W HAT DOES your ordinary day look like?
For me, an ordinary day in the office during COVID-19 is checking and responding to emails, text messages, and phone calls. Coordinating with the staff, and doing some type of work preparing for Sunday — getting input on what to include or leave out of the service, preparing the liturgy, studying for the sermon, and record parts for the online worship. The same thing day after day, or close to the same.
Except … except when it’s not. A phone call about a death. A concern about someone in need. A Christmas pageant to help put together.
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THE SHEPHERDS ARE at their office. Outdoors, night duty, keeping watch. The same thing day after day and night after night, or close to the same.
Except … except when it’s not. A lion tries to take a lamb. Desperados seek to steal the flock. Singing angels appear.
During the early years of the Old Testament, shepherding was a noble occupation. Somewhere along the line, shepherding became a menial vocation for the laboring class.
In Christ’s day, shepherds were on the bottom of society. They shared the same status as tax collectors and dung sweepers. In general, they were considered second-class and untrustworthy. As such, they could not be admitted in court as witnesses. Shepherds were officially labeled “sinners” — a technical term for a class of despised people.
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YET, SURPRISINGLY and significantly, God picked lowly shepherds to first hear the joyous news: “Rejoice! It’s a boy, and He’s the Messiah!”
I don’t expect there was much joy in shepherd lives. Yet here they’re being told to “rejoice.” Today we lit the third advent candle — the curiously pink candle — for the shepherds and the quality of joy.
Joy. We see the word everywhere this time of year. Signs, ornaments. Knickknacks. We sing of joy. It’s as if joy is part of the Christmas package. It comes out of storage with the tree. It’s handed out with presents. But often, things are not any more joyful at Christmas than they are any other time of the year.
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FAR FROM BEING PERFECT, pristine, rosy, and bright, life is filled with disappointments, unexpected difficulties, and heartaches. This reality, I think, leads all of us to a basic question we must deal with: What does it mean for us to have joy?
Does our idea that joy and happiness are the same, prevent us from experiencing the joy in the good news — “Rejoice! It’s a boy, and He’s the Messiah!”?
The shepherds offer us perspective on finding joy in a world that is almost always less than perfect and often not happy. Think about it. Even after the shepherds encounter the angel and the baby Jesus, the best we know is they return to the difficulties and struggles of their everyday lives. But we also know their lives were changed by what happened in Bethlehem that night.
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WHAT THE ANGEL SAID to them was that they were receiving news of “great joy.” The coming of Christ will bring joy into their lives. Even though their circumstances are not going to change, joy now and forevermore will be theirs.
What the angel suggests to the shepherds and what is so important for all of us to embrace is that joy is the ability to discover hope and peace, no matter what happens in any given day in our lives.
The Good News of Christmas is that Christ’s coming into the world isn’t a way for us to discover happiness, but it is a way for all of us, through a relationship with this child, to know joy.
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IN SOME TRADITIONS, today is Gaudete (Gaw•day•tay) Sunday, from the Latin word for “rejoice,” as found in Paul’s wonderful refrain in Philippians 4: “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.” The pink candle reminds us it is about time to have a party. “Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy … .”
What is this great joy?
■ Joy is the ability to find hope in God, no matter what happens in our lives.
■ Joy is the ability to say that because God loves me, is with me, and will guide me, I am at peace.
■ Joy is the ability to sense God’s goodness and God’s mercy even when we can’t see it.
■ Joy is a constant sense of God with us during the ups and downs and ebbs and flows of life.
■ Joy is the great gift offered to the shepherds, and to us — the ability to recognize blessedness even when there is no exterior evidence to support such a claim.
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THE OPPORTUNITY is ours. We have the chance to renew our joy in these days — a joy knowing God that can never been taken away, no matter what happens out there. Amen.
