Psalmist wrote, “I shall
not want.” But, by
the time of Jesus’ birth, family farming in Farm
workers lived and slept in the open fields with the sheep. They were paid poorly – mostly in food to
eat and cheap wine, and a few coins to send back to their families. Their
lives were hard and short. It was
to these farm workers that the angel and heavenly choirs appeared announcing
the birth of a Messiah. The
theme I would like to explore with you this Advent/Christmas season is Birth
Announcements. The Christmas story is full of birth announcements…Annunciations,
they are sometimes called. In the
nativity stories Jesus' birth is announced by angels and stars to shepherds,
gentile astrologers, a peasant teenaged girl, a disbelieving priest, a
righteous man whose fiancée is pregnant, and (indirectly) to a despotic king.
The birth
announcement to each of these, and their response, is a theological statement
the biblical writers are making about who Jesus is and, thus, about the heart
of God, which Jesus reveals. Why
shepherds? Why did the angel and the heavenly choruses choose these poor farm
workers living in the fields…the actual Greek word is ajgraulevw
(ag-row-leh'-o) literally meaning “To live outdoors.” Why
choose these homeless farm workers to announce the birth to? Here’s why: Because otherwise they were have
never guessed that Jesus was born for them. Nobody would have ever guessed
it. This is why, I think, the angel’s message to them
is so specific and pointed …“To YOU is born in the City of This leads me to raise two questions for us to
brood on as we listen to the oratorio this morning. Who in our world today will never guess Jesus was
born for them unless we tell them? How can we remove every barrier between
people and Christ? This is becoming a theme for me ever since we blessed the
new ramp. The biggest barrier is the assumption that you
are somehow excluded from Christ because you are a farm worker…or because you
are different in some sort of way from the stereotype we all carry in our
heads of what good Christians ought to look and think and act like. Who in our world today will never guess Jesus was
born for them unless we tell them? I’d venture there are people in your life
and mine who have been taught that there are barriers of intellect, status, orientation,
economics, lifestyle, or something else, between them and Christ, and they
will never know that Jesus was born to them unless you and I figure out a way
to tell them. The other question is this: Where inside of you
and me do we find it impossible to believe that Jesus was born for us? Most of us have places within ourselves that we believe
Christ could not be born into. Stables and mangers we suppose are
unacceptable to Jesus. But it is not the polished parts of who we are where
Christ is born, but the places we try to deny and hide. May Christ be born and may Christ reign in the
very places within our spirits and souls where we find it hardest to believe
Christ would want to dwell. To YOU, dear smelly shepherd inside me and you,
is born a Savior. www.foundryumc.org |
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