God Speaks Through Shepherds

I’d like to begin with a Psalm that all of you likely know. Maybe even know by heart. The 23^rd Psalm. Let’s recite it together in the old KJV, shall we?

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Keeping that ageless Psalm of David in mind, let’s turn to John 1. Near the end of the chapter, we meet John the Baptist. He is all grown up. He is a baptizer, preaching repentance. And after someone repents, which literally means “to turn toward God,” they are baptized, symbolizing the birth of a new life. That’s what he’s doing in verse 28. He’s preaching and baptizing in Bethany at the Jordan River. In the verse above, John notes the presence of Jesus, now around 30 years old.  

The next day, John comes back to Bethany and the Jordan to continue in his ministry. He sees Jesus in the distance, walking toward them to join them again. John says this. “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

Our shepherding God, his only begotten son, the one who embodies God for us earthlings, well, that son of God is a lamb, a baby sheep. Jesus is the Divine Shepherd’s divine lamb!

Just so you don’t miss it, Jesus, even as a 30 year old, is still a lamb, a young sheep. In some ways Jesus never grew up. Normally, that’s not such a good thing. But here, it is. Jesus maintained a childlike innocence and wonder. Even as an adult, he lived in the moment like children do. Everything was fresh and new. Jesus’ childlikeness never left him. I imagine this made him extra alluring to people and a religion that had lost that childlike wonder a long time ago.

Let’s juxtapose the Divine Shepherd and the Divine Lamb with another scripture that is in the top 5 list of most popular Bible passages. This from Luke 2, verses 8 through 20.

The Divine Shepherd via an angel comes to a group of shepherds in a field outside the city of David. Remember David? The most famous shepherd in Israel, the iconic shepherd king, the last messiah, the one who made Israel the strong and proud people of God.

God has chosen these shepherds to be the first to receive the good news wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger in Bethlehem.

It gets even more interesting. Scholars believe the reason the shepherds are up so late is that it is lambing season. Lambs are being born, and often lambs are born in the middle of the night.

The Divine Shepherd says to these shepherds outside the divine town of the shepherd king David, go into town and bear witness to the birth of, whom?, the divine lamb of God.

Shepherds, shepherding and sheep are so central to the Christmas narrative. It is essential to the Hebrew scripture, too. The Lord is my Shepherd. David, the shepherd who became king, wrote those words! Abraham and Moses were shepherds, too.

The biblical story again and again highlights shepherding as akin to the divine.

Here’s the thing though.

Shepherds in Jesus’ day were a maligned and marginalized people. They were outcasts in Israel.

This begs the question: if God is a shepherd and the bible magnifies shepherding, why were shepherds so marginalized and maligned?

This disconnect is telling.

We see this disconnect in our own day and age, don’t we?

I can imagine someone saying, God maybe a shepherd, but a heavenly shepherd, not like those we got here.

My son, when he was maybe 7 years old, he came up to me one day and said, Dad, “I don’t think I like church. It’s too goddy.” That was his word. Goddy. There’s a lot to that made up word.  

We separate the world into two, don’t we? There’s the  goddy stuff, church, Sunday mornings, and then there’s the earthly stuff, home, Monday through Saturdays. And we live our lives as if the two don’t mix.

But the spiritual life, it’s aim anyway, is to see the sacred everywhere you look. The spiritual life is all about seeing reflections of the divine all around us. The spiritual life is all about seeing the image of God in the human face, beginning with those who are maligned and marginalized.

Jesus will say, if you do it to the least of these, you do it unto me. For Jesus, marginalizing or maligning shepherds, or anyone, means marginalizing and maligning our shepherding God. Jesus critiqued the religion of his day that worshipped the Lord they deemed a shepherd but castigated lowly human shepherds.

Hopefully, the closer we get to God, the more we become aligned with God, and the more we see God in what we often malign, and stop maligning!

The last passage I’d like to look at for a bit is John 10. In verse 11, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. He repeats the claim in verse 14. A refrain goes with the claim. The good shepherd “lays down his life for the sheep.”

What defines a shepherd as good? To Jesus it is this. Laying down, or being willing to lay down, one’s life for others.

In general, Jesus seems to define human goodness as selflessness. For Jesus, to be good means to be selfless.

God is good. We hear that a lot. In the Black community, this is a continually repeated refrain. God is Good, and all the time. Beautiful, isn’t it?

And true!

The God of Christ is good all the time because God is selfless love. God is good all the time because of his limitless, sacrificial love for us. God is good all the time because God becomes not just a shepherd but a slave to lift and save all, beginning with, the enslaved.

God is good all the time! This means God’s selflessness never, ever gives up on us, on any of us!

As for the good news of great joy, that news is good because it begins the story of selflessness, the selflessness that will save us.

That’s the good news the shepherds heard in that field in Bethlehem.

And what do these shepherds do with this beautiful, universe-shifting, good news? They selflessly share it!

Verse 17 – “they made known what had been told them about” Jesus.

As lowly, poor shepherds, marginalized by society, in going and telling everyone about Jesus, especially to those above their class, they risked rejection and, worse, again and again. This would have taken guts. Hutzpah! But the good news of God’s selflessness, how else could it be? Selflessly, they went beyond their comfort zone to spread the good news of God’s love!

We’re called to do the same. To be good, selfless messengers of the good news we know!

Be good, selfless shepherds yourself! That’s what Christmas says to us.