According to the lectionary, a three-year cycle of readings for preaching and worship, the scripture for New Year’s Day is Luke 2: 15-21. If you were in worship on Christmas Eve, you know doubt heard this text read. It is the shepherds’ response to the angelic message that the messiah is born this day.
The shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now…”
I’ve read this text a few dozen times, at least, but until now I had not been struck by the power of those simple words, “Let us go.” What an amazing reaction. Consider the moment before the angelic host appears. They are out with their sheep. They are not waiting for something amazing to happen. They are not praying for God to step into their lives and turn things around. They’re just doing their jobs, minding their own business, when out of nowhere a heavenly army appears.
Luke’s story tells us that they were terrified. That is understandable. But they refuse to let their terror define their next steps. They listen to the words of the angel. They pay attention to the signs that the angel notes that they will see. When the experience is over, they go.
Think for a moment about how often you have been held back by fear or worry when a new opportunity comes to you. Consider how you’ve been held back by concerns over the changes that you know in your gut need to be made in your everyday life but you resist because change is just too inconvenient.
In my life, when the Spirit is sending me in a new a direction, I too often want to overanalyze the situation. Paralysis by analysis is a cliched saying but in my life, and maybe yours, too, it often becomes an easy route to take to avoid facing the truth of whatever God is inviting me to see.
After visiting the child, the shepherds returned. After all, they still had work to do. There were sheep that needed tending. No doubt one or more of the simple-minded animals had wandered away and needed to be found. In some ways, nothing had changed. Their everyday lives looked like they did before.
Except that now they were “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen…” Maybe that is the key to finding a life that matters. Maybe what we need more than anything else is the ability, in our basic routine lives, to hear the angels, to see the holy and to praise the One who knows each of us by name.
Grace and peace to you,
– Glen
