Most of us have heard the "Christmas story" countless times.  Across the world for thousands of years, people have read and pondered, over and over, Luke's account of Jesus' birth.  One might almost think that there is nothing new to find in it.
     But there always is.  As I was reading it this year, I found myself struck, and not for the first time, by the thought that the first people to hear about Messiah's birth were shepherds. In the twenty-first century, unless we are living in an isolated rural area in various parts of the world, we do not think much about shepherds.  In Jesus' day, however, many people did.  Shepherds were an integral part of the economy of the ancient world.
     Socially, however, the shepherds were despised, viewed as the lowest of the low.  Few wished to associate with them.  They spent their days--and nights--largely apart from the rest of the people, living lonely lives in the fields and hillsides of the nations.
     Yet throughout the pages of the Bible, shepherding is held in high esteem.  Most of us have heard of Psalm 23, the psalm of the Good Shepherd, and many of us are aware that Jesus presented himself as the good shepherd (John 10).  In addition, David, the most famous king of ancient Israel and distant ancestor of Christ, was a lowly shepherd boy when he killed the Philistine giant, Goliath.
     Many of us devote the Christmas season to finding the most expensive gifts we can afford.  We strive to go one better than we did last year.  The last thing we aim for in our gift buying is humility.  Ironically, however, the first group of people to whom God revealed the birth of Jesus were people whose lives were steeped in humility:  forgotten by nearly everyone, the shepherds labored and toiled outside the margins of conventional society. No one knew them.
     We might say that in its purest form Christmas doesn't encourage greatness; it calls for humility.  It calls us to look not at ourselves and how we can spend our money on ourselves, our friends, or family, but rather what we can do for others, what we can do for the "shepherds" among us.  Christmas demands that reach out to those on the margins. While we will always be inclined to take care of ourselves, we may not be as eager to do so for others.
     So did Jesus say that, "The Son of Man [a name that he often used for himself and which reflected traditions deep in the Hebrew worldview] did not come to serve, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for the many" (Mark 10:45).