Watching for shepherds

And looking for their message

Manner of David Teniers the Younger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I’m thinking about those shepherds. The ones Linus told us about (here quoted from the New American Bible, Luke 2:8-14):

Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock.

The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear.

The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord.

And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:

“Glory to God in the highest

and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

I prefer the King James’s rendering: “…and they were sore afraid.” Evocative language that.

Dudes are hanging out. It’s a bleak midwinter. Maybe it’s cold. They’re yacking about this and that. Maybe there’s some bawdy humor being exchanged. The sheep are being sheep, making noise and thinking sheep thoughts. All the humans are on alert for poachers and predators.

And then the glory of the Lord shone around them. I imagine a few of them startled, standing up, muttering the Aramaic equivalent of “WTF!!??”

Then they see the Angel.

When an angel tells you to chill, it’s probably a good idea to take them at their word and abide.

And then they got The Message.

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Catholics get that story Luke tells in the Gospel on Christmas Day. A week later, we get the follow-up in a Gospel reading using verses 16-21.

The shepherds race to Bethlehem to find the scene the Angel described: the manger, the infant in swaddling clothes. It makes sense they immediately spill their secret, telling Mary and Joseph everything that had happened: You see, we were out in the fields, and, and, all of a sudden, it was like, Boom! Like, light… everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Johnny over there sounded like a little baby, all scared and stuff, and then, and then, there was this… Angel!...

“And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.”

I like to ask, “Who am I in this story?” Or, I suppose, “Who are we….”

Are we the shepherds?

I suppose all of us are represented by them. Neither they nor we, generally, are the high and mighty. After all, there were three kings called to the manger as well. The shepherds and we all often have our noses down in our work, so much so that it probably would take a visiting angel to get our attention.

But is it possible to apprehend being a courier for the Lord? The Lord sent an angel to the shepherds with a message of great joy. They were the first to receive the salvific message of Christ’s birth. In a mere moment, they were “made worthy,” to quote a favorite prayer. They could not have known nor apprehended the singularity of that moment.

That seems a bit of a stretch for most of us.

I don’t think we could be Mary in the story. She had been hip to her role in God’s story from the beginning. Knowing the alpha and the omega of her child’s life could not have been a comfort in that cold, straw-filled stall. That’s a level of suffering and heartache beyond mere mortal understanding; that’s not for we humans.

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However, I do like the description of Mary keeping the message in her heart, reflecting on it. Maybe we’re more like Joseph. He knew some of what was going on; an angel spoke to him, too. Did he keep the shepherds’ message in his heart as well?

Is that our station, our lot in life? To be waiting in the dark, with knowledge that something of import is happening in our lives, but we’re waiting, waiting… and waiting… for a message to tell us that everything’s all right, yes, everything’s fine; that there’s a plan.

The shepherds provided triangulation, a third, additional point of reference that confirmed for Mary that all that had transpired was ordained. Good news. Great joy. Incomprehensible sadness. The searing, joyously painful truth she would hold in her heart for 33 years: Dómine Fili unigénite, Jesu Christe,/Dómine Deus, Agnus Dei, Fílius Patris.

From where does triangulation arrive for us, the merely human? Are we attuned enough to capture the signals? In the absence of trumpets and angels, are we doomed to miss the message, busy-bodied as we are with the quotidian minutiae of modernity?

The signals are there, in stories of bravery and small kindnesses, in the stranger and friend, in the purr of a cat and the thunderstorm as it cascades down the mountain toward the warmth of our home, in the care of our aging parents or our newborn babe.

Or the newborn babe.

Gloria in excelsis Deo.