Risk and Beauty

            Sunday morning, at about 7:30, as I was driving to Onida for our worship service, I saw something amazing.  I looked to the west, and there was a big, full, orange moon near the horizon, just about to set.  Then, I looked to the east, and there was the beautiful glow of the sun shortly before sunrise. 

It was an incredibly beautiful sight.  It reminded me again of how much beauty there is in God’s world.  Whenever I think about that, it occurs to me how much God must enjoy the act of creating. 

When you enjoy creating something, when you have fun doing it, that’s when you really let your creative juices flow.  You don’t try to just create something that’s functional, you try to create something that will be beautiful.  You don’t just create something that will get the job done, you create something that people will really like and enjoy.

            To create something like that, though, you have to take some chances.  If you want to create something beautiful, you can’t just take the easy way out.  You can’t just settle for things that will work.  Instead, you have to think, “What if I did this?  What would happen if I did that?  Would it work to do it this way instead of that way?”  To create something beautiful you can’t just play it safe.  You have to take some risks.

            I wonder if that could be part of the reason God created humans with intelligence and with free will.  That wasn’t the easy way out, after all.  God could’ve created us in a much more functional way.  God could’ve created us to just act on instinct, the way animals do.  God could’ve created us in such a way that we would always love each other and do what’s right.  Instead, God created us in such a way that we have the ability to make choices for ourselves.  That, of course, includes the ability to make wrong choices, which we all do far more times than we realize or would like to admit.

            God knew that was the risky way to do it.  God knew that was not playing it safe.  God knew there were times we’d make wrong choices.  God knew there were times we’d mess things up.  Still, God did it that way anyway.

            I think maybe part of the reason God did it that way is that God did not want to just create us in a way that would be functional.  God wanted to create us in a way that would be beautiful.  That meant that God had to take some risks.  If we were just creatures of instinct, if we had no choice but to do what’s right, humans and human society might be much more functional than it is now.  But it would not be as beautiful.

            God did not just create a functional world.  God created a beautiful world.  God did not just create functional people.  God created beautiful people.  Even when we make mistakes, even when we make bad choices, we’re still beautiful people living in a beautiful world.  God created it that way, and God enjoyed creating it that way.  After all, it was God who said creation is good.  If that what God says, who are we to argue?

God Did It, and It's Good

The following message was given in the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, January 8, 2012.  The scripture was Genesis 1:1-2:4.

Even though last Sunday was New Year’s Day, in some ways this really feels like the first Sunday of the new year.  After all, New Year’s Day is still part of “the holidays”:  the Christmas decorations were still up, we still lit the advent candles, we still were talking about the baby in the manger.  Today, though, the Christmas decorations are put away, all the company has gone home, everybody went back to work or to school.  Now we know that we really are into a new year.

           

A new year is a chance for a new start, a new beginning.  So, our first sermon series of the new year is called “In the Beginning”.  In this sermon series, we’re going to look at some of the stories from the book of Genesis.

           

It’s not going to be all the stories from the book of Genesis.  If we did that, we’d still be doing this sermon series in June.  If your favorite story from Genesis gets left out, well, maybe I’ll do a similar sermon series next year.  There’s certainly enough material there.  We’re going to start, though, with the very first chapter of the Bible, the story of creation.

           

Now, as soon as we start talking about creation, we jump into an old controversy.  Are we supposed to take the story of creation literally?  Are Christians required to believe that God created the world in exactly six days, no more and no less, and that God created everything just as it exists today?  Or, can we believe in what current scientific theories tell us?  Can we be Christians and still believe in things like evolution and the big bang theory?

           

Those of you who were here last week may remember that, when we were talking about the wise men, we talked about how they used the science of their time to figure out when and where the savior had been born.  We also talked about how God can stand up to scientific scrutiny, because good science is a search for the truth and God has no reason to fear a search for the truth.  After all, God is truth.

           

We also talked last week about how we will never come up with conclusive, one hundred percent, undeniable proof that God exists, that Jesus is the Savior, that the Holy Spirit acts in our lives, or anything else.  We can always come up with a way to doubt and to explain things away if that’s our goal. 

Well, the same thing could be said of scientific inquiry, too.  Science can never prove things with one hundred percent certainty, either.  It can come close, sometimes.  Certainly, there are things that science has proven with enough certainty that we rely on them every day of our lives, whether we realize it or not.  Still, good scientists know that nothing is ever one hundred percent certain.  Everything we learn simply raises more questions, and sometimes we think we know the truth only to find out that we don’t.  That’s why we say that science is a search for the truth:  because searching for truth is a never-ending job.

