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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text comes from the Gospel reading of Christ’s birth being foretold. You may be seated. Merry Christmas to you. The text talks about a very sinful man who had a very sinful desire to raise taxes. And this sinful man, Caesar Augustus, completely changed the entire Roman world in order for everyone to go back to their hometown in order to be counted for taxes. And God used this sinful man with his sinful desire to raise taxes to do the will of God. Amen. Yes, Caesar did the will of God without Caesar ever really knowing what he was doing. He only viewed it as a way to increase the taxes of his empire, and yet God used him in order to get Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.
Mary and Joseph had no reason to go to Bethlehem. They both lived in Nazareth, 90 to 120 miles away. They had no need to go to Bethlehem. Their families had been in Nazareth for many years. But for God to fulfill the prophet Micah’s prophecy, God moved the world through a sinful man with his own sinful desires. No one will thwart God’s will when it comes to your salvation. No one. Now all of this was so that Mary brought forth her firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling cloths.
Stop. That’s what all women did. It’s the next part that our ears are so used to because we’ve heard them, but this is the bizarre part: Laid him in a manger. Now, a manger is a trough, a place where animals eat out of. If my wife knew that that’s where I had prepared for her to lay our firstborn, I don’t think there would have been an undiscussed situation. It would have been discussed quite thoroughly. And here she lays God in the flesh in that manger—a most ignoble birth.
Now, there was no room for them in the inn, and nobody really cared. Mary cared. Mary cared. Joseph for sure cared, but nobody else cared. It’s interesting because in today’s world, in this country of yours, you know and have seen and have witnessed with your own eyes that there is a lack of care for this great good news of great joy that you’re gathered here to hear. But it is not an impossible venture of which God has used many other people before you were ever born.
So let’s think about this. Here is God coming into the flesh, and rather than be born in the capital and the center of all worship, Jerusalem, where the temple was, he’s born in the backwater town of Bethlehem. Instead of Jesus’ birth being told by the angels to the theologians and the priests of the temple in Jerusalem, He tells it to shepherds. Now, shepherds were on the lowest part of the totem pole of the social strata. And these shepherds, they weren’t good church attenders either. These shepherds were out in the field most of the time. They didn’t go to the synagogue regularly.
And of all the people that God would choose, He didn’t choose the Sunday-in, Sunday-out churchgoer, did He? He didn’t choose the priests and the theologians of the day, did He? He chose the churchgoers as some would like to call the backslidden ones out in the field. Now that’s a story that you don’t always hear about, isn’t it? And it is these men whose lives this message changed in a dramatic fashion.
So here they are. You know as a shepherd, you’re not all that good of a guy. You know as a shepherd that your life is different than the people that you see in the towns. You know as a shepherd your life is not as holy as many of the people that you see because you don’t have time or, for whatever reason, you don’t frequent the synagogue very often. So when the angels show up in front of the shepherds, do you not think that they would have thought, oh no, now it’s time to pay up, God?
Would you be so frightened if an angel appeared to you? Are you so confident in your own righteousness that you wouldn’t fall on your knees in fear and trembling? And that is exactly what these angels did. If it wasn’t enough that they could have this guilt laid upon them, it was also that not only did one angel talk to them, the whole heaven was opened up. Thousands upon thousands of angels, like John saw in his revelation, did sing glory to God in the highest at a much higher volume than you and I can sing by ourselves.
They knew they didn’t deserve this love that God had shown upon them. They knew where they stood in the strata of society, and they knew where they stood with God because they didn’t always talk to God that often. They didn’t always come to hear His Word all that often. But they received this good news and they believed in it. They believed in it. They believed that this Word spoken to them, of all people that it could have been spoken to, applied to them.
Now God proclaims some interesting things to these shepherds. The angels don’t sit down and try to describe all of the doctrines of the attributes of God with these shepherds. He tells them basically two important facts. One, fear not. The first words out of the angels’ lips, fear not. You tell me what causes you to fear and worry. Two. And you tell me how comforting those words would be to hear when confronted with God in the flesh, in those angels, as it were. Where God is speaking to them in those angels, their fear would be greatly enhanced because they would know that they were dead to rights. They had nothing on God. God had them completely exposed.
Fear not were the first words. The second, today… In the city of David, for you, for you, mind you, shepherds, though it is for all people, it’s also for you, dear shepherds, a Savior has been born. Now, when they hear the word Savior, and when you hear the word Savior, you and I think of this term, this kind of a super, super, uber-minch kind of a person, superhero kind of a thing. And yet, it’s born for you in the city of David, a Savior who is Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One. When you did go to the synagogue and hear the good news, you knew that this was going to be about Him—the one who would crush the head of Satan, as Moses said in Genesis. Not only would He be that, He would also be the Lord, God in the flesh.
That was all that the angel told them about this baby. Well, there was one other important point. Because they added, you will find him wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. There could have been other babies born at the same time as Mary gave birth to our Lord Jesus. But I can bet you dimes to donuts, none of them were found in a manger except that one. So they go, because they’re excited God has revealed this to them of all people. They go to see what it is. And when they arrive, it’s just a baby, wrapped in swaddling cloths.
