I knew you were trouble when you walked in.

Taylor Swift

Jesus comforts. Jesus confronts. We see it over and over in the Gospels. I’ve been thinking about those two realities a lot for years now, and I have been encouraging my freshman students to wrestle with it each week as we consider a different interpersonal encounter in the life of Jesus.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about welcome. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 that God is reconciling the world to himself through Christ—and through us. God is “entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” He “gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” Unfortunately, for so many reasons in our suspicious age, we so often answer that trust with a ministry of alienation characterized by a lack of welcome.

In a strange way, these threads—comfort, confrontation, reconciliation, and welcome—come together in the Nativity story. Even as an infant, Jesus comforts. Jesus confronts. Jesus welcomes. Jesus reconciles.

They Smell Like Sheep

You might think that shepherds would be highly honored in a culture that looked to Abraham with reverence and David with nostalgic longing. But human beings have a maddening tendency to half-remember their own history and misapply its lessons, and the shepherds of the Nativity story got to live with the results.

They lived at the fringes, both figuratively and quite literally. The rhythms and structures and requirements of their job did not allow them to really participate in “normal” Judean life—including synagogue worship. You might become a shepherd because that’s just what your family does, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t try to do something else if the option was available. Finding yourself on a hillside in the middle of the night protecting someone else’s sheep from wolves and robbers was proof enough of how few options you really had. This was a line of work for people who had fallen to the bottom of a ladder whose lowest rungs had been kicked out.

Some suggest that the shepherds of the Nativity story were tending flocks intended for sacrifice in the Jerusalem temple, which might be true but does not translate into any special honor for them. Nor did their stewardship of a crucial food staple with special cultural and religious importance every Passover. Perhaps like migrant farm workers in American society today, Judean society depended on their 24/7. But that 24/7 was out of sight and out of mind—except when it wasn’t. And when the realities of the shepherds’ work came into contact with everyone else, it annoyed those people who took the benefits of their labor for granted but resented the inconveniences and complications and unpleasantness that came with it.

Shepherds were not rejected because they were shepherds so much as they were shepherds because they were rejected. But after a while, who could remember the directionality or care much about it anyway? To be alienated was to be alone, utterly alone, and consumed by that aloneness. Sure, my sheep know my voice. Nobody else does. Nobody else wants to.

Nobody except for the God who is about to break into history, that is:

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!’” When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” (Luke 2: 8-15)

You know the story, of course. We read and remember and reflect on it this time every year. But what suddenly strikes me is that the shepherds to whom a choir of angels sang the announcement of the Messiah’s arrival found what they were looking for in literally the only place in Bethlehem they would not be ostracized.

A stable.

That’s a pretty important part of the story about how some unknown shepherds, their names long lost to us, became the first evangelists of the Gospel.

Everything’s Gonna Be Alright

Pardon me while I chase a squirrel for a second, but don’t diminish the fact that their first proclamation was to Mary, the mother of Jesus. The faith of this amazing young woman and her receptivity to this—can we be honest for a second—totally crazy, completely unbelievable, absolutely reputation-destroying work of God was a predicate for all the heaven-rending, pupil-dilating, hundred-decibel activities of that evening.

But faith is not static. It ebbs and it flows. Ask Elijah, the Hero of Mount Carmel, how fickle faith can be. Find him in his cave on Mount Horeb and ask how strong and sturdy and unchanging faith is. From his prison cell John the Baptist sent two of his disciples—possibly for his own benefit, and certainly for theirs—to ask of Jesus hey, are you actually the Messiah or should we, ya know, keep looking? Ask John—and ask those two unnamed disciples who had to interrupt Jesus mid-miracle to ask that question—how durable and unshakable faith is after months and months of waiting for The Thing to happen.

And even when The Thing, the universe-reordering God-incarnating Thing, finally happens—friends, as somebody who has been raising children for about 25 years now, I think I can say with a high degree of confidence that kids take time. A LOT of time. And patience. And energy. Mary’s waiting had only just begun. But for this teenage girl who is coming off a life-disrupting hundred-mile journey amidst a life-disrupting pregnancy and is now in the throes of an adrenaline crash and a postpartum hormone crash and [waves hands emphatically], I can’t imagine not being thoroughly overwhelmed by all of THIS.

It isn’t hard for me to imagine Mary looking back over her entire short lifetime, then trying to look that far or farther into the future, and asking “O God, my God, now what?” That angelic visit was months ago. Stuff like that fills you with faith—but it only carries you so far as the waiting stretches on. The full weight of “let it be with me as you have said” just got really, really real.

And that’s when some smelly shepherds showed up.

At least they didn’t diminish the olfactory experience of the stable, and (shudder) they weren’t there to play a midnight drum solo. But really, guys…now? Now?

Yes. Right now.

Because the shepherds had just had their own angelic visitors, and now these men who were probably far more comfortable and confident around baby sheep than baby humans and were probably coming off their own adrenaline crash were telling Mary and Joseph all about it. A Savior! Christ the Lord! Glory to God in the highest! On earth, peace!

Oh, I think Mary needed that.

