Midnight Mass 2006 at St.
Mirin’s Cathedral Paisley
- My dear brothers and
sisters, on this Christmas night, I am sure we are gladdened
once again by the angel’s announcement of the birth of
Jesus: “Do not be afraid. Listen, I bring you news of great,
a joy to be shared by the whole people. Today in the town of
David a saviour has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord.
And here is a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in
swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” This message never
fails to fill us each year with wonder and joy at the birth
of Mary’s child, the Incarnate Son of God, who is called the
Emmanuel, God-is-with-us.
-
The Gospel tells us that the
first recipients of the good news of the birth of Jesus were
the shepherds who were in the fields watching their sheep
through the night. This is much more than simply a charming
or endearing detail of the Christmas story. They were part
of a people who were waiting anxiously and expectantly for
the appearance from the royal House of David of the
Shepherd-King, and, as shepherds, here they were the first
to become joyfully aware that that prophecy had been
fulfilled at a stable in Bethlehem in the birth of Jesus,
Mary’s child. They were shepherds, and they stood in wonder
and praise at the birthplace of Jesus who would say later in
his life: “I am the good shepherd”. As shepherds, they
looked after their sheep, and now they contemplated the baby
Jesus who would declare that he had come to seek out and
find the lost sheep. As shepherds, they guided, protected
and rescued their sheep, and now they came to worship the
child of Mary who came to lay down his life for his sheep.
Indeed, shepherds know better than most that, of all the
sheep in the flock, the most precious are the lambs. Not
just is Jesus, born of Mary, the Good Shepherd who knows his
sheep and seeks out the one who is lost, but he is also
pointed out by John the Baptist as the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world. He is the sacrificial Lamb whose
blood will be shed on the cross as the new covenant for
many. So my dear brothers and sisters, the fact that it was
the shepherds who first heard the good news of Jesus birth
is immensely significant. These unlikely witnesses to the
most significant event the world has ever seen in fact lead
us into the mystery of the identity and mission of Jesus,
born of Mary, in a stable in Bethlehem who was destined to
be the Good Shepherd who would lay down his life for his
sheep.
-
There is little doubt that the
shepherds were poor people, people of few and simple means,
and it is very likely that their poverty and simplicity
would help them to recognise the newly-born saviour. Jesus
as a grown man would begin his Sermon on the Mount, with
these words: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.” Perhaps he was thinking of, among
others, the shepherds who visited him as a baby and his
mother Mary and her husband Joseph in the stable at
Bethlehem. But the shepherds, in their material poverty,
were nonetheless spiritually alive. They waited with faith
and with trust for the coming of the Holy One of God. And
the key to their virtue is not so much poverty for its own
sake, but the living faith with which they would welcome the
child who was born of Mary as the Saviour, as Christ the
Lord.
-
This is the same spiritual
insight which would characterise the other group of visitors
who, following the movement of a star, would arrive at the
stable in Bethlehem and kneel down in worship before Jesus.
These were the Magi, the wise men from the east. We often
refer to them as the three kings, and they were most likely
men of status, of learning and of means. But although they
and the shepherds were worlds apart in terms of culture,
learning and social standing, they and the shepherds
nonetheless had in common a lively religiosity and a strong
trust in God, so they too could acknowledge Jesus, born of
the virgin Mary, to be the Emmanuel, God-with-us, the
Saviour long-awaited by the Jews and so much needed by all
human beings.
5.
These people, shepherds and kings, poor and rich, Jew and
Gentile, really needed God, really needed a Saviour, really
wanted God to come close to them. And they had the faith and the
insight and the trust to recognise that God had answered the
desire of their hearts in the most unexpected and amazing way of
all: God gave us his very own self in Mary’s child, in Jesus, in
his Incarnate Son. So, as we hear the Christmas message again,
first announced to the shepherds, we are invited to celebrate
Christmas with gladness that God, in his Son Jesus, continues to
answer the deepest expectations of the human heart. Christmas
means that the age-old search for God on the part of man is in
fact unexpectedly answered by a search for man on the part of
God. The good news is as astounding now as it always was, that
God’s answer, his search for us is in fact a person: “A child is
born for us, a son is given to us.” May we with the shepherds
of the fields rejoice that the child born of Mary is the
Incarnate Son of God, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who continues to
seek out the lost sheep.
St. Mirin’s Cathedral, Paisley
25th December 2006
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