12/28/52
“And The Shepherds Returned”
Scripture: Luke 2: 15-32
Text: Luke 2: 20; “And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen...”
Anniversaries are important, if they serve to remind us of some splendid accomplishment, some moment of high and holy resolve, or some great decision that should be perpetuated or oft-repeated. The anniversary of a wedding can be a sustaining reminder of the happiness and hope with which a home was established, and which happiness and hope can be built into that home continually, year after year. The anniversary of a church’s founding can be an occasion of renewal of the purpose and dedication that moved a group of people to be gathered together as a working Christian congregation -- a purpose and dedication that is the spiritual life-blood of those who continue to be that church.
The anniversary of the birth of Jesus is an annual reminder of something transforming that happened to the world -- and that continues to happen to the world wherever the birth of the Savior is remembered.
Sometimes a considerable celebration of an anniversary is arranged. A family may celebrate the 25th or the 50th anniversary of the marriage of the parents. Friends may join in to make it a happy and memorable occasion. And it becomes a time of joyful recognition, as was the original day of the exchange of marriage vows. A church may celebrate its centennial year in a manner that promises reconsecrated vigor in the faith and work of its membership. Christmas is, annually, a season of celebration. It has its moments of high reminder that the greatest gift that ever came to earth brought joyful peace in the hearts of people accustomed to the struggle and hatred and sorrow of the earth.
We work awfully hard at Christmas celebration! Probably too hard in some respects. For, to “put Christ back into Christmas” (--in the words of a popular slogan of this year) is not so much to give and receive holiday greetings and gifts, organize programs and arrange feasts, as it is to lay hold on the spirit that transformed old Scrooge; that made of his nephew a man who could not hate his unregenereate old uncle, or anybody else; and that made of the Cratchit household a family of loving joy, despite their poverty.
The remembrance that Christ has come to earth brings us to the kind of exaltation from which there is sometimes a “let-down.” When the great moment is gone, there is the road ahead --- the year’s end, annual reports, inventories, reduced sales, tax returns, bills to pay, acknowledgments to be made, return to school, and a lot of other things that sound like prose instead of poetry!
What do you suppose those shepherds went back to, on the low hills outside Bethlehem village --- chilly nights in the open, sun-baked days, dumb sheep, crafty wild animals that must be kept from the sheep, sharp stock-buyers driving a hard bargain for the sheep, a government that everybody except the ruling clique just hated. Back from shining happiness to humdrum monotony and hardship! For a little while, they had been away from the sheep and in a little stable of the village where they had seen a babe of such promise as they had never before dreamed! But they could not linger there. Back they must go. The road back is often a hard road. On the way up a hill to see the sunrise, each rock of the path is a stepping stone to the eager experience ahead. On the way back down the hill, each stone is a torture to sore feet and aching knee joints -- unless the sunrise was seen to be so beautiful that life continues to be buoyant, in spite of weariness.
There is a serious letdown, after Christmas, to all those who are busy with abandoning, rather than preserving, their ideals. The high beliefs of Christmas, in such folk, fade fast. The hymns of the season are forgotten. Men and women lose the sense that a marvelous mystery floods their skies. They may even disparage whatever they had thought was a vision, and emphasize what they call “realism,” forgetting that realism is not only the recognition of what is tough and hard, but also of what is lovely and of good report.
Their world becomes again drab and harshly lighted -- the kind of world which is assumed by so much of contemporary literature, unrelieved by any desire to find in life some high religious meaning. This is what happens to many who return from Christmas each year. It might have been so with those shepherds returning from Bethlehem. We read the words: “And the shepherds returned.” But note; the first words of the sentence do not end the story. Those words are followed with these: “glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen.” They took with them, undimmed and undiminished, the expansion of soul which had been theirs in their most exalted moments. In fact, the genius of the Gospel of Christ is that it has so often grown, expanded, in the souls of those who have heard it proclaimed and seen its vision! What was it that those shepherds carried with them that would last?
1) For one thing, there was their recognition that their highest happiness had its source in God, and that is a recognition which all mankind needs to preserve. Are there not, in your life, and in every life, moments when there is some sudden experience so beautiful and so full of loveliness, that one knows that its inspiration is of God? “Yes, yes, that is very well,” men may say, “there have been rare occasions when I have felt what might be called ‘inspiration.’ But on the ordinary days I do not feel it.” So it may be. It is so with most of us. But do we remember the days when we did have such a lift of soul? The point of importance is that we do remember them and do let the music of their great fact keep reechoing in our recollection!
