The Last Shall Be First

Lectionary Reflections for the First Sunday after Christmas Day (A)

By Andrew Davey

Readings for First Sunday after Christmas, Year A, Dec. 26, 2004

Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3

Psalm 147 or 147:13 - 21

Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7

John 1:1-18

In an age of instant news and communication, whispers and rumours travel fast – often with an impact thousands of miles away from their origin, within minutes. A huge capacity of time is dedicated to verifying information and forecasting outcomes. Those who the news most affects will know quickly and be able to respond appropriately.

Even in the lower circuits of our global news hungry society, news of a birth can travel fast – working its way out from those affected first.

First there's the immediate family; at a later stage come the announcement cards to those who the parents are not in daily contact with, but who will be eager to find out what has been happening.

Telephone calls, emails and announcement cards are really put in their place by a multitude of the heavenly host singing praises to God. But think back to where we started – those most affected by news need to hear it early – here the news comes to complete strangers, people who lived in fields and had little to do with polite society.

If Jesus had been born in the palace of the roman emperor Augustus . . . there would have been a great to-do. . . Yet at Bethlehem we discover the priorities are reversed – the good news of joy and peace are proclaimed, but not in palace halls or great cities, not to the rulers and the rich, but the news comes first to a field in the middle of nowhere, to some shepherds. . .

If Jesus had been born in the palace of the roman emperor Augustus, who we hear mentioned at the beginning of our gospel reading, there would have been a great to-do. Poets and speechwriters would have authored magnificent, flowing essays about destiny, peace and prosperity. Messengers would've been sent to farthest corners of the empire telling the news as they went; holidays and banquets would have been declared; carnivals and celebrations would have taken over the streets.

Yet at Bethlehem we discover the priorities are reversed – the good news of joy and peace are proclaimed, but not in palace halls or great cities, not to the rulers and the rich, but the news comes first to a field in the middle of nowhere, to some shepherds, poor people who just about get by on the pittance they earn keeping an eye on someone else's sheep.

But there are two other things about the way the birth is announced. The angel says to the shepherds: this will be a sign for you. That sign isn't the extraordinary way in which the announcement has come. The sign the angel speaks about is the ordinary sight of newborn baby, another baby born among the poor, to be found in a lean-to at the back of a boarding house.

And there's another thing – it's from the shepherds that Mary and Joseph hear about the angel and the heavenly host. These two, busy with the chores of childbirth under the most difficult conditions, do not themselves experience heaven breaking in but hear of it from the shepherds. It seems strange, but for them the child is enough.

Rather than just being a quaint story, we begin to hear an important truth, which we find repeated constantly in Luke's gospel.

The kingdom, the new order, that Jesus is bringing in, is one where society's outcasts, people on the edges, like the shepherds, not only matter but are the ones who are most open to the way God chooses to work. These are the type of people we find around the table for the great banquet which is the kingdom of God. They are certainly not the people who come first on anyone's list for banquets or birth announcements.

Later in the chapter, we read about how those shepherds react to what they have found. The shepherds return to their fields glorifying and praising God for all they had seen and heard. The parents are left wondering and pondering about what is happening.

Redemption is worked out in terms of inns and stables, of travellers and shepherds, in unpretentious ways among unassuming people. If it had happened among anything but the ordinary then it might all seem too inaccessible, too awesome, but this is the way God chooses to work, in the places, among the people and in the way that we can grasp.

But it's far from unthreatening. . . The news we are thinking about will eventually come to the ears of those for whom it was not good news. Herod hears about it within days or weeks, for Caesar it will be a matter of decades. But the news to those shepherds begins the shakings, as a new order starts to permeate the layers of empire.

The Rev. Andrew Davey is the National Adviser on Community and Urban Affairs for the Church of England. A founding member of the Anglican Urban Network (AUN), he sends out an occasional AUN email newsletter featuring perspectives from around the world, and is distributed free of charge. Andrew is author of Urban Christianity and Global Order: Theological Resources for an Urban Future (Hendrickson, 2002), and may be reached by email at andrew.davey@bsr.c-of-e.org.uk .