I think, though, that when we in the church get bogged down in questions about creationism and evolution and intelligent design and all that, we miss the point of why the story of creation is in the Bible in the first place.  The Bible was not written to be a science textbook.  The book of Genesis was written thousands of years ago, and it was originally written for people who had no conception of other planets or galaxies or universes or anything else.

Could God have created the world and everything in it six days?  Of course.  God is all powerful.  God can do anything God chooses to do.  God could’ve created the world and everything in it in six seconds if God had chosen to do so.

The thing is, though, that whether God created the world in six seconds or six days or six million years is not the point.  The creation story is not in the Bible to tell us specifically that God created the world in six days.  The creation story is in the Bible to tell us that God created the world.

From a religious standpoint, that’s really all we need to know.  After all, that’s a pretty awesome achievement, is it not?  Creating the sun and the moon and the stars and the planets and everything else out of nothing?  Creating plants and animals and fish and insects and humans out of nothing?  That’s a pretty big deal.  How God did that or how long it took or anything else is not the point.  The point is that God did it.  The point is that nothing would exist without God.

If God created the world and everything in it exactly as it exists now in six days, that’d be pretty awesome.  If God created the world and everything in it over thousands or millions of years using a big bang and evolution and stuff, well, that’d be pretty awesome, too.  In fact, in some ways, that’d be even more awesome.  Think of all the things God would’ve had to work out in advance to do it that way.  Just creating it as it is would’ve been easier, really.  Working out a system where things evolved and changed and grew over millions of years and eventually developed intelligence, well, that’s beyond comprehension.  That’s incredible.

Think of how long scientists have been trying to create intelligent life, and we’re not even close yet.  Here’s the other thing, if humans ever do create intelligent life, it still won’t be anywhere near as awesome as what God did, because if we ever did it, we’d be doing it by starting with the materials God gave us.  God started from scratch.  God did it with nothing.  It’s sort of like the old joke.  A scientist is talking to God and bets God that the scientist can create life without God’s help.  God asks, “How are you going to do that?”  The scientist says, “Well, I start with this dirt here…” and God says, “Hey, wait a minute.  That’s cheating.  Go create your own dirt.”

God created the dirt.  God created the chemicals.  God created the intelligence that we have that even allows us to try to understand the world.  God created it all.  It all comes from God.

                Here’s one more thing that the creation story teaches us.  This is another reason getting bogged down in debates about evolution and a big bang and stuff misses the point for us as Christians.  When we look at the creation story that way, we forget about a very important verse.  It says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

That’s a verse that its easy for us, as Christians, to miss.  There are a lot of times when we look at the world and it does not seem very good to us.  We see wars, we see hunger, we see abuse, we see immorality, we see all sorts of things that don’t seem very good at all. 

God sees all that, too, of course.  Yet, God still says the world is very good.  I think the reason God says that is that God sees the potential for good in everyone and everything.  God knows that each one of us sins.  God sees all the times that each one of falls short of what God created us to be.  Yet, God also sees all the times when we get it right.  God sees all the times when we actually do show love to each other.  God sees all the times when we really do put others ahead of ourselves.  God sees what we are, but God also sees what we can be.

God sees something else, too.  God sees how it’s all going to end.  You know, there’s been a lot of talk about the ancient Mayans supposedly predicting that the world is going to end in 2012.  I suppose it’s possible that’s true.  After all, Jesus told us that only God knows when the end is going to come.  I guess there’s no reason we know of that it could not come in 2012, just as there was no reason we know of that it could not have come in 2011 or 2010.

When we think of the end of the world, we tend to think of it as a tragic, cataclysmic thing.  There are ways in which it probably will be.  If you’ve ever read the book of Revelation, you know there’s a lot of stuff that’s supposed to happen before the world ends. 

Here’s the thing, though.  Whenever the end of the world comes, God will create it.  Just as God created the beginning of the world, God will create the end of the world, too.  Just as God’s creation was very good in the beginning, God’s creation in the end will be very good, too.  Any time God is involved in something, it has to be very good.  No matter how much we humans may get in the way, no matter how hard we humans try to mess it up, we cannot take away from God’s goodness.  God’s creation was very good in the beginning, it is very good now, and it will be very good at the end.  God’s creation is very good because God is very good.  Anything created by a very good God has to be very good.  That includes each one of you.  It includes me, too.

