Today’s reading: Luke 2 NASB
SCRIPTURE “The shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.” Luke 2:20 NASB
OBSERVATION
Ever return from a movie totally jazzed - wanting to tell some else? I have! I can imagine the mind blowing excitement of discovering everything just as it had been told to them - Wow!!!!!!
It’s in the midst of this excitement I began to wonder.... did the shepherds already take part of the census Caesar Augustus required? ....And what did things look like on the front end of this scene? What prefaced the shepherd to follow all the angels spoke of?
Were the shepherds simply enthralled with trees, lights, presents, and eggnog? lol.... Nope.... Time for a cultural mindset shift.... The Christmas season was and is the culmination prior events.... of Advent to a Jewish shepherd.
What’s Advent? Advent is about the church calendar and the church calendar is something we never stop talking about.
Like what? For starters: the birth & death of Christ.
So let’s take a look through the shepherds eyes and go, ‘Advent.‘ Advent.... Wow, that takes me back to the Exodus. (I didn’t see that coming) and look at the story of the Hebrew slaves being rescued from Pharaoh. Okay?... It isn’t just a story about the God who rescues people from the cracking whip—it’s about the God who rescues people from other kinds of slavery as well. See life in Egypt was comprised of making bricks for the Pharaoh every day, all day, without rest or one would hear the sound of a cracking whip and a painful cry. Bricks, bricks, bricks, eat, sleep, more bricks, bricks, bricks. Tomorrow will be just like today: bricks, bricks, bricks.
When the Israelites are rescued, however, God gives them commands, one of the most urgent being to take a Sabbath day a week, a day unlike the others. Yep, it was a day without bricks. Six days you shall work, but on the seventh, don’t.
Why is this so monumental? God gives them balance via a physical, mental, and emotional break. Sun up to sun down - the Israelites worked day after day.... until everything just blurred together.... Life for them before God’s commandment of the Sabbath was an unmeasurable succession of blurred days gone past. But now.... with God’s command, their time is broken up, measured, arranged, and dare I say ‘planned.’ And so they created the church calendar. A way to organize the year, a way to bring variance to our days, a way to measure work, a way to personally care for oneself and family.
What’s an Advent calendar example?
Let’s go Lent. For the seven weeks leading up to Easter or Resurrection Sunday, the shepherd’s practiced sober awareness of our frailty, sins and smallness. What? Okay, let’s rewinded a bit. Let’s go ‘Ash Wednesday’ when ashes are traced on our foreheads in the shape of the cross, a tactile reminder of our origins in the dust. From there we come, and to there we will go. (Genesis / Exodus). ‘Ash Wednesday’ brought the shepherds to a starting point where one faced a timeless truth: “death.” By focusing the ending point they continually were reminded that, “I’m I’m weak, powerless, and small.” See they spent seven weeks facing their death and despair and doubt. This process engaged their—heart, mind, and emotions—nothing behind. Why?
For a number of reasons, chief among them the simple truth that Sunday comes after Saturday. Only when you’ve gotten through, not around “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” are you ready to throw the only kind of Resurrection party worthy of the occasion—that Sunday when we run huffing and puffing from the open tomb, beating our pots and pans in that clanging raucous outburst that begins with those three resounding words: “He is risen.” But that’s not the end—the Resurrection is just the beginning! After Christ’s birth was His death. So, on the shepherds would go to the season of Pentecost! Pentecost is the celebration of the Spirit, the One who moves in mysterious ways.
Jesus is not with us in body, He’s with us in Spirit. He’s risen, but He’s also here, in ways that transcend language, and so reflect on this for a season, tuning your radar to the divine presence in every moment of every day. So we like the shepherds are headed somewhere, coming from somewhere else, and doing it along side others, as a community of disciples, as a community group made up of individuals, as a church.
In life I sometimes find myself exhausted, other times I’m overwhelmed with doubt. Sometimes I’m on top of the world and everything is going smoothly, other times I find myself standing in the midst of the wreckage, surrounded by smoldering flames, wondering how it all went so wrong!?....
The issue then, as it is now, isn’t just getting me out of Egypt (figuratively)—it’s getting the Egypt out of me. It’s rescuing me from sameness, dullness, flatlined routine, reminding me that however I’m feeling, whatever I’m experiencing, wherever I’m at in my heart—the Spirit waits to meet me there (aka: a timeless saying, “God want to meet you right where your at.”)
APPLICATION
That takes me to Advent! Advent, then, is a season! The church calendar is about seasons, whole periods of time I enter into with a specific cry, a particular intention, for a reason. Societies calendar revolves around season - unknowingly where it began....
Advent is about anticipating the birth of Christ! It’s about longing, desire, that which is yet to come. That which isn’t here yet. And so in these days before Christmas I wait, expectantly (like a child excited about Christmas day) With an ache. Why? Something being hoped for.
Why does Advent mean so much to me? Cynicism is the unsaid new religion of our time. Saying, “Whatever it is, this religion teaches that it isn’t as good as it seems. It will let me down. It will betray me. That institution? That church? That politician? That authority figure?” Teaching individuals, “They’ll all let me down. Whatever I do, I need to not get my hopes up. Whatever you think it is, whatever it appears to be, it will burn you, just give it time.”
Advent confronts this corrosion of the heart with the insistence that God has not abandoned the world, hope is real and something is coming. Advent charges into the temple of cynicism with a whip of hope, overturning the tables of despair, driving out the priests of that jaded cult, announcing there’s a new day and it’s not like the one that came before it.
Another question: “Were the shepherds more apt to respond to a the angels guidance because of ‘TIMELINESS’ in which everything was occurring? (aka: a master plan)”
PRAYER
God, Your promises, Your plans, Your calendar, Your timing are all perfect. Honestly, I work on different timeline than You at times - God... lol... Help me hold fast to Your promises and return to the traditions You’ve set out to help me consciously develop a genuine relationship with You as I continue to daily holdfast to the hope which is before me. - Trevor
Your thoughts?
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