Luke 2:8-20
Ever feel on the outside of things?
One of the strangest moments in my life – years ago – a conference in Madison, Wisconsin … weather delayed my flight … so I arrived a day late.
In the day I missed, several hundred folks had already made connections, decided where to sit, and pretty well worked things out …
I was the odd-guy out …
I remember the feeling … made a deep impression on me …
But the conference leader made an effort to welcome me … and it worked … it wasn’t long before I melded into the event …
I’ve not forgotten the feeling … of being the odd-guy out … nor have I forgotten the effort by the conference leader to welcome me.
Ever feel on the outside of things?
Years ago in West Virginia, the early 70s – Donna and I had our first church … actually two of them – Camp Creek and Ridgeview – one built beside the road, with the rear half on stilts hanging over the creek, and the other, nestled up a holler against the mountain.
Boone County, he poorest county in the poorest state in the nation … coal miners out of work … a lot of men with busted backs and bad lungs … a lot of poverty … and all the sadness that goes with it …
Donna and I lived in a new manse, with new furniture – when we moved to West Virginia right out of seminary, we used some inheritance money from my grandfather to purchase new furniture … so we lived well - up the holler – at the foot of the mountain, next door to the church.
One day, a little old lady came to visit – cookies and coffee … she belonged to the church and did the best she could … she was a widow living on a meager pension and some Social Security … she lived in a very tiny house that had seen better days a long time ago … the only way to her home was a pathway over a rickety few planks for a bridge and up a little hill – next to a slag dump from an abandoned coal mine …
Donna heard her say quietly as she looked around our home, “This would be so easy to keep clean.”
Ever feel on the outside of things?
Remember Ted Haggard … former pastor of the Colorado Springs New Life Church … head of the National Association of Evangelicals …
It’s been a rough road for him …
In a documentary set to air on HBO January 29, Haggard says:
The reason I kept my personal struggle a secret is because I feared that my friends would reject me, abandon me and kick me out, and the church would exile and excommunicate me. And that happened and more, he says.
(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,470038,00.html)
He struggles with his sexuality … his wife stands by him … he’s selling insurance in a small town in Illinois … of his life right now he says, I am a loser.
Ever feel on the outside of things?
For me, one of the most horrible moments in grade school was gym – softball … the teacher would choose two goons who could hit the ball across Lake Michigan to be captains, to choose the rest of us for their teams …
I couldn’t hit the ball with a tennis racket …
So, there I am, standing like a sheep about to be slaughtered … as the goons handpick their team … Jimmy, Johnny, Chuck … even Susie and Carol, for crying out loud … but not me … no, I’m the last victim standing, and then the teacher would point and say, Tommy, you’re on their team … they’d groan, and I’d slouch on over like Quasimodo.
Ever feel on the outside of things?
Clint Eastwood’s latest, “Gran Torino” – set in Detroit – he’s a retired autoworker living in the same house he’s lived in for 40 years … he’s a widower, and the neighborhood has changed – Hmongs live next door, and he’s a stranger in his own land …
Several years ago in Northern Michigan, had some car work done, so after I dropped my car off, a courtesy ride home – the driver was a retired autoworker now living up north for ten years – he was telling me how he loved it up north, and that he rarely gets back to Detroit – then he said, When I get back there, I feel like a stranger – so many foreigners have moved in …
Mickey Rourke’s latest, “The Wrestler” – at the end of the road … poor health, a failed relationship with his adult daughter – living on the margins – living off the past … taking a job at the local grocery story deli counter; humiliated by the manager … in a painful conversation with his daughter, he says, I’m just a beat up piece of meat.
I suspect we’ve all had moments when we were on the outside looking in … feeling like strangers in our own world … no one picks us for the ball team; we sit home on prom night … left out, left behind, ignored, discriminated against … humiliated and embarrassed by circumstances …
Remember Rodney Dangerfield, his finger in a tight collar, pulling on his tie, I get no respect …
What a childhood I had, why, when I took my first step, my old man tripped me!
My psychiatrist told me I’m going crazy. I told him, “If you don’t mind, I’d like a second opinion.” He said, “All right. You’re ugly too!”
I was so ugly, my mother used to feed me with a slingshot!
I tell ya when I was a kid, all I knew was rejection. My yo-yo, it never came back!
When I was a kid I got no respect. The time I was kidnapped, and the kidnappers sent my parents a note they said, “We want five thousand dollars or you’ll see your kid again.”
We all laughed at Rodney Dangerfield … he touched a part of life – when we don’t belong, when we don’t fit in … that others think less of us … and we think less of ourselves …
I’m a loser,
I’m a flub,
I’m a failure …
On the outside looking in …
What’s the point?
