Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth
The Third Sunday in Advent
December 16, 2007
THE SEARCH FOR JESUS: THE SHEPHERDS’
DISCOVERY
Scripture: Luke
2:1-20
INTRODUCTION
This morning in anticipation
of our sermon about “The Search for Jesus and the Shepherds’ Discovery,” I want
to tell you a story that is not in the Bible.
Craig Goodrich told it to me, just as it had been told to him and to his
wife Andie by our long-time member Eleanor Dabney out at the
A church in rural
Lifting him up ever so
gently, the preacher, alongside the boy’s parents and members of the
congregation, asked him “Did you find Jesus?”
The boy shook his head and said “No, I didn’t.”
So the preacher dunked him
down a second time, brought him back up and they all asked the boy again, “Did
you find Jesus?” The boy was a little
bewildered and answered “No, I didn’t.”
So for a third time, the
preacher dipped him into the river and held him down just a few seconds
longer. As the boy came back up dripping
wet and gasping for air, they asked him once more, “Son, did you find Jesus?” The exasperated boy rubbed his eyes, shook
his head, looked around at all of them and said, “No, I didn’t. Are you sure this is where He went in?”
Well, as I already mentioned,
that story is not in the Bible! But
Frederick Buechner, the Presbyterian author and preacher, has written in his book
“Listening To Your Life” that “stories have enormous power for us…and if we
whittle away long enough, it is a story that we come to (at Christmas) – a
time, a place, a set of characters, and the implied promise…that something is
coming, something…significant and exciting is about to happen.” (From “Listening to Your Life” by Frederick
Buechner, page 223)
I
And that is exactly where we
began our series of Advent sermons two weeks ago: “The Search for Jesus” – with
Matthew’s story about “Joseph’s Dream,” as an angel appeared to him and said
“Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for the child
conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20). And during that first Advent-Christmas
Season, Joseph’s dream came true!
Then last Sunday, we listened
to Luke’s story about “Mary’s Decision,” telling how the angel Gabriel appeared
to her and announced “Do not be afraid, Mary…for you have found favor with God,
and you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name Him Jesus,
and He will be called the Son of the Most High.”
Mary could have denied that
request, but instead, Mary’s decision was to say “Yes” – “Here am I, the
servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your Word” (Luke 2:26-38).
Today, as we continue on our
journey in Luke’s story, we come to the little town of
The words in the New Revised
Standard Version of the Bible tell us that the shepherds were “terrified.” The RSV says they were “filled with fear,”
and the old King James Version describes their condition as being “sore
afraid.”
The original Greek text uses
the word “phobeo,” which translates into the English language as “phobia,” and
might best be related to the panic attacks that some of us have suffered in the
midst of depression and the dark night of the soul, when your body feels
paralyzed and your mind seems like it is spinning out of control.
Now the shepherds were not
sophisticated enough to analyze all of that, but they had reasons to be anxious
and afraid. They lived under the Roman
occupation and the bad news was they had little hope for a better life. They were considered second class citizens
among the Jews, and the bad news was that they were isolated and had few friends. Their work was dirty, they lived on the edge
of poverty, and the bad news was that they had almost no opportunity to improve
their situation.
Think about the immigrant
farm workers and day laborers in
Then the angel appeared to
them in the fields outside of Bethlehem and made the announcement: “Do not be
afraid…for I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you
is born this day in the city of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord.” And suddenly, there was with the angel a
multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying: ‘Glory to God in the
highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom He favors” (Luke 2:10-14).
II
And that’s when the shepherds
made their discovery – first, that the good news of the gospel has the power to
overcome the bad news in our world. You
see, the angel’s announcement gave those shepherds hope that in all things, God
would work together with us for good.
Less than a week before
Thanksgiving, Governor Sonny Perdue met outside the Georgia State Capitol with
hundreds of people “to reverently and respectfully pray up a storm,” in hope of
ending the drought that has threatened the water supply and the economic
stability of the State of Georgia.
That story made the national
news, and many people ridiculed the governor for “pie-in-the-sky religion” and
attacked him for crossing the boundary lines of church and state. But Samuel Silver, an orthodox Jew here in
Georgia, reminded us in an article printed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(November 20) that William Bradford, the Governor of the Plymouth Colony in the
early 1620’s, called for a day of fasting and prayer to ask God for rain to end
the drought that almost ruined the beginning of our American Experiment.
When the rain finally began
to fall,
Which leads me to say, and I
believe it is true, that praying for rain not only has a historical precedent
in this nation, but it is also part of the Biblical story in our
Judeo-Christian tradition (read I Kings 18, Psalms 68, 147 and James 5:16-18). You see, the good news of the gospel has the
power to overcome the bad news in our world.
And who of us will ever
forget Dr. John Claypool standing in this pulpit on the Sunday after September
11, 2001, when he preached these words with power and conviction:
“God did not cause those acts of
terrorism…What those depraved terrorists did on that fateful Tuesday was a
tragic abuse of what God intended.
