By: The Rev. Canon Greg Goebel
How do these words strike you: shepherds are trash. They are lowborn people whose lives are of no consequence. If they were valuable to God, they wouldn’t have been born as shepherds. They don’t really understand the Law, and they don’t follow it. God doesn’t hear them, because their prayers are hindered by their lowly status and their uncleanness.
I hope the previous paragraph offended you. I hope you are angry that shepherds – or any group of people – would be slandered and degraded and disrespected like that. I hope you see the shepherds as people whom God created and whom God loves. I hope you see them as well suited to visit the Messiah on the day of His birth and to give glory to God.
You and I are offended when a human being is degraded. And yet, in the day that Jesus was born, this ishow many of the religious leaders and others saw shepherds. In fact, in both the pagan and the Hebrew
worldviews, there were hierarchical classes of people. Some people were born “higher” than others. People like shepherds were not suited to be honored or to be close to God. They were seen as lowe and often worthless.
This baby that they worshipped, as you know, was Jesus the Messiah. He would change everything! He would preach to the poor and rich alike. He would upend our notions of value and worth. He would preach that all of us are sinners, and yet all of us are loved by God. He would make a way for both the proud to repent and the lowly to glorify God.
And, even here at His birth, this was true as the lowly shepherds were chosen as witnesses who would glorify him.
All human beings are equally created in God’s image. Every shepherd, every king, is equal in God’s eyes. God loves the world.
Sometimes we are told, today, that poor mothers shouldn’t bring their children to birth. They should have the option to terminate the child’s life before birth. Only a century ago, people were advocating eugenics, hoping that the undesirable people of the world would be sterilized, and that low class or minority babies would be terminated. They were hoping that only the best people would survive to contribute to society.
We still live with some of that thinking today. And yet the presence of the shepherds—those poor, outcast, uneducated people—at that manger shows us that everyone can glorify God. Everyone deserves life and has a purpose in God’s kingdom.