There’s no halo over his head like many artists depict from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance era. He doesn’t have his fingers blessing all the people who come to him as an infant, as the artists depict. They were doing that in order to emphasize that this baby is God. The shepherds didn’t have that nuance given to them. They come and they see a man—a man, a young woman, and a baby. And it’s the only baby in all of Bethlehem that’s lying in a manger. And they recall and wonder at the words that God said that that baby is born for them to be a Savior.
They hear from God that God’s mercy will fulfill His justice. Remember, God’s mercy will fulfill His justice. There is no more to pay. There is no more to do. His mercy fulfills His justice. They had to then think about this and ponder it. But as they thought about this and pondered it, they took that message after having seen the baby, because there’s nothing else to see—just the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes—and that’s God lying there. They leave and go tell other people.
In the middle of the night, probably not a lot of people out carousing. But whoever they did see, they told. And here’s the interesting part. Do you know what these shepherds did after seeing God in the flesh, after having these angels revealed to them? They had their religious experience beyond any religious experience. Do you know what they did? Well, let’s start, first of all, what they did not do. They did not sell their possessions and go out and missionize the whole world. Hmm. They did not set up a brand new established bureaucracy that will dispense money to all kinds of poor people. They didn’t do that either. They didn’t do anything that you see modern people do, and God didn’t ask them to do that, did He?
What they did was go back to their fields and kept being shepherds. Now, mind you, they would tell other people about what God had done with them and what God had said to them and what they had seen, but they did it as shepherds. Joseph, after having the angel appear to him in a dream to take Mary as his wife and not to be afraid. After Mary has the angel talk to her to tell her that she’s going to be giving birth to God. Do you know what Joseph does? He doesn’t become a lecturer on the circuit. He goes back to being a carpenter. The guardian of God in the flesh is a carpenter, and he remains a carpenter. And he teaches God in the flesh how to be a carpenter—a carpenter.
And Mary doesn’t become like a Mother Teresa. Mary continues to be wife and mother. Wife to her dear husband Joseph and mother to God. She sticks with what God has given her as Joseph stuck with what God had given him, as the shepherd stuck with what God had given them, all the while pondering these things as is said in the text, wondering what that meant, putting it all together, connecting the dots. Yes, and telling other people. They told other people. Whomever their life touched, they told.
Now, was Joseph as efficient of a teller of God’s good news as he could have been? I don’t know, but he was a darn good carpenter who provided for his family and for his God of all things. And Mary, a sinner, doesn’t mean that she wasn’t always a perfect wife to her husband Joseph. And she didn’t always understand that her child is God, her Savior, and yet she was faithful.
As you ponder these things in your life, these gifts that God brings, you come here tonight with all kinds of different things happening in your life. Some of you come here with great joys, being with family and friends and seeing one another and having meals together and opening presents. Some of you are coming here with great sorrow and sadness. Someone’s not sitting in the pew with you this year. Someone’s not going to be gathered around the table with you this year. Some tragedy has befallen someone you love dearly. As much as God loves you and is for you when you’re joyful, He is as much for you and has redeemed you in your sorrow and sadness. Amen.
As much as God receives you and takes you as His own, when you think you look the most beautiful, He takes you even more so when you look the ugliest and smell, because He came to save sinners. Shepherds were the example of sinners. Now I know, most of you attend church far more than those shepherds ever darkened the door, but you know what? God didn’t come to you or to me. He came to shepherds who had very little interaction with the synagogue in order for you to know about your Savior. And it changed their life. It changed their life.
You see, they received love and accepted it—undeserved love—and they accepted it. Not everybody does. There are two ways of dealing with undeserved love from our God. One way… It’s to assume that we’re not as good as everybody else, so God can never forgive us. That’s the most obvious. The one more dangerous, the one that infects me and you more, is to think that we don’t, 100% don’t deserve it. We like to think we’re 10% undeserving or 99% undeserving, but there’s still this little 1% in us that’s still, because we’re not that bad.
We’re not like ISIS, and we’re not like some sociopath or psychopath, and we’re not on the headline of the news. That’s rejection of undeserved love—to have that same attitude. Because either it’s 100% undeserved, or there is no love. And the Savior… It’s not born for you or for me. But if we’re like the shepherds, the lowly men, this Son and this Savior has been born.
You came tonight to hear good news of great joy. But the good news and great joy that you hear has to be spread and scattered throughout all aspects of your life, not just the parts of you and I that we’re very pleased with, but the parts of you and I that we don’t like to come in contact with. That good news is for that part of you even more, because that part of you is what Christ was born for. All of it is undeserved, whether we realize it or not.
That’s why we pray, Lord, come and free us. And do you know from whom we need to be free? From ourself. From ourself.
In the name of Jesus, Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus, to life everlasting. Amen.
