Word of Salvation – Vol. 34 No. 08 – Feb 1989

 

The Shepherds’ Worship

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf on Luke 2:15-20

Readings: Titus 2:11-3:8, 2Kings 7:3-16

Singing: 180; Bow.H.205:3; -337, 346; Bow.H.502

To the Reader: You may need to add words to complete sentences and thoughts where I’ve been a little cryptic!

 

All of a sudden heaven is gone again.  There they stand – their feet once again planted on earth. The dying embers of the fire are, becoming visible again after the glare, and in their noses there is the smell of their sheep.

Once more they are what they always were: poorly paid agricultural workers looking after other people’s property.  Yes they are… but can their life ever be the same again after what they just heard?

1.  In The Dark

Yes, you can say that the shepherds are now in the dark again.  Angels always have had a way of disappearing.  As Handel paints his musical picture, the “Messiah”: after that mighty song, “Glory to God”, they fly away; now you see me… now you don’t, sort of thing.  This is a reason for some people in our cynical age to say: “angels do not exist”.  They were a figment of the imagination in an age when there was no fluorescent light yet.  The medieval world of angels and devils is no longer; our world.

If that were really the case our darkness would be very definite, very deep.  We would be lonely people on a little ball of matter floating in a cold universe.  But those shepherds knew better!

As soon as they begin to talk to one another they know that their experience is shared.  And so they encourage one another – as Christians still can and should – do in the dark of a world where we do not always(!) see yet.

If one shepherd may have thought: “It was only a dream”, then others could soon enough tell him it was better than that.

One of the reasons we come to church – and need meetings with God’s children during the week too – is that this kind of reminder is so needed!

But there is also action!  And in a unique version of Psalm 122 they say to one another: “Come let us go…!”  You know the psalm says, “Let us go to the House of the LORD”.  In a way that’s what these guys could have said now.  For the Temple of God was now to be the Temple of the body of the Son of God.  One Day it would be broken off, too… and built again in three days. All that still lay ahead, though.  It was still only a small temple, but the glory of the Lord was dwelling in it already.  Come let us go… and then they hurried!

As we saw on Christmas Day, it is no good dilly-dallying around when God’s time has come!  You never know if you will get the chance again.  This was the unique chance for the shepherds and so they hurried!  They ran!  Across the dark fields, along deserted roads – where dogs start barking when they hear running footsteps – through a world seemingly unchanged.  And then into a stable!

A seemingly insignificant smelly grotto!  What an unlikely residence for the long-awaited Messiah!

There too, it seems as if they are in the dark. But they aren’t!!  Now they are…

2.  In The Light!

For that’s what you are when you are with Jesus. He calls Himself the Light of the world.  But note now what the text says:
            “…they hurried off, and found Mary and Joseph and the Baby…”

First they saw Mary and Joseph!

It’s still like that, is it not?  People want to find Jesus but on their way to Him they always first bump into church people.  Other sinners; fellow saints who live by grace just like you do.  Human beings with their irritating as well as their endearing qualities.  You are never on your own, in the light of God. It is shared light.

And then, having come in, or should I say: barged in (after all it was just after a birth had taken place!!) they have a story to tell that Joseph and Mary did not know yet!  Even Jesus’ mother could learn something new and exciting from these farm labourers, these simple souls of the night shift.

Do you see what God is telling you and me there – Reformed Super-Saint with your Super-Refined theology?  Only together with all the saints (as Dr. Paul with his Pharisee degree and apostolic office tells us!) only together with all the saints – be they Baptist Methodist or Presbyterian or even Roman Catholic! – can we know fully the extent of what God has done!

But then only when the Spirit opens our eyes and shows us the child in the manger, the Son of God in the food trough for the beasts, on his way to the cross.  The bread from heaven that feeds hungry souls.

The Old Testament which the shepherds had known all their lives begins to take on a new meaning for these men.  Life will never be the same again.  With new eyes they will now read the old Word.  But that road of discovery had already started for Mary.  She had sung her song and had borne her child.  And now this!  These men are telling her how God had heralded. His doings to these humble colleagues of Father David!  She is full of wonder and does not say much.

The text says that she “…treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

We call that ‘to meditate’… meditation.  That term is used quite lot these days.  Often people understand it to be “sitting still with a blank mind and letting anything that happens to be around, any old random thought, fall into that mind as if from God”.  But that is not meditation.  That kind of blank can be filled just as much by the devil as it can by God and who is ever to know the difference?  No, just as Psalm 1 talks about meditation “…on the law of God”, so here we first have: treasuring up.  That means to look at real things, count them, set them all on a row, and only then to ponder these things in your heart.  You gather treasures in your heart.  O, you can meditate – all right – when you lie in bed at night and sleep eludes you: thank God for sleepless nights spent that way!  But it is not much use unless you have what God has done to chew on.  You must have heard or seen… you must have read it first!  Then you can meditate and the treasure glows inside you and grows in splendour.  That’s what Mary did.

Much later it would all come out when this strange fellow Luke would come and visit and ask her what had happened.  She would be able to tell him.  And so we have this gospel today!

But for the shepherds it was another story.  They had to go back to their sheep, to the new day in their old city, and a new task, a new song.  It says of them that they went their way, “Glorifying God for all things they had heard and seen”.  Isn’t that a beautiful response?  Glorifying God!  When we get a story, a gift, something to share with someone else, the temptation is always to use it whatever it is, to make ourselves look important.  I got something that makes me special!  Sure, it is that.

To be the recipient of the greatest Gift in all the universe does make me special!  No doubt about that!  But what is it that makes me so special?  That now at last I am again where God wants me!  This is why I was chosen, says Paul, chosen from eternity!  And this is why I am redeemed!  That I should be to the praise of His glory!  “Glory to God!” sang the angels.  Now God strains His ear and He smiles!  Listen to that, angels!  Now my children are singing it.  Isn’t that great music to listen to?

The other citizens of Bethlehem might have thought those shepherds were a bit daft: something the matter with them.  But God was praised and that is all that matters.

Now let us once again read the text:
            “When the angels had left” (as angels do, for the job is ours now)
            “the shepherds said to one another: ‘Let’s go…!”

That’s encouragement!  That’s what God’s people still do.  They encourage each other: “Let’s go to the house of the Lord…!”  “…and check out this thing God has done!”  That’s what church services and bible studies are for: “…see what God did!”

“So they hurried” (no time to waste, you know, neither day nor hour!) “and found first Mary and Joseph…!”  First it is always church people that you see on your way to Jesus!  It is still like that!  “But there is also the Child lying in the manger”.  They saw the simple way the Word came; He is food for the world… bread for the hungry!  “And when they had seen Him they spread the word!”  No way to keep it silent.

Whoever has seen God at work is a messenger.  Hard job!  For the people to whom they told the story had not heard the angels.  People were amazed, but they did not believe… yet!  Mary had learned something new, though, and had more to meditate on, more to ponder, more to wonder about!

And the song of the angels was now the song of the shepherds: Glory to God; Great things He has done.