One of my favorite books over the years is a book by Don Kraybill
called The Upside Down Kingdom. In this book, he reflects upon
the life of Jesus and the fact that what Jesus preached and what he
did turned society's status quo upside down. He said, "The poor
are rich. The lowly are lifted up. The weak are powerful." His
declaration of this was first made at the moment of his birth, as we
see in this story. The point we want to draw out today is that
God looks favorably upon the overlooked, the forgotten, the
invisible, and so should we.
The shepherds were Israel's forgotten people. In their day, the
shepherds were a fellowship of the forgettable, if not the forgotten.
Maybe you thought of them as blue-collared yet respected laborers.
Think again. No blue-collars; no white collars. These harvesters of
would-be wool wore no collars. They had no status. It is even
possible that they had Rambo-like tendencies as they tended their
flocks out there by night. But by day, they sheepishly made their way
toward town. They were the overlooked in society. In a culture
into which Jesus was born, shepherds had very little chance of ever
doing anything different with the rest of their lives. Unlike David,
who was also born in Bethlehem, your chances of tending your father's
sheep and then growing up to become king of Israel were as remote as
catching Chinook salmon in the Dead Sea. Times have changed in a
thousand years since David's birth. Shepherds were anything but
waiting in the wings for a royal robe.
A musical was written by Michael and Stormie O'Martian called "The
Child of Promise." They wrote a song for that that shatters
our starry-eyed view of the shepherds. These shepherds were not
George Clooney look-alikes dressed in terrycloth bathrobes smelling
Downy-fresh. Listen to the realism of this song called, "Nothing
Ever Happens to a Shepherd."
"It's cold outside in this God-forsaken place, And we're
stuck here with a thousand sheep.
While life is exciting for everybody else, the highlight in our
day is sleep.
It's lonely out here in this isolated job. Our position is without esteem.
We're socially challenged. We're society's scourge. We're not
exactly every woman's dream.
Shepherds have a hopeful purpose; of our fate few people care.
Sometimes I wonder if God knows we exist. If he does, he's
forgotten where.
Nothing ever happens to a shepherd. Life is boring as can be.
While exciting things occur all over the world, nothing ever
happens to me."
What a poignant description of what it is like to be an overlooked
member of first-century Jewish society. No wonder it was unthinkable
that God would choose a group of sheep herders to receive the first
birth announcement pertaining to his son's arrival. By instructing
the angels to "go tell it on the mountain," the Creator
wasn't just randomly selecting those who would be the first to hear.
He knew what he was doing. He was making a statement. Nobodys are
somebodys to God. Those who spend their nights and days caring for
sheep with matted wool matter to God.
And so in this account, we have God honoring the overlooked, honoring
the shepherds with a special revelation and task. Look at the end of
the passage. It says, "When the shepherds had seen Jesus, they
spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child,
and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to
them." You better believe they were amazed. It wasn't what the
shepherds had to say that left the crowds amazed. It was the fact
that the shepherds were the ones who were broadcasting such
network-worthy news. Of all people who would be privy to this kind of
late-breaking development, you'd expect Dan Rather or Peter Jennings
or Tom Brokaw to be the one to break it. Anybody but unshaven,
uneducated shepherds.
There's a principle at work here. Have you seen it yet? God
intentionally chose the shepherds as those who would initially be
entrusted with the message of Jesus' birth. It wasn't a random
choice. By having the angels tell them, he was honoring their worth,
giving them a special role, and we have been called to do the same
thing. When we share the good new of why Jesus was born with those
around us who are held hostage by prejudice, economic injustice or
the consequences of bad choices earlier in life, we validate their
worth in God's sight. Paying attention to the overlooked and
undervalued in our lives and in our society is a debt we owe that is
long overdue.
Let me take this a step further. When we honor the shepherds in our
culture by sharing secrets about God's love, we honor God by
following his lead. That's what Jesus did. When the Christ child grew
up and began his itinerant ministry as an adult, he followed the
model his father had already set in motion. He hung out with the
outcasts. He touched the lepers. He elevated the status of sinners
and women and children, all who were overlooked in that society.