People have been arguing about when and how the world was created since before I can remember.  We’ll probably still be arguing about it long after I’m gone.  From a religious standpoint, though, the first thing we need to know about creation is that whenever and however it happened, God did it.  The second thing we need to know about creation is that, because God created it, it’s good.  The third thing we need to know about creation is that, no matter how badly we humans mess up, God’s creation will always be good.  The last thing we need to know about creation is that, whenever and however it ends, that will be good, too, because everything God does is good.

                There’s nothing wrong with trying to find out more, but those are the things we need to know.  If we know those things, our faith can handle whatever science may reveal to us.

New Year's Every Day

The following appeared in the January issue of the Wheatland Parish newsletter.

            Did you ever wonder why we celebrate the new year?

            It’s not like there’s anything that special about January 1^st, really.  We don’t mark anything in particular with it.  It’s not the anniversary of anything.  There’s no person or group of people that we honor with it.  There’s no reason to start the new year on January 1^st.  We could as easily start the new year in April or September.  I’m sure there’s some historical reason why January was chosen for the new year, but I also suspect that it was largely an arbitrary decision.

            From a practical standpoint, all a new year does is provide us with a more practical way of keeping track of things.  We have to start over again with counting months at some point, or we’d be in month number 24,133.  There’s no reason to have a big party just because we now write a “one” for the month and add one to the number of the year.  Yet, we do, and we have for a lot longer than I can remember.  Why?

            I think a lot of it is that the new year symbolizes something for us.  A new year symbolizes a chance to start over again.  It’s a chance to do things differently from the way we’ve done them in the past.  That’s why we make New Year’s Resolutions, after all.  The new year symbolizes a chance to stop doing the things we know we should not do, and to start doing the things we know we should do.  We look at the new year as a chance to be the people we really want to be, rather than the people we actually are.

            That’s okay.  In fact, there are ways in which it’s a good thing.  Sometimes we need some incentive to make changes in our lives.  If a new year provides us with that incentive, there’s nothing wrong with that.

            What we need to remember, though, is that the chance to change ourselves is available to us all year round.  That’s one of the most incredible things about the sacrifice Jesus made for us.  The forgiveness that faith in Jesus offers us is not something that only happens once a year.  That forgiveness is available to us every day.  All we need to do is believe in Jesus as our Savior and sincerely ask for forgiveness.  If we come to Jesus with honest hearts and with a real desire to change, Jesus will give us forgiveness and will help us change.

            That does not mean that we’ll suddenly become perfect people.  There has not been a perfect person on earth since Jesus was here, and there will not be a perfect person on earth until Jesus comes back.  What it means, though, is that our attitude will change.  Our state of mind will change.  We will change.  Even though we will still make mistakes, we’ll be different people.  We’ll be better people.  We’ll be God’s people.

            It’s wonderful to celebrate the new year.  Remember, though, that we can have a new year any time.  All we need to do is believe in Jesus as our Savior and sincerely ask for forgiveness.  Any day that we do that can be New Year’s Day.

Quotes From My Favorite Author (Part 2)

            This is my first blog post of the new year.  I probably should write something very bold and forward-looking.  The thing is, though, that even though it’s January 2, it’s still kind of a holiday.  I mean, there’s no mail today, the banks are closed, the Rose Parade and the bowl games are all today.  This just doesn’t feel like a day for a bold, forward-looking blog.

            So, instead, I’m going to finish my look back at things I’ve said in 2011.  One of the things I try to do on facebook is come up with some clever ways to invite people to church.  So, here are some of my top church advertisements on facebook for 2011:

--Lots of schools are having homecoming—why not come home to church?  The United Methodist Churches of the Wheatland Parish would love to welcome you.

--He once read the entire Bible—including the Apocrypha—in ten minutes.  He once performed a baptism and a funeral—at the same time.  He is…the Most Interesting Pastor in the World.  “I don’t always preach sermons, but when I do, I preach in the United Methodist Churches of the Wheatland Parish.  Stay faithful, my friends.”

--GODCO.  A fifteen minute sermon could save fifteen percent or more of your soul.

--Occupy the United Methodist Church!  Rallies Sunday in Onida at 8:30, Agar at 9:30, and Gettysburg at 11:00.

--The Wheatland Parish invites you to experience worship in 4G:  Grace, Guidance, Gratitude, and Glory.