God takes a special interest in “losers” …
Abraham and Sarah were too old for children, but God said, I’m going to give you a family.
Jacob was a cheat and a liar, but God made him the father of the 12 tribes of Israel …
Ruth was an outsider, a foreigner, but she became the great grandmother of King David …
God chooses the unlikely for the softball team … no one is used up as far as God is concerned … no one is unacceptable!
No one is ever left behind!
God never shuts the door on anyone!
The welcome mat is always out …
The light is always on …
In the middle of the night, heaven’s choir paid a late-night visit to shepherds in the hills …
Now that sounds sweet and lovely to us … and it is.
We sing songs about it … and we should.
Angeles singing to shepherds …
The stuff of Christmas cards and pageants …
It is sweet and lovely …
But there’s a message here …
A golden thread woven into the story …
God pays special attention to the down and out …
Shepherds, the lowest of the lowly …
They were tagged as unclean …
In spite of the fact that Israel had “sentiment” about shepherds …
Psalm 23: the LORD is my shepherd …
Ezekiel uses the image of the good shepherd to describe God’s love and care …
Israel’s greatest king, King David, was a shepherd boy …
Jesus himself uses shepherd imagery, I am the good shepherd, and I will find my lost sheep …
But sentiment and reality don’t always parallel …
When I was child, my Dad told how poor he was growing up … his mother used to mix pork fat and molasses together, and they’d spread it on bread … and he said, It was so good.
So Mom and Dad decided to make it … I remember it well – side pork was fried … the grease drained off, cooled … and then mixed with molasses … it looked pretty good – smooth and creamy … spread on bread …
And then the moment of tasting …
My Dad took one bite and grimaced – this is horrible … I never even tried it … the batch was thrown away, and that was the last we ever heard about pork fat and molasses.
Sentiment and reality don’t always parallel very well.
Though the shepherds raised the sheep for temple sacrifice, and the meat everyone ate, shepherds were on the bottom of the heap socially … considered scoundrels and petty thieves … and besides, they smelled!
Maybe we’re getting the picture now …
That night, God said to one of the Archangels … pay those shepherds a visit … and bring the choir …
What did you say?
Them?
Aren’t there a few other people we might better visit?
Palaces and princes?
The powerful and the beautiful?
Why shepherds?
What good are they?
God says, Trust me!
The Archangel says, Okay!
And off they go …
An angel of the LORD appeared … light and glory …
Don’t be afraid …
I bring you good news … today, a savior has been born … in David’s town … you’ll find a baby wrapped in simple blankets lying in a manger … in a simple place … a place that will welcome you … you’ll feel right at home in the Savior’s birth place …
And suddenly, a GREAT company of the heavenly host appeared …
Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!
God pulled out all the stops …
The best of the best … for the least of the least …
For shepherds in the hills …
No palaces …
No princes …
Not the beautiful and the powerful …
Because everyone counts …
Everyone’s important …
Everyone belongs …
So, what does this mean for us …?
The first is this: God pays special attention to us when WE’RE on the outside looking in …
We’re never alone in our sorrow …
We’re never alone when the road turns south …
And life turns mean …
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of the death, I will fear not evil, for thou art with me …
That night in the hills, the best and the brightest paid a visit to those on the far side of life …
As the rest of the story turns out … Jesus spends most of his time on the far side of life …
The woman caught in adultery …
Zacchaeus up a tree …
Blind Bartimaeus …
The woman at the well …
The leper …
The lonely …
The low-down and the lost …
And you and me …
Just to balance things out … the world’s favor goes to the rich and famous … God’s favor goes to the least …
To keep things steady …
To give special attention to the forgotten …
That’s how God does it …
The second piece of the story?
When we’re on top of the heap …
When things are good for us …
When our roof don’t leak and the car is clean …
Remember the shepherds in the hills …
Look at others with my eyes, says God …
The young waitress with an accent you don’t understand …
The man selling flowers and socks in the median …
The guy playing his guitar hoping a few coins might be tossed his way …
The tough looking gal on the street corner …
A thousand folks we see everyday …
REALLY see them, says God. Remember how much I love them … remember the night I paid a glorious, over-the-top, visit to the shepherds in the hills …
Share your best and brightest with the lowly and the least.
Jesus says it well:
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me [Matthew 25:34-36].
To be the church of Jesus Christ …
To follow in his footsteps …
We have a commission:
To even things out …
Keep the world in balance …
Don’t let the lost go too far a-field …
Keep our eyes open …
Work together … work for a just and fair world …
Share our love …
Be generous and kind …
Build the kingdom of God …
Thy will be done ON EARTH as it is in heaven …
Amen and Amen!
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