Of all the characters we are talking about this Advent and Christmas season, I am supposed to identify most with the shepherds. Maybe some of you found yourself akin to the aged priest Zechariah. Some of you saw yourself in the Virgin Mary, and others in just Joseph. My wife, Kim, is waiting for the character she feels closest to next week—that’s when we look at the angel Gabriel. I hope none of you can identify with the wicked King Herod—a far cry from good King Wenceslas. A few of you are hoping for some gold, frankincense or myrrh in your stockings so you can make believe you’re a Wise Man. But for me, being a shepherd of the flock and all, well, this is my Sunday.

Shepherds are, after all, … pastoral. And the root of the title for pastor comes from the pasture. You are the flock and I am the shepherd. We make up this pastoral scene, and we graze about in the pasture of the Lord. Bruce and Lawanna loved the metaphor of the pastor as shepherd. I have this mug [show] they brought back to me from one of their trips to Scotland. And others of you, like Jean Burns, have supplied me with plenty of reminders of the pastor as shepherd who cares for the sheep. [Show three small statuettes of shepherds.]

Aren’t you just thrilled to be thought of as sheep? Sheep are not known to be smart. In fact, they’re pretty lazy animals, all told. They graze all day long with their heads down, easily wandering off and losing their way. Not too flattering. But the pastor as shepherd thing isn’t too flattering, either. Oh, I know David was the shepherd king, and Jesus said he was the good shepherd, and God is The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. To tell the truth about shepherds, they were socially uncouth. They weren’t even social by nature. Unless you count the sheep they hung out with day and night. When shepherds came to town, you weren’t sure they’d left the sheep in the fields, as they smelled like them.

My resident colleague, Anne (Jernberg), believes shepherds invented the game of golf. Another reason I should identify with them, don’t you know?! Anne figures she will be forever handicapped as a pastor because she doesn’t play. The good news, Anne, is that golfers have thought of everything, including handicaps! Shepherds probably did invent golf. The Scottish shepherds around St. Andrews with their crooked staffs and plenty of hardened sheep chips under foot: you can imagine them knocking them about until they found a rabbit hole. But Anne’s conjecture goes to why they did. They were simply bored. (Of course, she also believes that since shepherds were men and men love to hit things with sticks—well, you get the idea.)

Shepherds, even back in the time of Jesus’ birth, were known to be a somewhat shiftless bunch. Oh, they had to be on guard for the occasional predators. Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my. And they had to look out for the one sheep that strayed from the ninety and nine. But note, they lost the one sheep that strayed because they weren’t all that attentive until it was time to round them all up in the pen and lay them down to sleep.

The question of the day, then, is this: Why would God choose shepherds abiding in the fields keeping watch o’er their flocks by night to be the first to hear the good news of the birth of the Son of God? In one sense it’s an affront to sense. If God wanted the world to understand the significance of the Holy One of Heaven coming to live among men and women on earth, why not go to the proper authorities? Why not get this news published in places of power and influence?

The answer is more obvious than you may realize. We later find out that King Herod wasn’t informed of it for good reason: he didn’t see this as good news to publish, but bad news to suppress. You remember that when he found out about it, he ordered the death of every baby boy in Bethlehem under two years of age. And we later find out why the religious authorities in Jerusalem were not entrusted with this news: they also saw this Christ as a threat to their power and had him delivered over to be strung up on a cross.

We have here at the very first of Luke’s gospel a hint of what will follow everywhere Jesus goes. The good news is swiftly embraced by the powerless people of the world and swiftly rejected by the powerful. The favor of God is welcome news only where it has never been assumed.

When the heavenly host sing in that night sky Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those whom God favors, it makes us pause, doesn’t it? Maybe it makes you pause first because you remember the King James Version that renders the Greek as peace on earth good will toward men. But the newer translation makes some of you pause because you wonder if it is really good news that God favors some and not others. Is that what the angels mean? Does God pick and choose among people and favor some over others? Well, no and yes. No, because this is good news of great joy that shall be to all the people.

