From one year to the next, nothing changes as much as Christmas, and nothing stays the same as much as Christmas. The presents under the tree are totally different every year, but the tree has to be the same. Have you noticed? Or take this magazine article in 1837: “What is the intent of the Christmas holy days?” asked the journal John Bull on Christmas Day 1837. “The merest child would give the correct answer----to eat plum-pudding and see the pantomime.” Collect a million wish-lists from kids or adults and these two things, plum-pudding and pantomime, so dear to the people of the 1830s, will not appear today. Christmas is always changing and always the same.
One feature of the nativity story that never changes is the shepherds.
Who were first visited by the angels? Who were first to be informed of the messiah’s birth. Who were chosen to be the first evangelists? Who were the very first proclaimers of the messiah, the first preachers of Emmanuel, the first bearers of the Prince of Peace?
Shepherds!
Why shepherds?
Shepherds were not considered the cream at the top. They were a burly, rag-tag bunch of rough-hewn, outdoorsy folk, who lived nomadic lifestyles in the fields and hills. They weren’t the “temple type.” But they were strong, fierce, and loyal. They were, what we might call, “field smart.”
Shepherds were the “field experts” on weather, crops, wildlife, and other practical matters of agriculture and animal husbandry. They descended from the first priests of Israel –the Shepherd Priests, those like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David. Their ancestors tended their flocks on those same hillsides of Bethlehem near the shepherding watchtower of Migdal Eder. Even Mary’s own father Joachim was said to be a shepherd priest.
They were known to be especially devout. After all, they were dependent on the goodness and grace of God for their livelihood. They were especially astute in the oral scriptures, in reading weather signs and heavenly signs, and versed in the religious traditions and folk traditions of their day. And… they were waiting….waiting for particular signs. For shepherds were the “sign readers” (the semioticians) of the ancient world, the prophetic voice and the nomadic memory of a very ancient people.
Like the magi who would later appear, the shepherds were expecting a messiah and constantly looking about for signs of his appearing.
Why a messiah? It was a bleak time in the history of the Hebrew people. Things were not going very well. The Romans had pretty much taken over everything in Jewish life, especially in nearby Jerusalem. Many of the priests and Pharisees, the overseers of the faith, were catering to the Romans and compliant in order to carry on their lifestyle. Others like the sicarii or zealots would organize frequent uprisings that would often result in very public deaths with armies of soldiers teaching people a “lesson” about the consequences of revolt. It was a tumultuous time.
Shepherds were for a very long time the keepers of the oldest traditions. After all, Israel began as shepherds, knew God as shepherd, and expected a shepherd king like David. YHWH had promised them an everlasting “covenant of salt” in the line of David. A new king of Israel would be born in the line of David, a king who would bring peace, a king who would make things right again. The shepherds smelled it in the air. Something would happen soon. A child would be born. And there would be signs….
Signs, you say. Hmm. Does anyone believe in signs?
How, you say, could these unlettered, lowly shepherds be so sure that this was the messiah? How in all of Bethlehem at that very time, could they have recognized a simple couple of signs like a child in a manger?
Well, for them, those signs weren’t so simple.
In fact, let’s do a little experiment for a moment.
I’ll name a sign, and you tell me the first thing that pops into your head. Just shout it out.
Golden arches
[McDonalds]
Gecko
[Geico]
A piece of the rock…
[Prudential]
Wow! You are good. Now, let’s try a few harder ones.
Peace sign
[spread your fingers apart]
Good luck!
[cross your fingers]
Ok…all of you farmers out there….what does a red moon signify?
[a sunny day follows, yes]
What about some of the signs in these stained glass windows?
Or how about the five-pointed star?
[Go through as many signs as you wish.]
Well, it looks like you are all sign readers. It just depends if you are familiar with the sign. If the sign is known to you, it’s not hard to point it out, is it?
Well, for Israelite shepherds, there were a couple of signs that were really important in the Jewish/Hebrew tradition, especially in the spring, the lambing season, the time when they watched sheep at night, to make sure, the little ones would stay safe and unharmed.
One of those signs was a ritual related to God’s “covenant of salt” we might call in short, “salt and swaddle.”