And get this. I think this is really cool. When Jesus attempted to
draw attention, to draw a picture of his purpose in coming to earth,
what did he sketch? An unmistakable image. He called himself a
shepherd! "I am the good shepherd," he said. "The good
shepherd lays down his life for his sheep." He found a way to
affirm the essential work of the underclass of society. I'm
speculating here, but I have a hunch that Jesus knew more than a few
sheep herders by their first names. No matter their occupation,
whoever was lonely out there in that isolated job, whose position was
without esteem, whoever was socially challenged or society's scourge,
those were the ones Jesus reached out to.
Touching the world with the love of God, Jesus identified with those
who had little or no public identity. And he still does that. In
Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats. This
is a judgment passage. You know it, I'm sure. Jesus fast-forwards the
tape to the end of time when he will return to earth accompanied by
his angels again. The upshot of the story is this: Like it or not, we
will be held accountable for the way we responded to the overlooked
in our lives and in society. What is even more remarkable is that
Jesus implies he is so identified with those marginalized people that
when we reach out to them (or when we resist them), we are reaching
out to Jesus (or resisting him). So it's important for us to learn
how to honor the overlooked. It appears there is a lot at stake for us.
You've got a little space on the back of your bulletin. Write three
things down for me. What's the first step to honoring the overlooked?
It may seem a little obvious, but to me, the first step is to
actually see them. Look for them. Ask God to help you recognize
the overlooked. Give a little time to this endeavor. You'll be out
and about in the next couple of weeks. You're going to be sitting in
an airport. You're going to be sitting down to rest at the Mall.
You're going to be going to Christmas parties. I'd like you to put
out your antennae and just look around and see who's alone. Who's
sort-of out of the loop? Who's being overlooked? Who's the one for
whom no one else is caring?
I knew several months ago I would be preaching on this subject today,
and I was at one of these denominational meetings I've been going to,
and right there in the middle of the hustle and bustle, two guys came
up to me to ask my advice about something and to share some thoughts
about issues that we're dealing with. I recognized that one guy was
doing most of the talking - tall, good-looking, articulate, winsome
personality. In the middle of that conversation, focused on this guy,
I realized there was other person in the conversation, too. He
was a short, stocky, very ordinary, kind of irrelevant-looking person.
I realized whom I was favoring, and I was really convicted. I bet
there are times and places where you might experience the same thing,
where you're drawn to certain people and just ignore the others. The
first step to honoring the overlooked is to actually look at and see
those we've been counting as invisible all this time.
Secondly, Look at them with God's eyes. Put on God's
eyeglasses to see through his compassion, his love and care for folks
we have ignored. One thing we know about every single human being,
regardless of their stature, their privilege or lack thereof.
We know that that person has been created in God's image. It says so
in the Bible (Genesis 1:27), specially created and endowed by God
with a unique personality and unique needs and unique gifts. This
person, by virtue of his creation, is worthy of God's love, and
therefore worthy of mine.
These are people with needs, starved as we are for love and able to
teach me something.
It is this aspect of the Gospel that motivates Jack Martens to honor
the overlooked where he lives. He knows that when he reaches out to
someone in need, he is in essence reaching out to Jesus. He is, in
quotes, a minister in San Francisco who marches to the beat of a
different drummer. He's not ordained. He doesn't preach in a pulpit.
He's never been to seminary, but he is a pastor nonetheless. Ask the
over ten thousand music students who have benefited from his ministry
on the other side of the music stand.
You see, Jack Martens is a band teacher to twelve-, thirteen- and
fourteen-year-olds in the inner city of San Francisco. For 33 years,
he has braved the challenges of less-than-ideal teaching conditions
at Ben Franklin Middle School, to graciously live out his faith among
kids others would considered to be outcasts.
Over 50 percent of Martin's students are from broken homes. The same
number are on Welfare. Nearly that many come from families where
English is not the first primary language. To that score, add the
reality factor that funding for the arts has all been cut off in
Jack's school district. The building is old and deteriorating. It's
far from the kind of place first-time teachers would want to start
their careers.
