Shepherds 101 Because the Bible celebrates a handful of shepherds who changed world history, we can pretty easily adopt a romanticized view of these folks. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their sons were all shepherd-ranchers. When God called Moses to return to Egypt to lead them in the Exodus from slavery, Moses was shepherding. David, Israel’s most famous king, was a shepherd when he was first anointed. God even calls himself a shepherd for his people (Psalm 23). Jesus referred to himself in the same way – the sheep hear the shepherd’s voice – they know my voice (cf. John 10).
But shepherding was a dirty job, and one that required a good amount of wandering. The Bedouins are a good example of this. Still today, this group of nomads wander around the Middle East with their flocks, grazing their way back and forth around the countryside. They have no brick and mortar to call home. They live in tents as they wander through life with their sheep and goats.
Some look down on such people groups as dirty commoners. At the very least, you could say that shepherds were a good example of “Everyday People.” The shepherds we encounter in the Bible’s birth narrative of Jesus (Luke 2:8-20) were working the graveyard shift, which meant they were probably residing on the lowest rung of the corporate ladder.
Roman Gods While shepherds roamed about tending their flocks, the Roman Emperors roamed the world, doing their best to bring the world into their control. Part of their approach was evangelism – literally translated as good news. The good news they were proclaiming was that there was a god who would take care of the world’s people and their needs. To experience the shelter of this god only required obedience and submission to the god they proclaimed: Caesar himself. Do that, and the Pax Romana – Rome’s Peace – would be yours.
If you didn’t embrace this good news, you might get yourself killed as later followers of Jesus experienced. The good news was only good if you sold out whatever beliefs you held previously to this new belief. If you are a simple, uneducated shepherd, living and roaming all over creation, you probably wouldn’t believe in Rome’s evangelism. It falls short for you. You believe there’s more, but you’ve also been told that God has been silent for centuries, and certainly won’t bother a shepherd if he chose to speak.
A Heavenly Chorus One night everything changed. God showed up, and he wasn’t a Roman. A chorus of angels – too many to count – filled the sky to sing about the good news they proclaimed. The Roman attempts at choirs no longer seemed regal or impressive – this was the heavenly host. They may have even been good enough to win NBC’s Sing It! a cappella competition. The announcement heralded by these angelic messengers was that God had done something quite unusual right around the corner – he showed up personally in the most vulnerable way possible – infancy.
The angels instructed these shepherds from Missouri to go see for themselves. How could you not want to go see for yourself? The reality is that this massive revelation of God to these ordinary everyday people left them with a desire to know more. The desire would not be quenched by mere thinking and talking about it on a hillside – they would pursue the God who showed up.
God-Shaped Hole Pascal, the great thinker and theologian from the past once said that there exists in every person a God-shaped hole, an absence, an incompleteness that can only be filled by God. The idea is that we are born without God, with this vacancy that remains until we somehow figure out that God is the only filler. But Peter Rollins, in his book How Not to Speak of God, suggests another way to think about this void that is certainly evident in the shepherds’ experience at Christ’s birth. Instead of the hole being created by absence, Rollins suggests the hole is created by the aftermath of the abundant presence of God.
In this rendering, then, we see the shepherds chasing after the One who was so deeply and abundantly present. Theirs was not a casual, intellectual pursuit because they sensed something may or may not be missing. These men ran to the scene because God had so powerfully broken into their existence in unmistakable ways. God was the glacier that left in his wake an obvious trail of impact. The hole left behind is the evidence of God and the motive for pursuit, not a proof of absence and a stumbling block that keeps us from moving forward.
Emmanuel, Really A story is told of Jesus sharing with his listeners that one day, when this life is over, they will find themselves spending eternity in heavenly mansions on beautifully manicured estates – the dream of many who lived in Roman times and still today, when those who claimed to be God and God’s favorites used their wealth as the “blessed” proof of God’s favor. But on the fringe of the audience that day was an ordinary, everyday person listening in. After the talk was over and the people dispersed, the shepherd approached Jesus. He told Jesus he wondered if there was any place in heaven for one such as him. He had never known anything but poverty, wasn’t nearly as educated as others whom Jesus was attracting – he wouldn’t know to miss a mansion since he had never been in one before. Jesus stepped closer to him and said, “Away from all the mansions and gold streets there is a little stable. It is cramped and old, but on a clear night you can see the stars amidst the cracks and feel the warm air on your flesh. It is there that I will dwell, and while it may be no mansion, there is a space in that place for you” (Rollins, 131).
A story like this challenges us to think about what we’re really hoping for from God. Do we simply want God to fulfill the American Dream for us when we get to heaven? Or are we hoping for something more? Do we want stuff or the presence of God? Which do we value more in our hopes and dreams of this life and the next? Which do we pray for more fervently?
Rollins tells another story of a lover who journeyed to his beloved’s home, knocked on the door and asked to go inside. The woman on the other side of the door refused, stating that there was not room enough for two. Later, he went back again, announcing that he was her lover, and wanted to come inside. Again, she refused with the same retort. Later, he tried again, this time bringing a gift, but was still rejected with the words, “There is not enough room for two.” Finally, after a day of contemplation, he returned, and knocked yet again.
“Who is it?” the woman inside inquired.
This time he responded, “It is not I, for we are one. There is no I but thou.”
After a brief pause the door swung open and his beloved responded, saying, “And likewise, there is no I but thou.”
To this day they live together in that little house built for one. (Rollins, 138)
The shepherds may have had some normal, carnal desire for material success. But somewhere in the recesses of their dreams I believe they longed for something much deeper, with much greater value. I believed they longed to be known and loved by the One who gave them life. In longing for such intimacy, they believed in the right way. May it be so for you, too.
Think…
1. Have you ever felt devalued due to your level of prosperity, gender, skin tones, job, life stage, marital status, height, weight, etc.? Who devalued you? How did your experience affect you? How did the experience shape your dreams and desires?
2. If you were a shepherd as described above, living in that time and place in the world, what dreams and desires might you have?
3. How do you respond to the idea of the God-sized hole being left by God’s presence that moved through our lives, instead of the absence of presence? How is that true or not true for you?
4. How do our dreams and desires affect our prayers to God?
5. At the end of the day and at the end of life, what do you really want to experience? How do your prayers reflect those hopes?
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