And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.’

LUKE 2:8-12

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.’ So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.

LUKE 2:15-16

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This article continues a four-part series that goes along with our new Advent devotional journey, Down to Earth. The journey and accompanying Sunday videos and sermon plans will help you reflect on our ‘down-to-earth’ Saviour – the Jesus who stepped into the mess and detail of life on Earth, and calls us to do the same. 

The angel’s invitation to the shepherds out on the hillside is one of the unlikely invitations we read about in the gospel accounts. Others include the unlikely invitation of a teenage girl to be the mother of the Saviour of the world and the unlikely invitation to a group of Magi to come and worship the newborn King. But perhaps the most unlikely invitation of all was to this group of shepherds.

Shepherds in Israel at the time of Jesus’ birth had very low social standing, even though originally the Israelites were a people of shepherds. Joachim Jeremias, a German theologian, notes that shepherds were ‘despised in everyday life’. He wrote, ‘To buy wool, milk, or a goat from a shepherd was forbidden on the assumption that it would be stolen property.’* Put simply, they were not to be trusted.

Shepherds had no civil rights. They weren’t eligible for judicial offices or even admitted as witnesses in court. Shepherds were one of the groups officially labelled as ‘sinners’, a class of despised people. They couldn’t join with others worshipping God in the temple – they were not invited.

Up to this point, the usual place for God’s glory was in the temple. 2 Chronicles 7 talks about Solomon dedicating the temple and ‘the glory of the Lord filled the temple’. But here, on this Bethlehem hillside, the shepherds’ everyday working context, we discover God’s temple is ‘everyday life’ – he’s not restricted by the walls of a building.

And it’s these shepherds who are not only invited to come and witness the birth of Jesus but are also commissioned to go and share this good news. Their priorities were transformed, their outlook was transformed, their purpose was transformed – they went out and told everyone about the unlikely invitation they had received and accepted.

One of the key purposes of Luke’s Gospel is to shine a light on those who were included in God’s kingdom – which included the Gentiles and the despised. (Our Down to Earth video for this week powerfully illustrates this today.)

There is encouragement and challenge for each one of us in the shepherds’ story. The encouragement is that our God can step right into our workplaces and everyday places: that we are all invited. The challenge is to accept that invitation with priority and urgency, speaking and acting in a way that invites others to worship our down-to-earth God.

Steve Rouse
Church Team Director, LICC

How might you extend God’s invitation to meet Jesus beyond your church gatherings into your everyday life?

*Cited in ‘Shepherd Status’, by Randy Alcorn, in Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus, edited by Nancy Guthrie (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 85–89; excerpt online here.