            --Get to a better state:   a state of grace.

--Wheatland Parish Doorbusters’ Special!  Free grace for our first two hundred customers!  Doors open Sunday in Onida at 8:30, Agar at 9:30, and Gettysburg at 11:00.  Don’t miss it!

--Have a December to Remember with the United Methodist Churches of the Wheatland Parish.  Lexus not included.

--The holidays are a time to get re-acquainted with old friends, so why not come to Jesus’ house?  He’d love to see you again.

            I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed new year.  And it is true:  the United Methodist Churches of the Wheatland Parish would love to welcome you.  Why not make a New Year’s Resolution to get closer to God in 2012?

The Decision

This is the message given in the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, January 1, 2012.  The scripture is Matthew 2:1-12.

Those of you who were paying attention during the reading of the gospel lesson may have thought, “Hey, wait a minute.  We just heard a sermon on that passage two weeks ago.”  Well, you’re right.  This is the same passage I preached on when we talked about King Herod.  Even though we’re looking at the same scripture today, we’re going to look at it in a different way.  Instead of looking at this from the perspective of King Herod, we’re going to look at it from the perspective of the magi, the wise men.

What you call them depends on your tradition and what version of the Bible you use.  The King James Version and the New Revised Standard Version refer to them as “wise men.”  The New American Standard Version calls them “magi,” as do Today’s International Version and the Common English Version.  The Message version refers to them as “scholars.”  It all amounts to the same thing.  They were learned scholars, the scientists of their day.  As such, they were very well respected as wise people.

We don’t know how many wise men there actually were.  Tradition tells us there were three of them, but the Bible never actually says that.  They gave him three gifts, which is probably where the tradition of three wise men comes from, but we don’t really have any idea how many there were.  There could have been two or there could have been twenty-two.  We have no way to know.

These wise men, these scientists, studied the movement of the stars.  They had also studied the ancient prophecies of when the Messiah, the Savior of the Jews, was supposed to come.  They saw a star rise, and they concluded this was the sign that said the Messiah had been born.  So, they set out to find the king and worship him.

We often think of them as having gone to Herod to ask him where the king was, but the Bible does not actually say that.  What the Bible says is that the wise men came to Jerusalem and started asking around.  That makes more sense, when we think about it.  They knew the king would not be happy to hear that a new king had been born, so the last thing they’d have wanted to do is go up to King Herod and ask him about it.  Apparently, though, the wise men asked enough people that word got back to Herod somehow.  So, he sends for them, sends them to Bethlehem, and tells them to find the king and report back to him.

They go to Bethlehem and find Jesus with Mary.  Note that poor old Joseph gets left out again—the Bible does not say they found Jesus with Mary and Joseph, just that they found Jesus with Mary.  They bow down and worship, they give their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  They are warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, so they go back to their own country by another road.

When you think about it, this is really kind of a strange episode.  We have no idea who these “wise men” actually were.  We don’t know where they came from, other than “the east.”  We never hear of them again.  The only role they seem to play, other than giving Jesus and Mary some gifts, is to tip off Herod that a new king has been born, which of course leads Herod to kill all the boys in Bethlehem two years old or younger.

It’s also interesting, I think, to note that the wise men did not receive word of the birth of Jesus from an angel.  Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, they all heard about this from an angel.  The wise men did not.  They figured it out for themselves.  The only role any angel might play is when the wise men are warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, and even the Bible does not say an angel was involved.  It just says the wise men were warned in a dream.  It does not say who warned them.

As we’ve looked at the characters of the Christmas story, one of the questions we’ve asked is why God would’ve chosen to have the Savior of the world come to earth in this way.  Each time we do that, I say that we can never really understand the mind of God.  That’s true, of course, but some of you may be wondering, “Well, then why are we talking about it?  If there’s no way to really understand it, then what’s the point of trying?”

Well, I think that at least part of the point is that we come to God in a lot of ways.  Some of us were born into the faith, and have always believed in God, and that’s wonderful.  Some of us had some sort of life-changing event that brought us to God, and that’s wonderful, too.  Some of us received our faith from family or friends, and that’s also wonderful.  Maybe some of us even heard from an angel, and that would be awesome.

