Luke 2:8-20
“What to Look For”
December 23, 2018
The journey had been a long one. On our flight from JFK I was a bit stunned and a little concerned for the young woman in my row who informed me within minutes of introducing herself that she had taken a couple of Benadryl and had a few drinks before boarding and planned to sleep for the entire seven hour flight and then she proceeded to do just that – foregoing two meals and a snack that were brought around and all of the hustle and bustle that is an international flight. Once in Madrid, it was all we could do to not sleepwalk from one end of the airport to the other to get our connecting flight. Once we arrived in Zagreb, retrieved our luggage, went through customs and emerged into the warm midday sun, our relief at easily connecting with our van driver Luca must have been palpable because he was all smiles and quickly shoved the luggage of 8 exhausted and yet very excited women into his Uber van.
Ahead of our trip, a request had been made that on the way to our destination of Podstrana about 3 hours southwest, we wanted to stop and take a picture of the house that my grandfather was born and lived in until he was a teenager and came to America at the outset of World War I. My mom had the address of the house that her dad had grown up in but we were having trouble finding it. We spotted a bunch of men enjoying a few beers on a porch down the street so Luca headed over, armed with the family name and supposed address, and asked if they knew which house it was. They pointed to a house that appeared to have been abandoned years before but also said that the women who lived across the street with a lovely yard and garden were Yurcics (my mom’s maiden name). Luca and my mom went to the front door and identified who we were and there was a warm and delighted welcome in spite of the language barrier. The woman who answered the door lived there with her husband and her 93 year old mother who was my mom’s first cousin. There were tears and laughter and rapid fire translating going on between Luca, the 8 of us and these two newly discovered relatives who immediately invited us all into their home for drinks and snacks and the sharing of photographs and letters that had been written between my grandfather and his sister for the 60 plus years that he lived outside Youngstown, Ohio and she lived in what had been Yugoslavia and was now Croatia. We were pulled toward this small town in a country to which all of us had blood ties but found so much more than we could have anticipated. We went looking for one thing and discovered something even more wonderful.
We may have been sleep-deprived, a little sweaty, and kind of cranky but we certainly didn’t draw disdain – only smiles, and comments like, “Oh, Americans,” when we first arrived and tried to do the math in figuring out how much U.S. dollars were worth in Croatian kunas.
The shepherds, on the other hand, took a much riskier journey and couldn’t possibly have known how they would be received. First off they were considered the lowest of society’s lows. They were poor and they lived an isolated existence. They were usually dirty and smelled of the sheep they spent their days with and slept among at night. Hopefully, the fact that they were searching for a stable may have made them a bit more comfortable in the hustle and bustle of Bethlehem where Mary and Joseph had journeyed, most likely quite uncomfortably, to be counted by decree from the Emperor Augustus who said everyone must go back to their birthplaces to be a part of the census there.
Stunning information accompanied with, to be honest, somewhat vague directions definitely sounds like there had to be great trust that what they were to go seeking would be beyond their imagining. Drumming up the courage to lay to one side their terror at having been messaged by first one angel who was then reinforced by a herd of angels, we can only imagine the conversations between them. Do we bring the sheep with us? There have to be hundreds of mangers in Bethlehem – how are we supposed to know where to look? What if people turn on us because of who we are? Are we really supposed to bother some lady we don’t even know right after she’s given birth? And yet they put aside all these questions – or maybe talked them out on the journey.
Somehow they managed to find the right stable and the right baby. Maybe it was a good thing that they weren’t given too much information. They were bound to have doubts enough without more details to try to sort through. And perhaps best of all they came bearing good news for these new parents who like all parents would be prone to thinking their child was unique and special – that’s what love does to you, doesn’t it?
When we truly love someone, the circumstances surrounding that love become insignificant in comparison. To then hear that this helpless, hours old baby was to bring a new world order and others now know this left Mary treasuring their words, trying to mentally remember every one of them, perhaps guessing that there would be trying times in this little one’s life to come and that she would want to return to the knowledge that these humble shepherds who had nothing to gain and quite a bit to lose recognized that God was indeed present in the flesh, on this earth and that his purpose was to usher in a kinder, gentler and more peaceful future.
These normally loner shepherds got to become heralds of great news. And we have to wonder how they were changed. Shepherds who typically spent weeks or months at a time tending sheep and scaring off predators, with little human contact got to be the ones bearing the news to everyone within earshot that this little boy was destined for greatness and not the greatness that one would expect. To begin this life among animals and their smells and noises was to say that God does not have a preference for the rich and titled. The value placed on position and address and lineage and financial status is irrelevant for God to enter the world. Jesus in the flesh was intended to show God’s desire to be known and the first ones after his parents to experience this amazing new life were the ones that others shunned. They lacked the pedigree and education and wealth that earthly kings surrounded themselves with. So maybe when we continue our search, as disciples of Jesus, for God in our midst, we might sometimes alter the search and be willing to change course. Maybe the places that we’re intended to experience God’s presence is among the shepherds that are around us – the lonely, the isolated, the ones that the world seems to have little use for. May we go out into the world seeking God in all the unexpected places where we are willing to be changed by the encounter. “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.” Amen.