Shepherd Story Explained

On reading my last blog post, which was the beginning of a Christmas story, Joanna said, "That's weird, Mom. Kind of depressing."

I explained that I wasn't finished, that I was planning to post again today and tomorrow, that it was meant to be depressing. The angelic visitation hasn't happened yet.

Then Emily just now called and said, "I can't stand that ending. I'm looking to read something nice and here you're writing about some man wanting to kill his wife. This is kind of dark."

"I never said he wanted to kill his wife...just slap her."

"You said he wanted to drop her dead body on the tax collector's desk."

"Not her. The ewe, honey."

Lest anyone else is wondering what kind of rum balls I've been making, let me explain. I've been thinking for several weeks now about the shepherds -not sure why - it's just where my mind has gone. I've just wanted to know about these men, to try and flesh out who they were, what it could have been like for them that night. Unfortunately, I've run out of time to "show" my story; hence, I now resort to "telling".

It's so easy to romanticize everyone in the Christmas story, to visualize the shepherds as gentle but strong men, men who sang to their sheep, worshiped God on the mountain. My nativity set has a shepherd with a lamb draped across his shoulders. So sweet, so benign. Even the title "shepherd" is pastoral.

But my guess is that these men had nothing to render them worthy of such an honor. Unlike Mary and Joseph, Anna, Simeon, Elizabeth, and Zacharias, there's no reason to think these men were righteous or good. No reason to think that they were chosen, out of all the people in the entire region, because they deserved it. The only reason is that we WANT to think that way.

So I imagined an unhappy man, a man full of bitterness and turmoil, angry at his wife, angry at life, ready for a fight. A man who works hard under harsh conditions, who is hungrier more often than he's full, who has lived his whole life aware that most in his society considered him no-account, dirty, stupid.

But, no, I hadn't gone so far as to make him out to be a wife-murderer. I had considered that he'd gone into town, gotten into a fight, then gone back to work with a full wine-flask - for the cold, of course.

Am I really considering that one of the shepherds was drunk? Why not? He certainly wouldn't have stayed drunk after seeing what he saw and hearing what he heard. Paul was murdering people left and right and he saw Jesus himself. We so want to sanitize everything, to make it sentimental and soft. We see a manger as a little crib lined with sweet-smelling hay. A manger is a feeding trough. Think dog bowl.

What I see in the angels giving those men the front-row seat at that night's explosion of joy is God's clear intent that His Son's birth be heralded, but not as humans would want, or expect. I like to think that the shepherds had nothing to commend them, but were given, as a pure and totally undeserved gift, the privilege of being the first to know, to see, to adore. And that the words, "Peace on earth, good will towards men" meant more to those men on the rocky, wind-swept hill than we could ever imagine.

Another thought has occurred to me in my musings about that night. Could it be that the reason there was no room in the inn for Mary and Joseph is that the sheep herders wouldn't have been welcome in such a place? Is it possible that God planned that detail not only to emphasize the lowliness of the birth, but to make a way for those men to be welcomed in? I like to think so.