No matter how we come to faith, though, there comes a point where we think, “Does this really make sense?  Do these things that I believe, these things that I’ve been taught, these things that I’ve read about or heard about, do they really make sense to me?  Is all this stuff about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and all that, does that really hold up when we think about it?  Or is this just a bunch of stories, a bunch of stuff we believe because it makes us feel good, or because we’re supposed to believe it, or because it’s just easier to go along with it than to get into an argument about it?”

It’s okay to ask those questions.  I think we all do ask them at some point in our lives.  Some of us may be asking them now.  That’s fine.  If we are truly made in the image of God, then there has to be some way in which God does make sense to us.  If there’s no way that God makes sense to us, then we’d have to conclude that God is totally arbitrary, and who’d want to follow a God like that?  How could we ever truly have faith in a God who made no sense to us, who acted in a completely arbitrary fashion?  How could we put our trust in a God like that?  How could we love a God like that?

This is where science comes into the picture.  Sometimes people talk about science and religion as if they were opposed to one another, but that’s not true and it should not be true.  A God who could not stand up to scientific scrutiny would be no God at all.  God does not fear a search for truth.  God is truth.

Here’s the thing, though.  We will never come up with conclusive, one hundred percent, undeniable proof that God exists, that Jesus is the Savior, that the Holy Spirit can act in our lives, or anything else.  No matter what evidence is uncovered, no matter what arguments are made, our minds can always come up with a way to doubt and to explain things away if that’s our goal.  After all, the Bible tells us that even after Jesus returned from the dead and appeared to the disciples, some of them still doubted.  God has chosen not to give us conclusive one hundred percent, undeniable proof.  Instead, God gives us the choice.  We can choose to believe, or we can choose not to believe.  God leaves it up to us.

That’s where the wise men, the scientists of their day, come into it.  No angel came to tell them about the birth of the Messiah.  They did not receive a divine message.  Instead, they studied.  They studied everything available to them.  They looked at all the evidence they had.  After they did that, they came to the conclusion that this star they had seen was a sign that the Messiah, the savior, the king, had been born.

Then, though, they came to a fork in the road.  They had to make a decision.  They had to make a choice.  They had evidence, they had reached a conclusion, but they did not have one hundred percent certainty.  So, they had to decide.  Were they going to act on this conclusion?  We’re they going to go out and search for the new king?  Were they going to take their treasures, go off on a long trip, and worship the king who had been born?  Or, were they going to look for more evidence, look for confirmation, wait until they knew for sure before they did anything?

You know, these wise men, these scientists, were probably not the only wise men that were around back then.  There’d have to have been others, don’t you think?  There have to have been other people who studied the stars, who studied the prophecies, who saw the same star these wise men saw.  We don’t hear anything about them.  We only hear about the wise men who acted.  Those other wise men saw the same things, but they did nothing about it.  They did not have enough faith to act on what they saw.  They wanted more.  They wanted certainty.  They either did not have faith, or they did not have the courage to act on their faith.  Either way, they missed out.

We all need to think about our beliefs.  We all need to examine what we believe and why we believe it.  While we’ll never understand everything about God, there needs to be an extent to which God makes sense to us.  God does not mind our questions.  God welcomes our questions.  Again, a God who could not stand up to our scrutiny would be no God at all.

Ultimately, though, we have to recognize that God did not create a world in which we get a hundred percent certainty.  That means we have to make a choice.  After we ask our questions, after we look at the evidence, we have to make a decision about what we believe.  Then, we have to have the courage and the faith to act on that decision.

God decided to give us that choice.  The wise men made their choice, and they’re still remembered two thousand years later.  Others made a different choice, and they’ve been forgotten.

As we start a new year, what will we choose?

Quotes From My Favorite Author

            Those of you who have “liked” the Wheatland Parish facebook page (and really, if you haven’t, you should) have seen a feature called, “Thought for the Day.”  This is a quote which may or may not have to do with faith, but that has to do with life itself.  One of the reasons we have this feature is simply that I like quotes.  I think there can be a lot of wisdom found in them. 

Sometimes, I think of something that I consider might be quote-worthy as well.  When I do, I put it on facebook, sometimes on the parish page, but more often just on my personal page.  I thought, since 2011 is coming to an end, that I would list some of my favorite quotes from myself over the last year.

--It is amazing how many people are certain they know what God’s political views are.  It is also amazing how those same people always seem to conclude that God’s political views are identical to their own.

--Sometimes, we just need to go in and stir the pot a little.

--Being in a really good mood for no particular reason that you’re aware of is an incredible gift from God.