The returning shepherds were thanking God not for what they saw along the return path from Bethlehem. The skies above them by that time were blank of any angelic light. Common earth and gravel was under their feet. But they were glorifying God for all the things that they had heard and seen.
2) The shepherds not only saw that their happiness had its source in God. But a second thought is this: the focus had been on something very simple and very human. Once men had supposed God to be very distant, very reserved, very terrible. God was to be seen only in fear and awe. He moved in the clouds over Mount Sinai, or dwelt in the dreadful silence behind the curtains of the holy of holies in the temple shrine. But the shepherds had learned something more wonderful than that! When God wanted to come near to human life, he chose a human family and a little child. He drew near, not in the majesty of a temple, nor in the regal splendor of some palace, but in a crude and accidental shelter in a crowded village. Because life was there, and love was there, even the stable gave room enough for God to enter in.
I wonder where Christ might be born, if he were first appearing in the time in which we live. Do you suppose it would be in Riverview Hospital? Would Mary be made comfortable in one of the corner rooms where there is warmth and light and good nursing care? Or if Joseph and Mary were traveling of necessity, might it be that Jesus should be born in a city hotel? or a modern motel? Or in the spare bedroom of some hospitable farm home? Or could it be that he might first appear in this world in some city tenement where too many folk were already having to live? It is provocative of a good deal of thought that he actually was born in a place where surroundings are not in any way impressive. Yet God came toward people there, and those people rejoiced and continued to rejoice!
God is not to be found in some distant day or at some far away place, if he cannot be found now. But he can be found now in the things which are most close to us, in the familiar blessings of friendship and affection, in the daily beauty of patience and devotion, of faith and love which may be given to any of us far beyond one’s deserving.
When people realize this, they can go, as those shepherds went, glorifying and praising God for all that they have seen and heard. And much of life’s monotony can be lifted from “grind” to the sacrament of service among those who continue to “glorify and praise God.”
3) Further, the shepherds knew that what they had found in Bethlehem should reach out, and on, without limit. They probably did not know how. But it was so. The little child of Mary’s arms should be a king over the souls of people - not in power of law or sword, but in the free power of willing allegiance. They could not have known then that the throne of his exaltation would be a cross and his crown, a net of thorns. They could not know that people would gladly acknowledge his rule without any coronation, or any royal robes, or even any oath of office. They could not know that the old hardness of sin must be broken by his own sacrifice. But they did recognize him as somehow royal in a new and joyful sense. And his new power that came so silently there in Bethlehem would reach out to the highways of the world.
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In these later times, we can not foresee God’s “when” or “how.” We do not yet know how all of our business can be Christianized; how an economic order can be formed to express fully the values of Jesus, how the relationships of nations can be lifted above the law of the jungle into some redeeming expression of the law of love. But high moments of knowledge have made one thing sure: it is the truth that only in Christ does life find its real interpretation.
When, in our homes and in our nearest contacts with human personality, we touch that which we instinctively recognize as Christlike, we are sure that we have come into what alone holds the keys of human destiny. When we have once known that, we can go back to the routine duties, still glorifying and praising God for what we have seen and heard in a moment of vision.
May if be so with every one of us as we return from Christmas. And we can go with the peace that passes all mortal understanding.
Jesus had much to say about that kind of peace. Without turning away from the trouble that besets people’s souls -- indeed, while looking at it squarely -- he charged his hearers to be untroubled. “Let not your heart be troubled;” [John 14: 1]; “Be not anxious;” “Fear not.” [Mark 6: 50]. These were the words which he used over and over to reassure people in the peace of which he spoke. The peace which he leaves with us is a mighty peace indeed.
There are too many folk who have the idea that peace lies in escape from hardships; in exemption from sorrow of suffering or struggle. Others have the notion that peace from temptation lies in self-gratification. As Oscar Wilde put it: “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” The tragedy and the shame of lives who hold to his theory give the lie to it.
Christ’s peace is that which resides in the souls of people who, with his spirit, control their lives in temptation; who endure hardship and suffering as good soldiers of Christ; who lay hold upon him in faith that is sufficient for life as we find it.
May this peace come to you this season; so that you may return from Bethlehem into a new year, glorifying and praising God, with warmth in your heart and strength in your soul.
Amen.
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Dates and places delivered:
Wisconsin Rapids, December 28, 1952.
Wisconsin Rapids, December 26, 1954.
Wisconsin Rapids, December 27, 1964.