“When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child;
and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”

The shepherds.
Who knew what they were in for that night, like any other night, out in the cold fields.
Who knew that this night would be a Hallmark experience.
Angels lighting up the skies with a message that sent the shepherds on a mission.
The Good Shepherd we’d hear about later would leave his 99 sheep to find the one.
These good shepherds left their 99 to find the one
whose birth announcement the angels had just delivered.
The shepherds left the fields to find Mary and Joseph and the baby;
and they woke the town with the news.

This is not the first time in the stories of the Bible that someone has a Hallmark moment.
Moses had his when he saw the bush in the desert;
the bush that burned but would not burn up.
That’s not something you can easily walk away from.
That’s a story you need to tell someone.
Obviously Moses did, and his solitary experience,
the experience that changed him into the leader of his people
is recorded for always in Scripture.

The same for the moment on the mountaintop when Peter, James and John saw Jesus,
dazzling as the sun, talking to Moses and Elijah.
They weren’t ready to leave that moment.
“Let us put up tents here, so we can stay. This is too good to walk away from.

Maybe you’ve had a mountaintop experience in your life, like the shepherds.
A moment so awesome, so unbelievable, so memorable,
that even though you know you will never forget a single bit of it,
more than anything you do not want it to end.
You want to pitch tent there, to stay.

Moses, the shepherds, Peter, James and John all probably felt that way.
This is really terrific. This is where God is.
Let me stay here, if not always, then for a long time.

Yet Moses- he is sent straight off to Pharoah to start the pleading…
“Let my people go.”
Again and again he had to return, Moses, the shy poor speaker, Moses who stuttered,
the least likely spokesman for the Hebrew nation.
“Let my people go.”
A moment of awe in the desert- to fuel a long, long mission.
A mission that God would make possible, that God of the burning bush.

Peter, James and John would have stayed on the mountaintop.
The sight they saw that day never left them.
Peter wrote of it years later in his epistle.
It was the moment that fed him with faith and zeal, the memory of his lifetime.
But stay there on the mountain? Hardly.
Jesus sent them all on down, to head to Jerusalem, and now we know what for.

The shepherds- no different.
Angels in the night.
A sky ablaze with heavenly messengers, a multitude of the heavenly host,
praising God with the glory of their message and song.
It was cold in the fields, but this was a concert no one wanted to end.
And when it’s done, when the angels have packed up their harps and gone home,
the shepherds who are begging for an encore,
are driven to rush off to find Mary and Joseph and the baby;
to tell everyone they meet what they have heard about this child.
To spread the amazement that they hadn’t yet had a chance to absorb.

It is the same with us. We have our moments.
We have our mountaintop experiences.
Our moments of grace. Our moments of God.
We see our burning bush.
We hear an angel or two; we’d love to stay there;
and we know that it is God preparing us.
Maybe we experience a Transfiguration,
or have an unexplainable moment that has God written all over it.
And we want to stay there.

You’ve heard the story of the Christmas day theft of the baby Jesus from an outdoor creche. The police were called to investigate. So a policeman sets out to drive around the neighborhood to see what he can find out, and after riding up and down a few streets, he sees a little boy pulling a red wagon, and there is the little missing Jesus enjoying a ride. The policeman stops to talk to the boy. “What are you doing?” “Why did you take the statue?” The boy answers: “I asked him for a wagon for Christmas; and I promised him the first ride.”

Numinous moments call us out.
The ecstasy of getting that red wagon wasn’t where the little boy could stay;
the wagon gave him his first mission.

We love to kneel at the manger; we love to sing our candlelit “Silent Night”,
to have our numinous Christmas moment,
That wonderful moment; we’d love it to last; to pitch tent there.
But God doesn’t let us stay there long.
For whether we are Moses, or Peter, a shepherd or a little boy-
our moment of wonder and grace is only to prepare us to spread the word.
To tell Pharoah to free the people, to preach the gospel to the Gentiles,
to go out into the night streets and tell all who will listen
about the baby that has been born to us.

We only come in to go out. We only hear so we can tell.
We only are fed so that we can feed.

Because God’s love cannot be contained within our hearts.
It must spill over to the lovely and to the unlovely.
The angels’ music must be sung to a world that sings out of tune.
The story of the baby that came to love the world
must be told to the world that so needs a loving story.

The experience of that angelic night transformed shepherds into disciples.
Angels always seem to do that to people.
That is my Christmas wish for us all.
May the Christmas angels send us into the dark night with the best news.
May we take the baby Jesus in our new red wagons for everyone to see.

“and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”

AMEN,
Rev. Terry Suruda, Deacon

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