--What most of us say we want is a leader who will lead us to take bold strides.  What most of us really want, however, is a leader who will lead us to believe we’re taking bold strides when we’re actually taking baby steps.

--One of the fascinating things about human beings is the many and varied things that get us fired up.

--Spending time with someone who is dying tends to help one gain perspective for a while.

--I refuse to re-post things, even things I agree with, just because someone on facebook tells me to.  Re-post this if you agree.

--Sometimes, for better or worse, you just have to make a decision, go with it, and move on.

--Unfortunately, things don’t happen just because we wish they would, even when we wish really, really hard.

--Problems often seem much easier to deal with when we can blame them on someone else.

--If you’re not getting some enjoyment and satisfaction out of life, you’re not doing it right.

--I wonder sometimes what compels us to look down on other people just because they disagree with us.

--The world can be a strange place.  Fortunately, it can also be a wonderful place.

--At some point, the question becomes not so much who caused the problem, but who can help find a solution.

--No matter how much we try to justify our stupid, it’s still stupid.

--Winds of around 20-30 miles per hour today.  This is what around here we call “a calm day”.

--Sometimes, we all want what’s best, but just honestly disagree about what that is or how to go about getting it.

--It is more important to love people than to win arguments with them.

--When do the Deer and the Antelope play, and what’s the point spread?

--If it seems like things aren't going the way they should be, and you can't get what you want no matter what you do, consider the possibility that God may be trying to keep you from making a big mistake.

--Sometimes you have to step right in the middle of it just to get everyone to admit that it’s there.

--If we could somehow get ourselves to stop fighting God and just get out of the way, we would truly be astonished at what would happen.

--One advantage cold has over snow is that you don’t have to shovel cold.

--Do we reason our way to a conclusion or conclude our way to a reason?

--Knowing when to make a decision can be as important as knowing what decision to make.

            I hope you’ve enjoyed these quotes.  Have a happy new year!

Not Just Today

This is the text of the message given in the Wheatland Parish Sunday, December 25.  The text is Luke 2:1-20.

            We’ve been talking about the various characters of the Christmas story.  We talked about Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist.  We talked about Mary and about Joseph.  We’ve been noting how often God seems to call ordinary people on ordinary days, and asks them to do extraordinary things.  Today, on the day we celebrate the birth of the Savior we take a look at the shepherds and their role in the Christmas story.

            If you want to get an idea of who the shepherds were, think of some of the cowboys who were in this country in the first part of the twentieth century.  I don’t mean the Hollywood version of cowboys, I mean the real thing.  I’ve had the privilege of getting to know a few people who, when they were young, were involved in some of that, and I’ve heard their stories.  They have quite the stories to tell.

            Contradicting what Hollywood says, it was not a glamorous life.  It was a very hard life.  You were out in the elements constantly, no matter what those elements were.  In the summer, it was high heat and humidity.  In the winter, it was bitter cold and snowstorms.  There was everything in-between as well.  You found shelter whenever and wherever you could.  You did not get paid very much.  You were kind of looked down on by the higher-ups in society.  It was not the kind of life very many people actually aspired to live.

            That’s pretty much who the shepherds were, back in Jesus’ time.  They were better than the beggars—at least they were working for a living—but they were pretty much on the bottom rung of that part of society that was employed.  Those are the people to whom God chose to send an angel.  Those are the people God chose to be the first ones to know about the birth of the Savior.

            I’m sure that, on that first Christmas night, the last thing these shepherds expected was that they’d see an angel.  I don’t doubt they believed in angels.  Angels show up quite a few times in the Old Testament, and they’d have heard all those stories.  The thing is, though, that these shepherds knew they were considered low-class people.  They might have believed that angels could appear to people, but if they ever thought about it, they probably thought they were the last people on earth God would send angel to.

            Then, as they’re doing their jobs one night, there’s an angel in their midst.  We don’t know if this was Gabriel again.  The Bible just says it was an angel.  Once again, just as every other time in the Christmas story, the shepherds are terrified.  The angel tells them not to be afraid.  Then the angel says those words that many of have heard so often, the words we hear every time we watch the Charlie Brown Christmas show.  “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign to you:  You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

            “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.’”

            And that’s it.  That’s all the Bible says about the angels coming to the shepherds.  Do you think it really happened exactly that way?  I mean, I’m not saying the Bible is wrong or anything, but think about it.  If you read the words the angel said, it takes about thirty seconds.  If you allow some time for the appearance and disappearance of the angel and the heavenly host, it takes about a minute.

