Did You Hear What I Heard?!

Scripture: Luke 2:8-14

The nativity set that my parents lovingly displayed every Christmas season left something to be desired. Over the years, the stable had loosened around the joints and had taken on a dangerously wobbly quality. I doubt that any Little Town of Bethlehem Safety Inspector would have allowed its occupancy, let alone by the Lord and Savior of Mankind.

The set featured about a dozen animals, most of which had lost at least one limb as the result of careless packing or unpacking. The only way to make the poor creatures stand up was to lean them against one of the stable walls. This explains why, for many years, I mistakenly believed that Jesus was born in an animal hospital.

My parents were more fastidious about the human figures and replaced those that turned up missing an arm or a leg or a head. But the new figurines were never the same size as the old ones—and in some instances they were quite a bit larger. This will help you understand why I affectionately nicknamed their nativity set “The Attack of the 50-Foot Shepherd.”

I take that figure as a symbol of sorts, because many of our Christmas traditions seem to make the shepherds into outsized and unreal characters. We portray them in paintings and films as improbably holy, improbably meditative, and improbably clean. We sing Christmas carols about them, including one (“Do You Hear What I Hear?”) where a shepherd and a lamb engage in a conversation, transforming the shepherd into some sort of desert-wandering Dr. Doolittle.

I love these traditions as much as anyone, but I think it is important to notice that they come at a price: they can cause us to lose sight of the shepherds’ humanity.

The gospels make clear, however, that these shepherds were ordinary human beings, just like you and me. Luke tells us that they did not react to the angel’s appearance with preternatural joy but with understandable terror. I doubt they joined arms and blissfully sang “Do you hear what I hear?” I think they probably grabbed each other by their robes and cried “Did you hear what I heard?!”

By the way, the story goes on to provide a wonderful little detail. Once the shepherds felt somewhat reassured, they did precisely what most of us would do: they talked amongst themselves before settling on a plan. These days, they would have formed a committee.

The gospel of Luke thus belies the idealized image of the shepherds as perfect disciples who eagerly received God’s word and immediately responded to God’s instructions.

Once we recapture a sense of the shepherds’ humanity we can imagine some of the thoughts and feelings they must have entertained. Surely, like all of us, every one of those shepherds had from time to time prayed for a sign of hope. Well, on that midnight clear they got a whopper. But it seems fair to assume that they did not get what they expected and they did not get it when they asked for it. In this respect, the experience of those shepherds is probably very like our own.

We can also empathize with the shepherds’ decision to go see for themselves. Perhaps that decision came from faith, perhaps from skepticism, but in any event who could resist? And then we can imagine the excitement, the mad dash to Bethlehem, the crazy search through town for a baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.

Now, we know how the story ends—but they didn’t. So imagine—if you possibly can—the utter and inexpressible amazement they must have experienced upon discovering exactly what the angel had described. Surely, this was an occasion for turning to each other and asking “Do you see what I see?!” Then they told all who were gathered what the angel had declared; and Mary treasured all those words, and pondered them in her heart.

But I am particularly intrigued by what happened next. It is recounted in a verse that is often overlooked—in fact, you probably didn’t miss it when you read the passage cited above. Luke tells us that “[t]he shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”

I can’t help but wonder: and then what? Did the shepherds become disciples who devoted their every waking moment to spreading the “good news of great joy?” Or did they go back to their flocks and fields, treasuring and pondering like Mary?

And how did they preserve the immediacy and reality of the amazing experience they had shared? How did they avoid falling into doubt and skepticism and rationalization? How did they keep themselves from concluding that the voice of the angel was probably just the sound of the wind in the night? How did they avoid shrugging the whole thing off, telling themselves that anyone who went looking for an impoverished child in Bethlehem would surely find one? If the shepherds were human beings, just like you and me, then how did they keep from falling prey to those very human questions?

Well, we don’t know. The gospels don’t tell us. But I think the answer is this: they remembered. After all, sometimes memory—and only memory—can make faith possible. And I suppose that we are like the shepherds in this way, too.

It often feels to me that during this season we long to reconnect to something very old, something fundamental, something deeply embedded in our collective Christian memory. Certainly, Christmas brings forward-looking feelings of hope and renewal and the promise of peace on earth and goodwill toward all. But there is simply no denying the backward gravity that sets in at this time of year.

For many of us, this means memories of wonderful holidays. Every December, I re-read a delightful essay called “Recipe for Christmas” by Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Coffin. Coffin grew up in Maine and argued that any Christmas worth celebrating had to correspond with his experiences as a child. According to Coffin, a decent Christmas therefore requires—among other things—a farm, an ocean, a cold snap, a big fall of snow, a blazing fireplace, a hand-cut fir tree, a horse-drawn sled, a father who tells stories and sings and shoots a goose for roasting, and a mother who strings popcorn and cooks the goose—along with three steamed puddings and twenty-five pumpkin pies.

Of course, most of us never had a Christmas that fits this description. In fact, many of us remember Christmases we’d prefer to forget. Perhaps you’re having one of those Christmases this year.

But the “good news of great joy” is that we share a memory that can sustain us—each and every one of us. It is the same memory that must have offered endless comfort to the shepherds when that miraculous night had ended and the drudgery of everyday life had resumed.

It is the memory of an angel’s voice. It is the memory of a light in the darkness.
You have heard it, even if not while you were watching your flocks. You have seen it, even if not in the sky over Bethlehem. But, as sure as I stand here, I am certain that the voice and the light have come to you, too.

Did you see what I saw?

Did you hear what I heard?

I think you did.

This week, like all the weeks after it, will do its best to distract you from the voice and the light. It will do all it can to drag you to that terrible and sad place called forgetfulness. I think that the shepherds offer us a simple, two-thousand-year-old lesson about how to contend with that challenge. And it can be summarized in just one word: remember.

Remember, brothers and sisters in Christ.

Remember the voice.

Remember the light.

Remember.

Remember.

Remember.

Amen.