In the ancient world, the sons of princes and kings were put through a special ritual. It entailed taking the newborn baby, washing the baby in salt water (a sign of purity) and wrapping or swaddling the baby for a couple of hours in strips of cloth. The swaddling signified the uprightness of his future life and a special anointing as a priest or king. We know the tradition was used also among the ancient Hebrews, because Ezekiel mentions Jerusalem’s lack of princely or pure birth and God’s adoption of her as God’s own people, cleansed and wrapped in covenant (16).
God’s own people, beloved of God, are wrapped up in covenant with God, as in a swaddle. Swaddling indicated special status, loving protection and affection, and a kind of purity that signalled a very special birth.
For the Jewish people, this ritual would also bring into play that other important metaphor –the salt covenant. Salt was a supremely important metaphor for Hebrew thought. Jesus himself would indicate the importance of having “salt” within: “Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another” he would say in Mark 9:50. The name of YHWH in fact IS the salt of the covenant, says Rabbi Moshe Yoseph Komiuchowsky. Being in covenant, being in salt with YHWH was your peace.
The salt covenant is a covenant of peace. Love of God issues in peace among all people. Only God could make things right in violence-torn Jerusalem. It would happen through the birth of a new shepherd king. It would happen through a life devoted to love, and peace, and service. A king of Israel would be born. A faithful king. An upright king. A shepherd king, pure of heart and pure of mind. A king of the people. The people would turn back to God. Peace would rule again. And a little child would lead them (Isaiah 11:6).
The shepherds lived by the scriptures. They knew all about the salt covenant. A salt covenant is eternal. In ancient times, ingesting salt made a legal agreement forever binding! And God always kept God’s word! In second Chronicles 13:5, it said, “Don’t you know that the Lord the God of Israel has given the kingship of Israel to David –and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt?”
All the shepherds needed to do is identify the location and identity of that child who would be born in the line of David. Even hiding out in Bethlehem, the “underground” faithful would have known about the child conceived by Joseph and Mary, both inheritors in the Davidic line. This would be a special child, and he would be born to be a future king.
To be swaddled (washed in salt and swaddled) was to reveal God’s glorious presence in His priest and king, the Emmanuel. Salt swaddled was code for “God wrapped in flesh,” the Lamb of God, the sign of the Shepherd Priest, the Shepherd King of Israel. It was indicative of the Davidic line.
Another sign was the “manger” or “crib” –the animal trough that when translated into Hebrew, indicates either tent or sukkah (tabernacle) –another code word for “God with us.” Whether you believe that Jesus was born around the time of the Feast of Tabernacles (as the eighth holy guest along with the shepherd priests who came before him) or born at the first of Nisan, the beginning of the Jewish year (in which God pitched His tent and tabernacle among us, as Messianic Rabbi Leo Hohmann suggests), either way, that “manger” had “God with us” written all over it!
This was the Lamb of God, who would be the Bread of the World, the peace of the nations, the king and restorer of Israel, the hope of the people. God tabernacling with us. God’s promise revealed. The eighth shepherd in the Feast of Tabernacles, the Good Shepherd (John 10:11), the holy Messiah King.
And if those signs weren’t enough, there was also the experience of the angels declaring the “good news”! That could shake you up a bit, no?
It’s SO God that the first evangelists for Jesus were shepherds. Shepherds –who had every reason to want to regain their honorable status in life again, who pined for the honor of Israel, who lay awake at night watching the stars and the weather as they watched their flocks, looking for the signs of scripture. Lowly shepherds served God with the least of possessions but the greatest of passions----a loyal and faithful heart, a heart that trusted in God’s promises. It was those with heart, the heart of a Shepherd, that God chose then and God chooses today, again and again and again.
Shepherds believed the messiah would be a shepherd king. One like them. One whose life would serve and who would bring peace to a nation gone astray (as told by Ezekiel), one who would come to be the harvester of heaven and shepherd of Israel. On a night most likely in the earliest spring, the end of March or the beginning of April, as shepherds watched their flocks by night, the Perfect Lamb was born: The Paschal Lamb.
This Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world was bathed in salt and wrapped in swaddling cloths. And laid in a “manger” –a sukkot not unlike the one perhaps that Abraham had made a long time ago (Genesis 18:1-10). The angels cheered. The shepherds found him following the “signs” they knew so well.
And Mary pondered all of this in her heart. What would this child become?
“Mary do you know?” the song asks? Some knew.
The shepherds knew.
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