This Will Be a Sign for You

Isaiah 9:2-7, Psalm 96, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-14

Then an angel of the Lord stood before the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord shone around them. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, saying “Glory to God in highest heaven.” And the angel said to them: This will be a sign for you. You will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.

It had otherwise been a fairly ordinary night for the shepherds, tending their flocks in the fields. It’s not an especially glamorous job, you know, being a third-shift shepherd. You spend your days and your nights out in the fields, away from home, away from family, no bedroom, no bathroom. When the sheep wander off in the dark, they can be hard to find. There are predators out there who are equally hard to see, until it’s too late, so you are always on alert. There isn’t much time to be sick or feel lonely or angry or worried, because the sheep need you. You are vulnerable along with your sheep, you are living not in a human house but in a sheepfold for the sake of your sheep.

And if you are of a philosophical bent, you might be wondering whether there is a God who would be a shepherd for you – a God who would become vulnerable along with you, a God who would abandon a heavenly dwelling place to come and live in your world for your sake. A God who would know you well enough to find you when you get lost and who will be there to defend you from unseen predators and dangers. It would be nice to have a God who does for you what you do for the sheep – but is that just wishful thinking? Or could it possibly be real?

And then – suddenly, without warning – an angel of the Lord appears. The glory of the Lord is visible. And then a multitude of the heavenly host – and by “host,” the text means an “army,” the army of God’s angels, visible all around, singing Glory to God in highest heaven.  For people used to being on a hair-trigger watching for danger, a terrifying thing to see.

And the angel says the thing that angels always say: “Don’t be afraid.” I’m here with good news. Good news for you and good news for everybody. And I have a sign for you.

A sign? You mean, besides the army of singing angels? Because that’s quite a sign if you ask me. Not something you see every day. You certainly have our attention.

Oh no, says the angel, we’re not doing this for you. We’re angels in the army of heaven, we are lost in awe and wonder and praise for God all the time, it’s what we do. No, I mean a sign that is for you. A sign for you human beings. In the city tonight you will find a child, a child that looks like every other human child, wrapped in layers of cloth and lying in a manger. That’s the sign that is especially for you.

Most of us would assume that, if we were to receive a sign from God, it would be something powerful and overwhelming and extraordinary – an army of angels singing in the sky, for example. A sign that you just couldn’t ignore. But God is not like that. God never overwhelms us with a presence that compels our attention and forces us to comply. Because then our response would not really be our own.

The reality is that the sign of God’s presence is something that we see every day – a baby that looks like every other baby, a baby that looks like Nan’s new granddaughter who was born this week, a baby that looks like you when you were born, a child that looks like the child who’s crying in church here tonight, a child that you see in the supermarket or getting off the school bus.  Signs from God are everywhere, and they always have been. Where the angel can help us is to tell us where to look, and to tell us not to be afraid of what we might see.

Tonight, we are a lot like shepherds on the night watch. There is a lot of scary stuff out there in the dark. There is stress – especially at Christmas time, the demands and expectations can be a lot to handle, the memories can be overwhelming for some people.  If we saw an angel in the sky our first reaction is – Oh, now what? I can’t handle one more thing.  But the angel says, don’t be afraid, I have good news for you and for all people, and I have a sign that is for you.

Look for a child, wrapped in layers of cloth, lying in a manger. Look for someone ordinary, someone very much like yourself, vulnerable, covered in layers of protective cloth that constrain and bind you. Look for someone lying in a manger, someone out of place, far from the place of safety and comfort they are dreaming of. And don’t go looking by yourself – go together, share what you see, discuss what you find, help one another to perceive the sign.

And when you see the sign, what should you do? The angel doesn’t say. For now, learning to look for the sign and to see it is enough. For the sign is here, right now, in the people gathered together in this church and in the people who didn’t make it here tonight. In people who are wrapped up in layers, vulnerable, in need. The sign is here, right now, lying not in a feeding trough but on a plate and in a cup that people share with one another, as the layers of our fears and terrors are slowly unwrapped, and as we begin to see together the sign that has been given to us.