A Night When Shepherds Turn Into Angels
Luke 2:1-20
There are times in my life when I still feel like a little boy let out of school, and going off to football is one of those times.
Following the great Brighton and Hove Albion when they are playing away from home in magical places like Reading, Leyton Orient and Brentford.
It’s a pitiful sight to see me squeezing in to my replica shirt and watching me fix my blue and white scarf to my car so that it trails along in the breeze.
One day me and my friends were going to Swindon.
We got there nice and early and were shepherded along to the away supporters enclosure by a police escort. We were made to join a very long queue which seemed to move very slowly towards the turnstiles.
Then I realised what was happening. All us Brighton fans were being searched for offensive weapons.
This was quite a moment for me in my life long quest to be one of the lads. So I did my best to look like a possible suspect.
I puffed out my chest, borrowed some chewing gum and began to chew it with my mouth open and tried as best I could to contort my face into something like a threatening sneer.
My friends were frisked quite extensively, which shows the sort of company I keep, and then came my turn.
I lifted up my hands and spread my legs apart waiting to be given the once over.
The police officer’s response to me was shocking and deeply intimidating.
He shook his head and began to laugh.
In fact I thought he was going to die laughing.
“I don’t think so sir, do you he chortled, “you just go in and enjoy the game”
Well, I was shocked dismayed and appalled. I was inconsolable.
“What is it about me” I said to my friends who were also laughing
“What is it about me that means I’m not even worth searching”
One of my friends then turned to me in a moment of rare philosophical reflection
“Well, I guess we can try all we like” he said “but in the end none of us can deny the truth about ourselves, can we, vicar?”
Welcome to the stable at Bethlehem, where, let’s face it, nothing very exciting is going on. The opening verses of our Gospel reading may be beautifully written , but when you think about it, it’s all pretty uneventful stuff.
A world wide census has been called for so many people are forced to travel long distances. Yes, our hearts go out to this young couple who make their journey whilst she is heavily pregnant. They reach their journey’s end. The town is so crowded they can’t get a room at the inn, so some sort of makeshift accommodation is provided in the place where the animals go.
Is this really worth coming to church in the dead of night to hear about.
Then the scene switches equally riveting. To nearby fields and some shepherds watching their sheep.
All very dull again until suddenly there’s an enormous creaking sound in the floorboards of heaven above and through a gaping hole tumble hundreds of angels.
The glory of them and the light of them understandably makes the shepherds cower in fear. They are told a Christ child has been born really, just around the corner from where they live.
A Christ child who people like shepherds are going to find very easily.
Have you ever wondered why, in the brief story of the birth of Jesus, Luke keeps on going on about being wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.
If you were marking this as an English paper, you’d put a line through that bit and write the words “unnecessary detail and pointless repetition” in red ink.
Unless Luke is making an important point.
You Shepherds, God is coming to find a touching point with you people.
You will find the baby Jesus in a condition you know only too well – freezing cold.
You will find him in a place you know only too well – a food trough for animals in your home town
You will find him at a time you know only too well – the dead of night.
Do you see, you shepherds, that the great thing about Jesus is that he comes slap bang into the middle of your everyday experience.
An in breaking of heavenly glory where you thought there was just a dull routine.
My dear friends, the great thing about this Christmas story is not so much what happens to Jesus – for all he does is lie there like any other baby. The great thing is what happens to the shepherds. Look what the Christmas story does to them.
Imagine them arriving at that stable.
Think of how awkward and uncomfortable they would have been to begin with.
All nervous coughs and humming tunes that don’t mean anything and doing what all men do when their nervous, jangling their change and their car keys in their pockets.
But then they saw God, fast asleep, happily content to be lying amidst the trappings of their lives.
Wrapped in swaddling cloths against the biting cold, lying in a manger, where their animals might have fed the following morning.
Please heed my warning. When you leave the church at the end of this service, it might be best to hurry home quickly. Don’t stop to look into our crib scene at the back of the church – because if you do you might find you are changed as they were.
Luke tells us that the shepherds were turned into angels.
Glorifying and praising God at the tops of the voices he tells us.
Well, that’s angels work that is, its not what shepherds are about at all.
Leaping about the lanes of Bethlehem, scaring the very sheep they had been paid to protect I shouldn’t wonder.
Because they had discovered God amidst their every day lives – and when you do that, well, it changes you.
It changes you into the sort of person you were intended to be.
Shepherds were people content to keep their heads down.
Angels lift their heads up for they are messengers of the love of God.
They tell the true story that God has come down to earth as a child and they are not embarrassed about who hears it.
So if shepherds turn into angels on Christmas night – what might it be that is going to happen to you, if you come close enough to this story?
We spend so much time trying to be the people we’re not.
As a Vicar, I get fed up with being seen differently, all I wanted to do, just for a moment was to be accepted as another potential football hooligan from Brighton.
Just be one of the crowd for a bit. It didn’t happen.
The danger about stopping here longer than you need to tonight, is that you might end up being different from the crowd, being the unique person God loves, not conforming to the fashions and the trends and the opinions of the day because that means you can keep your head down.
This Christmas, He will come to each of you here as he came to those shepherds
In a condition you know.
In a place you know.
And at a time you know.
Swaddling cloths and mangers may not feature heavily for you.
It will not be at dead of night in Bethlehem – I shouldn’t think.
But if He is to have his way and turn you from shepherds into angels.
It might be Redhill, it might be St Matthew’s church and it might be now.
RH 24.12.07