In this Christmas season, we see innumerable crèche scenes with figurines representing the central protagonists of the biblical story of Christ’s birth (a tradition tracing its origins to Francis of Assisi’s efforts to make tangible the narrative to his illiterate townsfolk). Elemental to these scenes is the familiar shepherd dressed in rustic clothes with a lamb draped over his shoulders. It seems then a profitable endeavor to examine what the presence of these characters tells us about the newborn Messiah.
First, it is important to note the distinction among the four Gospels regarding the birth narratives. Mark and John have none whatsoever. Matthew has only the Magi visiting the infant, Luke only the shepherds. Thus, our contemporary manger scenes that include both are then a conflation of these individual traditions.
Noted Scripture scholars Raymond Brown’s monumental study “The Birth of the Messiah” and Joseph Fitzmyer’s “The Gospel According to Luke,” shed light on the importance of these opening scenes. Fitzmyer claims that Luke’s infancy narrative “incorporates many theological motifs of the Gospel proper…it is an integral factor in Lucan theology. Functioning, as it were, as an overture to the Gospel proper, the infancy narrative sounds initially many of the motifs to be orchestrated later on in the Gospel and Acts.”
The shepherds then set the tone for the evangelist’s particular interests and agenda in interpreting the Incarnation and Resurrection.
First, they give an indication of the theme of reversal of expectation which is central to Luke’s Gospel. Brown claims the entire Lucan birth narrative is written in an Isaian context. He claims the scene of a baby born in a manger is tied to “God’s complaint in the Septuagint of Isa 1:3 ‘The ox knows its owner; and the donkey knows the manger [phatne] of its lord; but Israel has not known me; my people has not understood me’ Luke would be proclaiming that the Isaian dictum is repealed. The shepherds have been sent to the manger to find the Lord who is a source of joy for all the people of Israel; they go and, finding the baby in the manger, begin to praise God. In other words, God’s people have begun to know the manger of their Lord.”
Thus, the birth narrative gives a small foretaste of the Isaian references which dominate Luke’s theology, most notably that of the passage, “They listen but do not comprehend; they look on but do not understand.”
In the shepherds’ realization and acceptance of the good news, Luke demonstrates the perfection of faith in the most unlikely of places, and thus shows a sure and potent example of reversing expectations and turning on its head the role of traditional religious authority. The ones who do see and hear are not those the reader expects. The shepherds, not the priests or Pharisees, come to recognize the savior. This reversal, the dramatic shift to make clear the radical newness of the Christ event, and with it the exaltation of the lowly, is typical of Lucan rhetoric and will culminate with a redeeming savior who dies in dishonor on a Cross.
Second, the shepherds are integral to a Davidic notion of Messianic Christology proposed by Luke. The typological characterization of the shepherds is clearly and intrinsically tied to the relationship between Jesus and David, the shepherd-king. The author’s entire Christology is influenced by this relationship. Luke presents Jesus as the long awaited Jewish Messiah, the descendent of David who will gather and restore Israel. This restoration is of course theological rather than political, but nevertheless Luke unquestioningly sees Jesus as the reigning savior of God’s people. The realization that Christ is this savior and Messianic king, as announced by the angels to the shepherds, is consistent throughout Luke’s narrative.
The angels claim “To you this day there is born in the city of David a Savior who is Messiah and Lord.” The connection between Jesus and David, as evidenced by the shepherd scene, is merely one of a myriad of rhetorical tools used by the author to show continuity between the rising Christian movement and the older, established Jewish religion, whose place was set in the Roman world.
Lastly, Luke uses the shepherds as typological representations of the poor, downtrodden, and marginalized toward whom Christ’s mission has a significant orientation in the Lucan narrative. Some believe the shepherds to be predecessors of the sinners who will be forgiven later in the narrative. Shepherds were viewed to dwell on the lowest rung of Israelite society, often considered dishonest or untrustworthy because of their tendency to do whatever was necessary to eke out a subsistence survival outside the boundaries of the community. They show very clearly a solidarity between Christ and those stricken with poverty or marginalized from society.
The systematic theologian Jacques Dupuis professes “Jesus not only shows a ‘preferential option’ for the poor, he is not simply ‘on their side,’ but he personally identifies with them: he is not simply for the poor, but belongs to them, and is with them.”
Nowhere is such an identification with the poor stronger than in Luke’s writings. Thus, his birth narrative, and in particular the shepherds, are prime examples of his attempts to show Jesus as the hope of the poor. Regardless of exactly how the poor are conceived or defined, it is evident that the shepherds are part of this collective term, one of the first instances of poverty to appear in the narrative.
The shepherds’ very appearance echoes the themes of the Magnificat in the preceding chapter. The Marian hymn reiterates the Lucan understanding of God’s relationship with the poor, embodied in the presence of the shepherds at the crib, “He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree, he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”
Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.
at the bottom and then tap “Add to Home Screen”