It wasn’t gold, incense, or myrrh, but what the shepherds brought her in the midst of almost certain exhaustion was a precious gift. And “Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.” Peace to those on whom God’s favor rests—most especially in this moment to you, precious Mary, faithful daughter of God, whose risky obedience became a blessing to the entire world.

Shepherds were not rejected because they were shepherds so much as they were shepherds because they were rejected. Sure, my sheep know my voice. Nobody else does. Nobody else wants to—except for the God who is about to break into history.

The shepherds were apparently not done, because Matthew records that all who heard their testimony of what they had seen and heard “wondered.” And here is a thing that I am really taken by as I sit with this—the stable. The testimony of the Early Church is that this was almost certainly one of the many small caves that dot the landscape around Bethlehem—caves that were used to corral livestock. God gave his Son first to Mary in a cave-stable where she was certainly less than comfortable—but then to the shepherds in the only place in Bethlehem they could be comfortable.

And that gift transformed them. Without the stable, the shepherds aren’t likely talking to anyone in Bethlehem and for sure nobody in Bethlehem is talking to or listening to them. But the stable changed everything for them. What they saw there apparently filled them with such courage that “they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child” to anyone in Bethlehem who would listen. And listen they did—listen, and wonder.

Enemies on the Porch

The Magi were possibly Persians, which (in the first century BC) is to say Parthians, which is to say “enemies of Rome.” The Parthians had occupied Judea and the surrounding territories only a few decades before, temporarily dislodging a young Herod not-yet-the-Great. But the Parthian incursion supplied Herod with the perfect outlet for his boundless opportunism, and he spent several years fighting to regain control of the Levant with Roman backing. Thus did Herod become the (Client) King of the Jews (at Rome’s pleasure).

It is also possible that the Magi were Mesopotamians, which is to say Babylonians, which is to say “historic bogeymen of the Jews.” This identification is based on the Magi’s familiarity with astronomy and astrology, disciplines that were thoroughly intertwined in the ancient world but had their genesis in Babylon several centuries before. By the first century this knowledge had spread everywhere, of course—it had thoroughly penetrated Roman society, and even Jewish literature of the period incorporates elements of it.

At the time of Christ Parthians controlled the territory of old Babylon, so it may not be worth making too much of a distinction about whether the Magi were Persians or Babylonians. It has bearing on whether they were Zoroastrians, as some Church Fathers believed, or emphatically not Zoroastrians, as other Church Fathers insisted. But I think what is important is that the Magi were from enemy territory and thoroughly pagan. Everything about them would incite the suspicion of Jews and Romans alike, causing centurions to reach for their swords as Pharisees to clutch their scrolls.

Welcome was available only to those already humbled by life—or those willing to humble themselves to enter.

And yet, in ways and for reasons that I can only speculate about, God gave these most unlikely and unwelcome men a celestial map to follow. And follow they did, arriving in Judea as uninvited foreigners asking anyone who would listen the most obnoxious question for men like them to ask in the land of an aging and paranoid Herod the Great: “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?”

The Gospels are maddeningly incurious about the timing of all this, and we can only speculate about how long after Jesus was born that the Magi found what they were looking for. Some infer from the massacre ordered by Herod that up to two years had passed. Matthew places Mary in Bethlehem, no longer in a stable but in a house, so enough time had gone by for her lodging to improve—something, perhaps, with an ambient smell that your average shepherd would actually degrade upon entry.

And yet no house in little Bethlehem would have impressed an Eastern astrologer, and some spendy incense would certainly help whatever odor there was. If the cave-stable made Jesus accessible and welcome to the lowly shepherds, the humble house under the Star of Bethlehem would be an obstacle to the high and mighty. Welcome was available only to those already humbled by life—or those willing to humble themselves to enter.

And enter the Magi did. They entered, they explained their presence, and they worshipped the child-king they had inexplicably found not in Herod’s palace but in some hut in this backwater village. They offered priceless gifts to this humble child and his humble, startled parents—gifts that poignantly signaled the remarkable life and cruel death that lay ahead for Jesus. And, I think, the very presence of these foreign pagans from a hostile land was one more gift to young Mary. It was further confirmation that God really was behind all of THIS and was up to something that would change everything.

Barriers to Entry

Maybe I am making too much of what it took for both the poor and alienated shepherds and the rich and alienated Magi to be welcome under the same roof as Jesus. The humility of the King who had emptied himself was a gift to both, but not for quite the same reasons.

For the shepherds who had nothing, nothing was required. Not even a bath. Who cares if you smell like a yak; so does everything else in here. Come inside. Lay down the burden of your self-consciousness. Worship the King. You are welcome here.

For the rich and cultured Magi, the requirement of humility to meet this same King was also a gift, one that perhaps they did not know they needed, one that was more valuable than the gold and incense and myrrh they carried. For the Magi who had everything, everything was required. Come inside. Lay down the burden of your worldly attachments. Worship the King. You are welcome here.

This Christmas, may you have reason to ponder the Child who comforts, confronts, reconciles, and welcomes you today as he welcomed smelly shepherds and lofty astrologers so many years ago.

Photo credit: Sam Kolder at Pexels