Dear Friends,
What must have been going through young David’s mind. A few moments earlier he was in the fields, watching the family’s sheep: keeping them safe from predators and making sure none of them strayed off.
Then, suddenly, without warning, he was summoned to the sacrifice that was going on in his hometown of Bethlehem. There the priest Samuel looked at him and said, “Yep, this is the one that God wants!” And with that poured oil over him, anointing him and starting a process that would eventually make him king of Israel. Surrounding him were his father, his probably peeved brothers who had just been passed by for the same honor, and likely some astonished townsfolks.
I don’t think it’s an accident or coincidence that about a thousand years later, in those same hills outside of Bethlehem, other shepherds, perhaps minding descendent sheep of the ones that David was watching that day, were suddenly and unexpectedly drawn away from their duties to pay a visit to a newborn baby, himself of David’s lineage.
Shepherds are the least likely to grow up to be king or to get in early in paying homage to a just born king. Shepherds are just expected to stay with the sheep; that’s their job after all. When it comes to dead-end jobs,shepherding must rank up there with the best(or worst?) of them.
In our modern-day, non-agrarian culture though, we don’t get that joke so much. God chooses a shepherd to rule over the promised land?! God chooses shepherds as the first recipients of the good news of salvation of humanity?! Right! Tell me another good one.
But it’s true. God works with who God will to bring about God’s commonwealth here on earth. And there’s no reason to believe that God has given up yet on doing any of that.
If we think however that we’ll find God anointing anyone in the halls of power and places of influence, we’re looking in the wrong places and we need to read about shepherds a little more.
Peace,
Gerry
[This post is out of order--it should have come before the sermon on the 21st. Oops. My apologies.]
© Gerry Brague
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