Yes, because God does pick out the shepherds to bring the good news to first. The whole heavens do not light up over the entire world so that everyone can hear and see this at once. Our democratic spirit would prefer that. But God is not a Democrat per se (or a Republican). God knows that the world of human beings is always lopsided, with some having more than others, and some thinking that what you have in things or status is a sign of God’s blessing or curse. God is not on the side of the status quo. God is a social revolutionary. God has what the theologians call a “preferential option for the poor.” That is, God is trying to bring the fringe people in from the fields so that they can get their hands on the baby Jesus and see that he came for them, too.

Now, this is an inconvenient truth (apologies to Al Gore). When I go to the hospital these days to see a baby that has been born—like Tiffany and Alan’s baby girl, Caytie Beall Wright—they are very guarded about who they let in there. And God knows you had better wash your hands and wipe your nose and not bring any germs around that child. But here we see God inviting filthy shepherds to go visit the stable nursery. I wonder if Mary let them hold the child in their arms. Something tells me she did. After all, God was not ashamed to let the eternal Son be laid in a manger.

The church has to reckon with this inconvenient truth. Lowly shepherds respond with gladness and obedience to the good news of God’s favor. Which means that they are among God’s special agents in the world, messengers to others of God’s love for all people. Which also means that the church has to own this identity over against its desire to be admired and respectable to the world.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche railed against Christianity for being a religion of and for losers. He claimed it debased humanity by appealing to the weak over the strong, and by elevating those who are not fit to lead the world with their strong will, fit minds, and grand purposes. And he was right in his analysis of Christianity, even as he was wrong about humanity. We saw in Nazi Germany what happens when the church gives in to this seduction to side with the strong against the weak. The strong have debased humanity more than the weak with their ambition to divide and conquer for their own glory.

The fact that the church is composed of social outcasts like shepherds right from the start is an inconvenient truth for us to accept. But we must if we are to honor the Christ, who was made known first to these certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay. Those whom the world considers inconvenient must always have a place among the people of God.

This is why I salute my friend, Dr. Joe Clifford, the senior minister of First Presbyterian Church in Dallas. When the city began Operation Rescue a few months ago in an effort to reach out to the city’s homeless, the effort was so poorly planned and funded that it ended up nothing more than a round-up of homeless people who were sent to jail. Joe and the church would not give permission to the police to enter their property and arrest homeless people. And so since then, its parking lot has been a homeless lot. It’s a bad solution and one that needs fixing, partly through raising money for the cost of shelter beds for these folk. Did you know it costs the homeless $10 per night to sleep in a shelter? The long-term solution is permanent supportive housing, but we are miles away from convincing government and business and neighborhood leaders of this inconvenient truth. In the meantime, hats off to a church that see homeless people lying down to sleep in their parking lot as reminders of shepherds who lay in their fields only to learn of the favor of God from the heavenly host, since they wouldn’t get that word from anywhere else.

The other inconvenient truth is that once the shepherds know the favor of God, they become responsible for living up to it. You know, if Daddy always favored your older brother, or if Mama always coddled your kid sister, or if the teacher always had it out for you, or if the world seemed forever against you, you could get away with doing nothing much and blaming other people for your shiftlessness. But if the God of heaven and earth has called you favored and allowed you to go hold the baby Jesus in your arms, you have to get up and get with it. Privilege without responsibility is no more the gospel than responsibility without privilege.

Some of you nurture that mentality by sitting back and coming up with excuses why you cannot serve the Lord or the church. You are always too something or not enough something else. You are too old or too young, too messed up or too put together, too sick or too tired. Or you are not smart enough or rich enough or strong enough.

Come on, shepherds. Pull out your driver and knock the ball down the fairway long and straight. And keep at it until you putt the thing into the hole. Tell the good news. Sing it from the choir. Spoon it out in a soup kitchen. Hammer it out on a mission trip. Teach it to a child in Sunday school. Walk down the aisle and get yourself to Jesus this morning. And then get on with being the earthly version of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those God favors—which includes you … and everybody.