“Walking with Sheep”
Luke 2:8-15
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
December 11, 2022
Have you ever tried walking with sheep? Not just meandering from grassy knoll to grassy knoll, but actually trying to get somewhere?
I hadn’t either, not until that night. Let me tell you, it is slow going.
I’ll back up a bit and explain how we ended up on that journey in the first place. It was a quiet night out in the fields. Some might call it peaceful but I’m not sure a night is ever peaceful when you’re a shepherd. I know, I’ve seen all those painting city folks create—shepherds lying around, gazing at the stars, playing their flutes. If you’re playing your flute, you’re likely to miss a sound that alerts you to danger. And the only time we ever looked at the sky was when we thought a storm was coming. The rest of the time we were busy looking for the beady eyes of a wolf sneaking up on us, or listening for the whispers of a gang of thieves, or trying to count the sheep by moonlight to be sure none had wandered off. There’s nothing peaceful about shepherds keeping watch over our flocks by night.
So when that angel appeared in front of us, we were startled—and not in a good way. If I hadn’t been so terrified I would have laughed at the first words the angel spoke: “Do not be afraid.” Yeah, right. First of all, our job is to be afraid, always on guard. Second, if you want a bunch of shepherds not to be afraid, don’t appear to us out of nowhere in the middle of the night.
The angel went on. “I bring you good news of great joy.” Then, suddenly, there were all these other angels. They were singing. I’d never heard anything like it.
As I listened, something inside me shifted. I felt my fear soften—or maybe it expanded—into this sense of awe. Then it shrunk back to fear. Back and forth, fear and awe, hard and soft. It was as though my soul was struggling to decide if I dared trust this might really be good news.
Then, as suddenly as they appeared, they were gone.
You should have heard the conversation that came next. My own inner struggle writ large across my entire extended family. The elders spoke first. Old uncle Jacob started off with a big “Harumph.” “Good news? Hah! We’ve heard that one before. Nothing ever really changes. And if something does change, it almost never means good news for people like us. It’s got to be a scam. I don’t know how they pulled it off, but I think we better make sure none of our sheep are missing.”
Aunt Martha—she is equally old—stopped him short. “I can’t live that way—without hope,” she began. “All my life, what’s kept me going are the promises the prophets made. You’ve heard them, Jacob, chanted in the temple, taught by that rabbi in our synagogue. ‘I am doing a new thing,’ God says, ‘I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Do you not perceive it?’ What if this is the moment Isaiah was talking about? Do you not perceive it?”
Wow, I thought. She really should have been a rabbi.
Back and forth we went—just like the back and forth I’d felt in my soul. When you spend your life on alert for signs of bad news, it’s hard to know what to make of signs of good news. Do you know what I mean?
I’m not usually one to interrupt the elders, but I could see they were stuck. Those moments of awe when the angels were singing had awakened my curiosity. I wasn’t prepared to accept that this was good news, but I sure didn’t want to miss out if it was. There was only one way to find out. I blurted it out: “How will we know if we don’t go see?”
My question turned the tide. We were going to go. “What about the sheep?” someone asked. My cousin Rachel—she’s always been a little impulsive—leapt in. “Leave them here. When angels bring good news, you drop everything and go.” My brother Joel was aghast. We call him the Sheep-hugger. “No way,” he said. “Those sheep are part of our family. They need us.” It was kind of a silly argument. Of course we would bring the sheep. Angels or not, we live in the real world. If one of those sheep got hurt, we’d have to pay the owner. We don’t have that kind of money.
We set off. I was the one who wanted to go, but pretty quickly I began having second thoughts. The sheep were all over the place—wandering into wheat fields, getting in the way of a farmer’s ox-cart, lying down and refusing to move when they were tired. We were never going to get there.
I sought out Aunt Martha. “If this really is God doing a new thing, I’m afraid it will be gone by the time we get there.”
“No, it won’t.” She sounded more certain than I ever heard her before. “God isn’t in a rush. In fact, sometimes the only way to discover the new thing God is doing is to slow down. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that the sheep are being extra-wandery. Relax into it. See if you can enjoy the journey. Maybe the good news is already here.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but she sounded really wise. So I tried to relax. When I found my brother Joel hugging the lambs that refused to move, I resisted my urge to prod them and him to get moving. I sat down and hugged the lambs too. Instead of leaping into action when an errant sheep began to roam, I asked my sister to help me. We joined the sheep in his roaming. I began to notice how green the pastures were. We found this pool of water—it was so still you could see the reflection of the stars in the sky. When I wasn’t roaming or hugging I sought out old Uncle Jacob, and I asked him to tell me stories of his life. He is wise in his own way.
I lost track of time. I almost forgot that our journey had a destination until suddenly we were there. A stable in Bethlehem.
You know, if it hadn’t been for what I learned on the journey, I think I would have been disappointed. The heavenly host was so glorious—so out-of-this-world. This scene was so much like the world I already knew. A baby crying in a makeshift cradle. The stink of cows and the sweet smell of hay. Parent who looked as tired as mine did after my little brother was born. Love and exhaustion, fear and awe—I could see that mix in their eyes. It was so familiar and so ordinary. Thanks to Aunt Martha’s wisdom on the journey, I could see it was also holy.
God was in that stable—in the promise of a newborn, in the overwhelmed love of his parents, in the noise and smell and beauty. God was with us on the journey—as we hugged the sheep and listened to stories and wandered together. God was with us back in the fields on those ominously quiet nights, joining us in the stressful reality of our lives, urging us to look up at the stars if only for a moment, challenging us to trust that good news breaks through.
God is doing a new thing—in that stable and in my life, for my family of shepherds and for the whole world. Yes, I do perceive it. Do you? Amen.