However, the Holy One is very much involved in all of this and has the
power to bring hope and healing out of this chaos…For the basis of such hope is
our trust in Him for whom the worst things are never the last things.” (From a sermon entitled “The Worst Things and
the Last Things” by Dr. John Claypool, preached at The First Presbyterian
Church of Atlanta, September 16, 2001)
That was what the shepherds
discovered when the angel appeared to them in the fields outside
Which leads us to a second
discovery the shepherds made – Luke describes it this way – The angel of the
Lord said “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.”
Did you hear that my
friends? Good news, and then, great
joy! Those shepherds needed to hear
something to cheer them up, and that’s what the angel of the Lord promised –
great joy.
We need to hear that promise
too, especially in the midst of this world’s sorrow and pain. Christmas can be a sad and lonely time for
those who know that the expectations are high, but their souls feel low and
seem to be running on empty. So how can
we find the joy that we seek deep down in our hearts?
The birth of Jesus can lead
us in the right direction if we are willing to pay attention to the children
all around us.
Bob Holland, pastor and
preacher for many years at the Shadyside Presbyterian Church in
“On Walnut Street the other day, a
tiny toddler in a stroller was having the most joyful time saying ‘Hi’ to
everyone…just discovered how to do it, not once but however many times you’d go
for it – ‘Hi! Hi! Hi!’
All of
G. K. Chesterton once mused that ‘The
reason the angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.’ (And it
seems to me that our children and those angels have something to teach us about
the joy we can discover in the Holy Child at Christmas.)” (From a sermon “School Days” by Robert
Cleveland Holland, Shadyside Presbyterian Church,
Watching our children in the
Christmas Pageant last Sunday brought joy into the hearts of all of us who were
here to celebrate the greatest story ever told.
And hearing one little boy belt out above all the rest: “Hark the herald
angels sing, glory to the new born king!” helped to make it the best Christmas
Pageant ever. Why? Because there was joy in his heart, joy in
the lives of all those girls and boys, and that joy is contagious.
That’s what the shepherds
discovered long, long ago – good news and great joy had come to them through
the child born in
III
And there’s just one thing
more they found out, that leads us to the final shout of the heavenly host in
Luke’s story, praising God and saying “Glory, glory, glory to God in the
highest heaven!”
You see, the shepherds
discovered good news, great joy, and God’s glory as the angels appeared to
them, and so can we. All we have to do
is open our hearts and minds and souls to listen and to imagine what it was
like on that first silent and starry night in
Our good friend and fellow
traveler toward the manger Barbara Brown Taylor, describes the glory this way
in her book “Bread of Angels”:
“(God is holding a cabinet meeting
with the angels in heaven and has an idea.
Why not create Himself as a child on earth). He tried the idea out on his cabinet of
archangels and at first they were all very quiet. Finally the senior archangel stepped forward
to speak for all of them. He told God
how much they would worry about him, if he did that. He would be putting himself at the mercy of
his creatures, the angel said. People
could do anything they wanted to him, and if he seriously meant to become one
of them there would be no escape for him if things turned sour. Could he at least create himself as a magical
baby with special powers? It would not
take much – just the power to become invisible, maybe, or the power to hurl
bolts of lightning if the need arose.
The baby idea was a stroke of genius, the angel said, it really was, but
it lacked adequate safety features.
God thanked the archangels for their
concern but said no, he thought he would just be a regular baby. How else could he gain the trust of his
creatures? How else could he persuade
them that he knew their lives inside out, unless he lived one like theirs? There was a risk, he knew that. Okay, there was a high risk, but that was
part of what he wanted his creatures to know: that he was willing to risk
everything to get close to them, in hopes that they might love him again.
It was a daring plan, but once the
angels saw that God was dead set on it, they broke into applause – not the
uproarious kind but the steady kind that goes on and on when you have witnessed
something you know you will never see again.
While they were still clapping, God
turned around and left the cabinet chamber, shedding his robes as he went. The angels watched as his midnight blue
mantle fell to the floor, so that all the stars on it collapsed in a heap. Then a strange thing happened. Where the robes had fallen, the floor melted
and opened up to reveal a scrubby brown pasture speckled with sheep and – right
in the middle of them – a bunch of shepherds sitting around a campfire drinking
wine out of a skin. It was hard to say
who was more startled, the shepherds or the angels, but as the shepherds looked
up at them, the angels pushed their senior member to the edge of the hole. Looking down at the human beings who were all
trying to hide behind each other (poor things, no wings), the angel said in as
gentle a voice as he could muster, ‘Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing
you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the
city of David a savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.’
And away up the hill, from the
direction of town, came the sound of a newborn baby’s cry.”
(From
“Bread of Angels” by Barbara Brown Taylor, Cowley Publications, 1997, Pages
34-35)
CONCLUSION
“Shhh” – Can you hear it my
friends, echoing all the way from
In the name of the Father,
and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.