Come All Ye Faithful, and Those Whose Faith Needs to Be Filled

This is a version of my sermon text for our Christmas Eve service (7:00 pm), on December 24, 2018. The text for my message was Luke 2:1-20. A video recording is below. Merry Christmas! + pBRC

May you always know how much God loves and treasures you.  AMEN.

Shepherding was not a glamorous vocation back in the single digit years.

It was the job of last resort. If you couldn’t do anything else, become a shepherd. You didn’t have to learn a skill, other than counting. You had to be willing to chase off, and sometimes fight off, wild animals. You had to be willing to spend a LOT of time outside. But one thing about being a shepherd was that you were exempted from attending worship. Actually, you were uninvited. By spending all of that time outdoors and around animals, they were judged unclean by the laws and traditions of the day.

By being ruled to be ‘unclean,’ they were not allowed in the Temple or synagogues until they proved they were clean to the rabbis and chief priests. That meant they had to be off of work for an extended period of time. Experts believe shepherds felt they were not wanted by God, or more accurately, God’s representatives, then they did not want to have anything to do with God. Ironically, like the sheep they tended, shepherds had wandered away from their own flock.

So shepherds were not regular attendees in worship. They probably only went on the BIG holy days, or when someone strongly encouraged them. When they did come, it was probably out of a sense of obligation, & they did not feel like they were wanted. They didn’t have a strong connection to, or a passion for, the church.  Hello to the shepherds in the room.

So on a silent night, the Shepherds are in the fields, keeping watch over their sheep when all of a sudden, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them. So, of course, they were terrified. The angel tells them to not be afraid, which is useless. The angel hasn’t had their night’s work disrupted by a messenger from heaven disturbing the bleak midwinter’s night.

So it was to people who turned away, or been turned away, that the hosts of heaven came to bring “Good News of Joy for all of the people.” I can understand why the shepherds were terrified. They hadn’t been to the Temple in years, and now the messengers of God show up in the middle of the night in their fields.

The angel told them the promised and long awaited Messiah had been born in Bethlehem. As a sign, they would find a newborn baby, wrapped in strips of cloth, asleep in a feeding trough. To encourage them to seek out this sign, more angels than they could count, and they are professional counters, said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom He favors!” There is no way this includes them. There is no way they are among those whom God favors. I mean, the unclean, non-church goers cannot be on the list of those who have found favor with God, could they?

When the angels left, they decided to go to Bethlehem to see this sign, this baby. They found Mary and Joseph and the baby, lying in a manger. Then the shepherds told everyone what they had been told by the angels about this baby. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

God decided the way to redeem humanity and restore the broken relationship between God and all of us was to send His Son to live among us, to live as one of us. For that Son to ultimately be crucified as a way to show how deep God’s love is for each and every one of us.

So when it was time to make the birth announcements, God sent a host of angels to … shepherds.  There was not an angelic appearance in the courts of Rome, nor in the Temple in Jerusalem. But to certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay, the messengers of God proclaimed the holy birth. “Good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Not to Caesar. Not to Herod. Not to the Chief Priests. But to those who feel abandoned by God, rejected by the church.

God knows that those who most desperately need to hear the message of God’s love and grace and mercy and forgiveness and peace are those who are least likely to come to a house of worship to hear it. So on that night around 2,000 years ago, God went to them.

Isn’t it amazing the lengths and depths that God will go to show that we are all beloved, treasures of God?

The Good News of Great Joy doesn’t just come to those who are full of faith. It comes to all people, It comes to those whose faith tank is somewhere in the middle. The Good News of Great Joy comes to those who are struggling in their faith, who are riding on empty. It comes to you.

The Good News of Great Joy is that we don’t have to be faith filled to be among those whom God favors. The Good News of Great Joy is a gift, an unearned, unmerited gift of grace from God. We cannot do any thing, to earn his love, and we can’t do anything to lose God’s love either. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God shows that God will do anything to show us we are loved, even die for us.

The announcement of the birth of the Messiah was made to people who felt outside of the range of God’s love; a message for the un-faith-filled. The declaration was made “to you.” The Messiah, the Christ child was born for you.

So if you feel like a shepherd, that God, or some of God’s people, don’t want you; you feel abandoned or ignored by God; or that you’re too bad, or been gone too long, or not worthy or that whatever else has kept you apart from God. I have a message for you. “Do not be afraid! I bring you Good News of Great Joy for all the people: for YOU a Savior has come!”

If you don’t feel like a shepherd, but you know someone who does, you need to be a messenger. Be an angel (because the word in Greek from which we get angel actually means messenger), and share the Good News of Great Joy, that for ALL of the people, for YOU, a Savior has come!

So, Come All Ye Faithful, and Come All Ye to be faith filled.

Be joyful and triumphant. Come Ye, O Come Ye to Bethlehem.

Come let us adore him – He is Christ, the Lord. AMEN.

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