            Was that really it?  Did the angel say some more stuff that’s not recorded?  Did the heavenly host have more to say, too?  Or did this all really just take a minute or less?  Did the angel and the heavenly host just pop in, say their bits, and leave?

            If so, try to imagine how you’d feel if you were those shepherds.  You’d think you’d been seeing things.  You’d wonder if you’d fallen asleep and dreamed that.  You’d be hesitant to even say anything to the others.  You’d be afraid they might think you’d gone nuts if you even started talking about seeing an angel, much less a heavenly host.

            You look around at the others, and you notice everyone else kind of doing the same thing.  They all have strange looks on their faces.  Finally, someone says, “Hey, did you guys see something?”

            You go, “Well, uh, maybe.  What kind of something?”

            “Well, I don’t know, just sort of like, well, a person, kind of, but not exactly.  It was sort of like they had this light around them.”

            “You mean, like an angel?”

            “Well, now I didn’t say an angel, but now that you mention it, yeah, sort of.  I mean, I’m not saying it was an angel, you know.  I’m just saying that, now that you’ve put that idea in my head, it did kind of look like an angel, in a way.  You know?”

            You go on like that for a while, and eventually everyone admits that they saw the same thing.  They all heard the same thing, too.  So, you all decide you’re going to go down to Bethlehem and see what the angel was talking about.  When you get there, there it all is, just like the angel said.  There’s Mary, and there’s Joseph, and there’s the baby, this baby who’s going to be the Messiah, the Savior.  In fact, that’s not really accurate.  The angel did not say the child is going to be the Savior, the angel said the child already is the Savior, even though he’s still a baby.  The angel did not tell the shepherds about something that was going to happen someday.  The angel told them about something that was happening right now, in their presence.

            The shepherds told everyone there what had happened, about the angel and the heavenly host and all that.  Everyone was amazed, as of course you would be.  Then, we’re told, “the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.”

            We never hear about these shepherds again in the Bible.  We don’t know what happened to them.  We don’t know what they did.  Again, though, try to imagine yourself as one of them. You’ve seen the angel.  You’ve seen a great company of the heavenly host.  You’ve seen the baby who is the Savior.

            You think things would just go back to normal after that?  I don’t.  Now, they may have stayed shepherds.  The prospects for career advancement for a shepherd were not that great back then, and they still had to make a living.  I don’t think they just went about their business, though.  Listen again to what the scripture says.  It says “the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

            I don’t think that’s something the shepherds just did that night.  I think it’s something the shepherds did the rest of their lives.  I think they told this story every chance they got.  I think they glorified and praised God every time they could.  Every time they saw someone, they talked about this.  When they were by themselves, they talked about it to each other.  I think they re-lived this night and glorified and praised God every day that they remained on this earth.  That might even be how Luke knew about the story and included it in his gospel.  If so, that would make these ordinary, low-class people among the most important people who ever lived.

            There’s a lesson there for all of us, I think.  What those shepherds did is what all of us are supposed to do.  No matter what we do for a living, no matter what our job is, even if we don’t have a job at all, this is what we’re supposed to do.  As we go about our lives, we’re supposed to glorify and praise God always.  We’re supposed to talk about the Savior every chance we get.  We’re supposed to spread the story of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ all our lives, for whatever time we have left on this earth.

            Do we do that?  For most of us, the answer is no.  It is for me.  I don’t do nearly as good a job of glorifying and praising God as I should.  I’ll do it in church.  I’ll do it at a gathering where a prayer is expected.  But just as I go about my everyday life?  Not very often.  That’s probably true of a lot of us.

            The point is not to make anyone to feel guilty.  The point is that we need to change.  That’s the point of the whole Christmas story, really.  We need to change.  That’s part of why Jesus came to earth.  We need to change.  Jesus brought a message that said we need to change, that we need to turn away from our sins, that we need to glorify and praise God always.  It’s a message that was true two thousand years ago, and it’s a message that’s still true today.

            Any time is a good time to make that change.  There could be no better day, though, than this day, Christmas Day.  On this day, we are doing what the shepherds did.  We’re celebrating the birth of the Savior.  Let’s not stop with today.  Let’s do what the shepherds did tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.  Let’s glorify and praise God every day of our lives.  Let’s spread the message of the Savior every chance we get, as long as we’re on this earth.