Let’s look at the part about the shepherds and the angels.
“Shepherd” is of course a very familiar word in the Biblical vocabulary.
It particularly reminds us of two Old Testament books.
The first is Ezekiel, which denounces the leaders of Israel prior to the Exile as false shepherds, leading the flock of their people astray.
The second is the Psalms, where we are told “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.”
These two references make it clear that shepherds, far from being marginal people excluded from the dietary laws on which the Pharisees insisted and therefore ritually unclean, are instead at the heart of the symbolic world of the gospel.
They epitomise everything that was wrong in biblical Israel and everything that God wishes to set right. And of course David was a shepherd boy before he became king. And it is in the new David, the Christ child, that God will become once again the shepherd of his people.
Keepers of Sheep
But there is one rather subtler aspect of the shepherds’ significance. Shepherds are people who keep sheep. Sheep were kept in ancient Israel not just for food and for wool but for sacrifice. Bethlehem is just a few miles rom Jerusalem. It’s not too fanciful to suppose these lambs were being reared for Temple sacrifices. Remember every household had to sacrifice a lamb in the Temple at Passover. That’s a lot of lambs. And yet Jesus isn’t born in the Temple. He’s the Lamb of God but he’s born with the animals, not with their slayers.
So here again Jesus’ birth echoes the problem of biblical Israel – the Temple sacrifice system that did not take away sin – while at the same time hinting at the solution – the Lamb of God, the new shepherd who was to be what the Temple always promised to be, the definitive place of encounter between God and his people.
Joy… The Heart of the Story
The heart of the story in many ways lies in what the shepherds learn from the angels. The first thing they learn is that what’s happening is fundamentally about joy.
The registration that took Joseph and Mary was about taxation, oppression, humiliation. But this is about joy. Then they learn that this is joy for all people. The story of the census began with all the world, the world that was under Caesar’s thumb: but this is good news of great joy for all people. In other words for everyone under oppression, hear the news of fabulous joy.
The angels mention David again, for the third time in ten verses, just to make sure you don’t miss that this is about David who was himself a shepherd like these shepherds and became a king like Jesus, who himself had a census like Augustus and yet came to realise that all things and all people belong to God.
Then the shepherds learn that this child is to be Saviour , Messiah and Lord, bringing glory and peace – in other words he is to be all that Augustus claims to be and more. He’s bigger than Rome and he’s the fulfilment of the longings of Israel. All things earthly and heavenly.
But there is the surprise – he’s plonked in an animal feeding trough. In other words he’s already been subject to the oppression of Rome that has dragged his parents a hundred miles on foot back to Bethlehem and he’s already suffered rejection by his people and got tossed in the hay instead of being given a decent place to lay his head.
And then – pow! A whole army of angels appears in the heavens. The language we’re used to, “a multitude of the heavenly host,” again obscures the significance of these words. Behind the angel appears a whole battalion of angels. Remember the name Gabriel means “God is my warrior”. This is military imagery. What this is telling the shepherds is,
“Don’t worry, God can kick the Romans out of biblical Palestine any time he likes – just look at the armies he’s got to call on. But he’s gathered these armies not for warfare but for worship, because this baby embodies everything he is about”.
Shepherds becoming angels…messengers of Joy
And what happens when the angels leave is that the shepherds become angels. Angels are, after all, messengers. And the shepherds become messengers and amaze people with what they have to tell them. They returned glorifying God for all they had heard and seen.
And as the story ends, with the shepherds glorifying God, we remember how Luke’s whole gospel ends, with the eleven disciples returning from Bethany with great joy and glorifying God. And we realise how this Christmas story is a microcosm of the whole gospel story, beginning with Rome’s oppression and biblical Israel’s rejection, and ending with a new set of shepherds (the disciples) who themselves turn into angelic messengers (or apostles).
Changes for us today
By the end of the story some things have changed, and some haven’t. What hasn’t changed is this: there’s still oppression in the world, and even the faithful still have little or no room for Jesus when he’s looking for a place to stay. But what has changed is this:
God has entered the story, definitively, vulnerably, and permanently. He has the power to overturn the oppressor and confront the hard-hearted. But he chooses to make himself known as a tiny baby, who needs and desires our loving and longing response.
The Good News
And the first people to learn of his coming are shepherds, whose work is sometimes ordinary, sometimes excluded, sometimes humiliating. And the good news of his coming turns those shepherds, as it turns us, into angels, who have seen the glory of God, have wonders to tell, and whose hearts are full of joy.
