8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” 15 When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”
16 And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. 17 And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. 18 And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
**************************
*********************************
I’ll say this: I like James Bond movies. I always have. In college, TBS used to do ‘7 days of 007’,
which meant they would start showing James Bond movies around 5 in the
afternoon and show them until around 4 in the morning. And yes, I’d try and watch them all. Recently, Skyfall
ended up on Netflix, and I watched it twice in two days, then spent the next
week looking for another excuse to watch it.
I’m a big James Bond fan.
Every James Bond movie pits the
smarts and skill of James Bond up against some new and clever villain. The plots are always different, and yet they
all bear the same theme—Bond always comes up against the villain in the end,
and they spent a lot of time talking and a little time fighting, and James Bond
always wins.
There’s another element to every
movie, though. It’s not one that is
often noticed, but it plays an important role:
henchmen.
The villain is always surrounded by
a small crowd of well-armed men who are never highly valued by the
villain. Each one has a mother, but the
villain uses them as disposable shields to protect himself against James Bond. They are thrown at the enemy, usually
nameless folks who quickly meet their end.
They are disposable, men without personality who act as pawns in a movie
focused on larger actors.
Most action movies that revolve
around conflict have these characters, usually men who play a role but are lost
within the larger plot developments. We
fail to pay much attention to them, and I have to imagine that the actors
themselves aren’t that excited to be hired and then disposed of with so little
attention.
But maybe we, as a society, are
used to the idea of disposable people.
Maybe we’re a little too comfortable with the idea that some people matter
more than others. It’s certainly not a
new idea—it’s been around as long as people have, it seems like. Folks in Jesus’ day certainly viewed lepers and
beggars in this way, as people not worthy of their full attention. There are people like that in our society
today—people we see but don’t really see, caring little about their personalities
or futures. They play a role in society,
but we gloss over their presence in order to try and see the people and things
that we believe really matter.
So it surprises us when we come
across Scripture like we have today. We’ve
grown so accustomed to hearing about the shepherds that we fail to grasp its
shock value. Shepherds were not highly
esteemed. In fact, I doubt most people
even considered them at all. Remember
when the sons of Jesse were paraded before Samuel to see if one was worthy to
be king? Where was David, the future
king? He was watching the sheep, and
considered totally unworthy of being king.
The youngest, the least respected, was sent to watch the sheep.
So imagine the shock when this
story was told in the first century—people would have gasped to hear the news
that God told the shepherds first. The
shock value would be the same if the President was coming to Chattanooga and
the first people who heard the news were the ones waiting in line at the
Community Kitchen. Our first thought
might be to wonder why folks who matter so little in society receive such news
before others who wield more power and influence? Shouldn’t those in the halls of power be the
first to hear?
God is teaching us something. 2,000 years later, we still need to hear this
lesson.
God is trying to teach us that
people are defined in a radically different way in God’s kingdom. From the very first moments of Christ’s life
on earth, we learn that it’s not the most influential or the most powerful or
the richest that are considered first.
There is an equality that frightens us, because it teaches us that what
we’ve achieved in this world doesn’t garner us special attention in the eyes of
God. In the lives of the Pharisees, we
see this fear played out—they are terrified that they don’t matter more because
they’ve spent their lives trying to earn God’s love. They can’t fathom a God who loves without
condition or regard to what you’ve done.
God is flattening society, and he’s
teaching us that we need to love all people equally. He’s trying to teach us to set down our
preconceptions, to stop valuing people on the world’s standards. God is trying to teach us that all people
matter, not because of what they’ve done or how they look, but rather because
they are hand-crafted in the image of God, uniquely valued by the creator of
the universe and important enough to die on a cross to redeem. People matter. All of them.
If you hear nothing else from this
sermon, I’d like for you to hear two points.
The first is that you matter to
God. God made you, and God loves you.
God died on a cross to redeem you from sin and death, and God wants you
to experience abundant and eternal life.
You are more valuable to God than silver or gold. No matter what the world tries to tell you,
you matter. No matter how messed up you
may feel, you matter to God. God’s love
levels the playing field, no matter which end of it you feel like you’re
standing on. If you die penniless and
homeless or in the richest estate in the ritziest zip code in America, God’s
love for you will not change.
This leads us to the second point—what
kind of statement is your life making about the lives of the people around
you? Are you willing to love people, all
people, because God does? Will you see
your broken-hearted neighbor and the homeless man on the street and the
stressed-out family in the mall and the wealthy banker downtown the same—as people
valued and loved by God and worthy, therefore, of your love, time and
attention? Will you love and serve
others as God loves and serves you? Will
you stop overlooking people and writing people off because God never does?
There are no disposable people in
society, and I’m tired of living in a world where people are written off
because of how they look or choices they have made. They matter to God, and if they matter to God
they should matter to us. The question
to us is how we are going to show that love to the them.
Let us pray
No comments:
Post a Comment