Christchurch Miami Christmas Eve Service

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

The night shift. One of them stayed up so the others could sleep. Necessary work, genuinely useful work, and nobody knew their names — a little like the person who bags your groceries, or the one who empties the bins at your office after you have gone home. Do you know that person's name?

Shepherds were not permitted to testify in court; their word was not considered reliable. Maybe because they were uneducated. Maybe because they were good storytellers and nobody could tell where the story stopped and the truth started. They likely did not even own the sheep they were guarding. They were making an honest living out there in the dark, appreciated most when they stayed out there.

And when heaven finally broke open with the announcement the whole world had been waiting for, God did not send it to the influential, the educated or the powerful — which is exactly how you would get a message out if the message were yours. He sent it to the men on the night shift, in a back corner of a village of maybe three hundred people.

So two things today. First: if you are in an unseen season, doing necessary work nobody thanks you for, note carefully who got told first.

Second, and harder: learn one name this week. The person who cleans your building, the one at the register, the one who is there before you arrive. Ask, and then use it.

Look at the lineage before you decide shepherds were nobody. Abraham was a shepherd. Jacob was a shepherd. Moses was a shepherd. David — the most famous king Israel ever had — was a shepherd.

God has a long habit here, and today's verse names it outright. Not many were wise according to worldly standards, not many powerful, not many of noble birth. He chose what is foolish to shame the wise, and what is weak to shame the strong.

Read the reason at the end of the passage, because it is the whole point: so that no human being might boast in his presence.

That is not God being contrary for its own sake. If the announcement had gone to the influential and the educated, the credit would have been permanently ambiguous. Send it to men whose testimony was not admissible in court and there is no confusion left about whose message it was.

He works through unlikely people, in unlikely places, by unlikely means.

Which means two things are true of you at once, and you probably only believe one of them. You are not too ordinary to be used — that has never once been a disqualification in this book. And you are not so capable that anything worth doing will be traceable back to you.

Where have you counted yourself out on grounds God has never used? Write down the reason you have been giving yourself. Then look at it again in light of a field full of shepherds.

There is a film about a church staging its seventy-fifth Christmas pageant, and the year a family of rough, unsupervised kids from the wrong side of town takes the whole production hostage. The oldest girl wanders in, sees a picture of Mary holding Jesus with Emmanuel written above it, and cannot look away. That is who I am going to be.

They hear the Christmas story for the first time and are indignant in all the right places. When they find out Herod wants the child dead, they want to go after Herod. Nobody had told them to be reverent, so they are simply, scandalously moved.

Then the brothers come on as the wise men. They have no use whatsoever for frankincense and myrrh, so they bring the most valuable thing their family owns — the Christmas ham somebody had given them — and set it down in front of the manger.

At the end, the girl playing Mary is holding the baby while everyone sings Silent Night, and a tear runs down her face, and the church realises it has just watched the best pageant it ever put on.

Today's verse has men of learning and means falling down and opening their treasures. The posture came before the gifts, and the gifts were simply whatever they actually had.

Sometimes people furthest from God see him more clearly than those of us who hear about him every week. Familiarity is not the same as awe, and it can quietly replace it.

What would you bring if nobody had told you what was appropriate? Bring that.

The angel gives the child three titles, and not one of them is decoration.

Savior means one who saves. In the Old Testament, the one who comes for God's people when they have no way of rescuing themselves. Not a helper for people making good progress. A rescuer for people who are stuck.

Christ was never a last name. It is a title — the anointed one. In Israel you were anointed as a prophet to speak God's word, or as a priest to intercede for the people, or as a king to lead them. He is all three, and the true one of each: the prophet who is the Word, the priest who is the sacrifice, the king whose throne was a cross.

Lord is the heaviest of the three. The Greek is Kyrios, and when the Old Testament was translated into Greek that is the word used every time the name of God appeared. Nobody standing in that field was confused about what was being claimed.

And notice who it is for. Good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Not for the qualified, not for the religious, not for the ones who had been waiting well.

Most of us have a favourite of the three and a neglected one. Savior is comfortable; we like being rescued. Lord is the one we tend to leave in the sentence without letting it change the week.

So which of the three have you been quietly skipping? Say all three out loud about him today, and mean the third one.

Notice what the shepherds did with it. They did not just hear it.

They went — with haste, the text says, leaving the flock they were paid to watch. And when they had seen, they made known the saying that had been told them about this child, and all who heard it wondered.

Hear it, go, tell. Nobody instructed them to do the third part. That is what love does; when we are truly in awe of something, we cannot keep quiet about it.

And remember who is doing the telling. Men whose word was not accepted in a courtroom become the first evangelists in Luke's Gospel, and it works — all who heard it wondered.

The Christmas Eve service ended with a single candle lit from the centre of the Advent wreath, hope and joy and love and peace already burned through the weeks before, passed hand to hand until everyone's was lit. And then we blew them out together, because this is the one night we are not called to be silent.

That is the whole instruction, and it survives past December. The light was never meant to stay in the room where it was lit.

Jesus has come — and not to save us from some small enemy, but from sin itself. Believe that. Live it.

Then go tell somebody. Not a speech. One sentence, to one person, about what he has actually done for you. Who is it going to be?