While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks

While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks

December 1996

There is a Christmas carol that proclaims, "While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground; the Angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around." This is a fairly accurate account of the announcement of Jesus' birth, as recorded in the Bible, shining glory and all. When it happened, the story goes, the shepherds "were sore afraid." Well, I think I would have been too. But the account is more than evocative. It is bizarre.

This most popular version of the nativity, Luke's, is asking us to believe that an honest-to-goodness angel came "down" from Heaven to announce the birth of the Savior of the world. And who were the recipients of this most important message ever delivered to any humans in the entire history of the world? A handful of shepherds. A lousy handful of shepherds.

Now, I mean no disrespect toward shepherds in general, as theirs is certainly an honest and useful occupation, especially if you like wool sweaters. However, if you were the Almighty Creator Of All Things, and you were preparing to inform all of humanity of the birth of your son (a Savior who would make eternal bliss possible for those same humans) would you have done it like that? Would you have entrusted this amazing news to only a few shepherds who all lived in the same small village in ancient Judea? What were the shepherds supposed to do with this extraordinary news?

Try to put yourself in the shepherds' place. The angel's visit alone should have been the experience of a lifetime. How many people are visited by angels, for any reason? Not too many of us, as a show of hands will confirm. But if the purpose of the visit were to announce the birth of the Savior of the world, surely you would be giddy with excitement and would think you had moved into your actual Twilight Zone. This is Earth-shattering stuff here. An angel would have bestowed upon you the honor of witnessing this. Once you had done so, and "told abroad" your story, would you just have gone back to your sheep-tending? Or, like a normal human being, would you have raced back to the stable, never again to leave the side of this newborn Savior? After all, he could prove someday to be a most powerful friend indeed.

Now try to put yourself in God's place. Let's say you had an urgent message for all of humankind. How would you try to convey it? Would you go up on the Internet and do your best on the Worldwide Web? Or would you scribble your message on a piece of paper, put it in a corked bottle, toss it into the ocean, and then hope someone finds it? Amazingly, this latter option was the one exercised by God in deciding how to announce the birth of his son, Jesus.

To be sure, there was no Internet in Jesus' day. But God had something far more powerful than any computer network ever designed. He had supernatural powers at his beck and call, and there is no limit to the number of possible means he could have employed in getting his Message to humans. He could have sent legions of angels to every corner of the Earth. Instead, though, he sent his message to a couple of shepherds.

The abrupt and permanent disappearance of the shepherds is one of the most puzzling, unbelievable segments of the nativity story, yet it is rarely discussed. The part the shepherds play in the story is so highly suspect it rivals the virgin birth itself.

Luke says that after seeing the Blessed Babe in Bethlehem, the shepherds "made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child." One may assume "abroad" did not refer to a Grand Tour of Europe. On foot, the shepherds could not have notified more than a score or two of people. (On race horses, not many more.) This meant that almost the entire population of the world at that time did not hear this all-important news. God must surely have known that the probability of this message actually reaching all of humankind was nil.

And that's more or less how the word spread about this Savior. It took a millennium and a half for the Word to reach South America. It never really took hold in Asia or India or, ironically, most of the Middle East, where it all supposedly began. In that part of the world, Islam reigns supreme.

But how were, say, people in Europe supposed to hear about this miraculous birth? It could not have been from our little band of shepherds. So why were no angels dispatched there? Or to the Kushan kingdom in India? Or the Han government in China? Or Japan and Africa and the Americas? Did God think the Mayans wouldn't be interested? This exceedingly selective use of angelic messengers plainly smacks of racism and favoritism, which is a bit of a redundancy.

But back to our shepherds. After they "made known abroad" the existence of this newborn Savior, "…all they that heard it [all thirty or forty of them, I guess] wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds." Then the shepherds returned to their fields, glorifying God, never to be heard from again. So it's tend your flocks, be visited by an angel, go witness the newborn Savior of the world, tell some people about it, and then back to your sheep. All in a night's work.

(The account of the Three Wise Men and the "star" that supposedly led them to Bethlehem, was omitted from Luke's story of the nativity, just as the shepherds were omitted from Matthew's account. However, if we get bogged down in examining the discrepancies and inconsistencies in the gospels, we'll be here all day.)

The Three Wise Men who suddenly appear, present their gifts, and then as suddenly disappear, forever, are as mysterious as the unconcerned shepherds. Do you suppose they met each other on their trek to the stable? You can almost imagine them, shaking hands and introducing themselves.

"Hello there, we're Wise Men from the east, come to worship the Savior, and offer him gold, frankincense and myrrh. And you?"

"Oh, we're shepherds, come to worship also. But we didn't think to bring gifts."

"And where are you headed after you finish worshipping?"

"Well, we're just going to go back and tend our sheep. You?"

"We'll be going back to our own country. In the east."

If this exchange seems implausible, then the entire nativity story is implausible. People are people. To regard miraculous appearances of angels as mundane, everyday occurrences would have been as bizarre then as it would be now. Such odd behavior was no more likely to happen two thousand years ago than today. So, today, if you were to be visited by an angel who then escorted you on a visit with the world's Savior, could you then just casually go your way, back to your old haunts and digs? If such and adventure could qualify as a mere footnote to your life, then you are having one hell of a spectacular life. Apparently, though, no more spectacular than that of a simple shepherd.

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