Let us go now to Bethlehem and see his thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.
What have you dropped for Christmas?
There they were. The shepherds. Doing what shepherds do. Tending to their animals, keeping watch for predators that might hurt their flocks. The shepherds were there to make sure the sheep were safe, fed and watered, nurtured and loved.
I suspect most of the shepherds on Bethlehem’s hillside cared deeply for their sheep. It would be hard to embrace that vocation if one did not possess some affinity for sheep. But let’s not be too romantic about it. These shepherds were also in business. They had a job to do. They made their living caring for flocks of sheep. They cared for themselves and those they loved by being shepherds.
They were tending to business just like they always did the night the angel showed up. Luke says the shepherds were terrified at the angel’s appearance. Imagine how they must have felt when a whole choir of angels appeared! Have you ever wondered about what your reaction would have been if you had been a shepherd on a hillside and had a visitation from the head angel and a bunch of his singing friends?
As Saint Luke tells the story, the shepherds dropped what they were doing and went to Bethlehem. They left the familiarity of their hillside camp, the soft bleating of the lambs and heaving breathing of the sheep – their livelihood – and went to Bethlehem to see what God was doing. Ever since I was a child, I’ve admired those shepherds, their courage, and their willingness to go completely on faith, totally unsure what they might in fact discover.
There’s an invitation here for all of us: what have you dropped for Christmas? What have you laid aside, even if only for a day or two, in order to go to Bethlehem and see? What can wait so you can discover as though for the first time what God is doing . . . in you . . . for you . . . through you. We can’t say for sure, but I suspect that most of those sheep were there the next morning right where the shepherds left them, just like most anything we drop for Christmas will be there when we too get back from Bethlehem.
So drop something at Christmas, even if only for a little while. Come to Bethlehem and see!
Christmas blessings!
–(The Rt. Rev.) J. Neil Alexander is Bishop of Atlanta