So, did you find what you were looking for?
Last Saturday...the last Saturday before Christmas, Becca was working at the pottery studio, and Fr. Brooks got this text message from her essentially saying that she forgot to get some things at Costco, and could he find time to get up there? Yes, he could, but not before he roped me into doing the driving. We both steeled ourselves because we figured it would be crazy. And, y'all, it was. Crazy! Every register was running, and card machines were beeping, and people were buying and buying and buying. And as I stood there, I kept hearing it over and over, every time the next person put their skiff in front of the cashier: Did you find what you were looking for? Did you find what you were looking for? Most people were nice enough, saying some version of, “Yup, thanks.”
Now I'm not sure how you could find anything in such a crowd, but for the most part, people sure seemed to think they did. And the money flowing seemed to prove it. And we walked out with that refrain flowing in our heads, just as much as the money flowing out of our account: Did you find what you were looking for?
Money flowing was what got this whole Gospel passage started. “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.” We've heard this story countless of times. The Romans want to count everyone and tax everyone, so they've got everyone moving all over the place, traveling here and there, and then paying up their tax. And in the meantime, you've got to pay for hotels and inns and food. There's plenty of entertainment, with hucksters and musicians, scrambling for a penny, too. Money everywhere, and everyone is trying to get some of it.
This is a big, busy deal.
And in the middle of all of this big business, there's this little event going on over to the side. And it seems so incredibly small. I mean, what do Emperor Augustus or Governor Quirinius care about a pregnant teenager or wandering shepherds? Mary, Joseph, and the rest – these folks are so incredibly small compared to these rulers and their big events. And yet Luke declares that whether these rich and powerful leaders care or not – heck, whether they even notice or not – the events Luke describes in detail are going to change the whole world.
And yet those events only seem to be noticed by the most unnoticable of people: shepherds, these gnarly, outdoor guys, eyes watchful for wolves and thieves; throats hoarse from shouting at sheepdogs, gruff from beer and weather; minds on the wilderness itself and all the threats that live there.
Who knows why God is so infatuated with shepherds? It has been so since the beginning, since Abel, beloved shepherd, whose death at the hands of his brother wounds God’s heart. And there's David, the shepherd whom God chose through Samuel, chose over all the eleven older brothers who were handsome and accomplished young men. There's Esau, the shepherd, was so loved by his father that he drove his brother, Jacob, crazy with jealousy. But nothing good came to Jacob till he learned, from his Uncle Laban, how to be a shepherd, and turned out to have a genius for it. Only then Jacob could wrestle with angels and become the father of a nation!
So here, now, as stars fall and the holy is born into a Child in Bethlehem, wouldn’t you know, the only invitation to come and see a miracle is given to shepherds. Out of all the people in the empire, only they are invited to witness the birth and share the tale with all the world.
And what an invitation! A concert of angels, singing God's praises for the miracle that had just occurred. The most incredible concert in all the world – and it was for the shepherds – and only for them. What is it that makes God melt for men who walk among herds of woolly-coated ewes and rams, men who sleep in the fields with the herds, men whose hearth is an outdoor fire or in a cave, not a family home in Bethlehem or a palace in Rome?
Why were they brought to see the child? A child in many ways just like any other. A Child with no memories, no past. This Child filled entirely with hope. And the shepherds, basking in the precious presence of the Child, are free to live in that hope, looking at tiny hands and bright eyes reaching out to touch and taste and see the world, trusting it all. Nothing but a Child wants the world so entirely, and the shepherds bear witness to this.
For God to become a Child in our midst gives all of us, like those shepherds, the star-struck delight, cooing joy, and wonderment that all humans know in the presence of newborns.
And to be present to this Child requires us to be attentive, generous, loving, providing, protecting, caring, just like shepherds. All the things newborns are not, we must be. Bending ourselves to the Child’s survival, just like shepherds with their sheep. Making, in the midst of the world, a place for joy. A place for hope to thrive. A place for a future to grow. Just like shepherds and their flock. It's an awesome responsibility to be like a shepherd. But maybe that's why God chose them over all others. Because they know what it means to watch and to care.
So often WE long to be the ones whom God will guide, protect, comfort, love. Yet Christmas does not offer us that role, Our role, instead, on this night, is to make adult choices – to be shepherds, not greedy merchants, squeezing out every penny; to be Wise Men, not corrupt, powerful kings like Herod; to be angels of mercy, not soldiers of destruction; to be mothers of hope; to be fathers of kindness.
Christmas asks of us what Easter also asks: that we set aside our own suffering and sorrows, and all of our assumptions about the world and our place in it, and come to love a small light that is not our own, that will not stay forever but is here now, that is hungry and thirsty and, if we provide for it, will shine in our care. That is what Christmas asks.
So though this world be dark, it is not forsaken, and the headlines we read and worry about will have their day and then fade again against the backdrop of THIS story we’ve been telling now for 2000 years. God loves this world! And God will not give up on it…or us. God continues to come to love and bless this very world and invites us to do the same.
It’s an audacious claim, when you think about it: that the birth of a baby to a young girl amid the squalor of a backwater town could possibly matter. And yet there, in a nutshell, is the promise of the Gospel: that God regularly shows up where we least expect God to be and always for us.
So I ask you again: Did you find what you were looking for?
Amen.