Still, this 56-year-old bearded, balding and slightly
bulging-at-the-waist director drives to work every day with
anticipation and a deep sense of contentment. Shepherding his
students through the less-than-green pastures of life, he sees
himself as Father Christmas bringing joy to girls and boys all year
long.
Jack's ultimate desire is to help kids in his band see God's love.
Although Martens keeps a Bible and other Christian symbols on his
desk, it is his interaction with the kids that gives his witness a
melody line. He eats lunch with them to give them a chance to talk
through their problems at home. He stays after school to help with
difficult fingerings with their instruments and difficult passages in
life. Through the mechanics of music, he is able to communicate with
disadvantaged and academically-struggling students that they are
capable of doing something beautiful with their lives. Every December
as the band from Bend perform in the Nordstrom Plaza, dressed in
their nicely-pressed white shirts and black slacks and skirts, it's
not only the Christmas shoppers that feel the spirit of this season.
The kids in the band who might otherwise be in a gang or in juvenile
detention feel the joy of God's love incarnated in a man they know
loves and respects them. In light of the popularity of the movie Mr.
Holland's Opus, it is refreshing to know that Jack Marten is not
a fictitious character. Viewing a secular job as a sacred calling, he
has discovered the fulfillment that comes from touching the
untouchables in his own sphere of influence.
But you don't have to be a band teacher in San Francisco to make
Christ-like connections with the overlooked in your life or in
society. The shepherds of our world are all around us. They are the
homeless, and have you noticed how many more are visible just in the
last two or three weeks as the weather has turned to cold? There are
AIDS patients. There are teenagers without a father or a mother at
home. There are developmentally-disabled adults carrying your
groceries to the car. There are foreign exchange students suffering homesickness.
What do we do to honor the overlooked? Thirdly, we honor them.
We've seen them. We've seen them with God's eyes. Now we give them
honor in creative ways. How do we do that? Here are just ideas. I'm
hoping this primes the pump.
1. Affirm them to others. Give a good report. Say something
nice about someone who has been overlooked by those around you. I'm
thinking right now about the gravedigger at Oakmont Memorial Gardens
on Friday afternoon. Imagine the awkwardness of the moment. A family
grieving, standing around a gravesite, with an urn of ashes there,
and with a signal from the funeral director, this silent man comes
and lowers the box into the ground and disappears. He had a nametag
on. "Juan, thank for your kind service today." That's
honoring the overlooked, who otherwise get no notice for what they
do. Find ways to affirm the overlooked to others.
2. Give them, if you can, a special role. Here it was the
shepherds telling the good news of Jesus' birth. Later, it would be
two woman at the empty tomb who were entrusted with the first
proclamation of the Resurrection. Do you see a pattern? The
overlooked in Jesus' society were given a special role.
3. If you can, provide what they need. For instance, I've made
a mental choice this month that I will not pass by somebody who asks
me for a handout. I don't ordinarily do that, but I have made a
discipline, and I've got my purse ready, and I'm going to put some
money into the Salvation Army Kettle, and if I get into the city,
which I'm hoping to do later this month, I have decided I'm not going
to ask any questions. I'm not going to make any assumptions. I'm just
going to give for that day. I'm going to give this month to those who
ask. I know we have to overcome a mental or emotional block to do
that. I know I do. But I've decided I must do that this month, to
help me see and respond to the needs of the overlooked around me.
4. Another idea would be to give a gift or a party for someone
you have taken for granted. In Zimbabwe, the girls and I made several
friends from different social strata of the former English colonial
society of Zimbabwe. We had our European white friends. Among them
were ministers and church members and other people we would interact
with, and we also knew several Africans, black Africans, who were the
servants around us. This is the only time in my life I'll be
surrounded by servants. It was such a joy to pay their salaries, you
know, because they made very, very little money.
But we had a maid. Our neighbors had a maid. The apartment complex
had a gardener. And we decided at the end of our time that we wanted
give a little dinner for those we had made friends with, of all strata.
So we invited all of them together to our flat, the blacks and the
whites, the rich and the poor, the privileged and the underclass. And
it was a great time. There was one very proper English woman who was
scandalized by the event, but the rest of us had a great time.
And you know who stayed and stayed and stayed late into the night
playing games with us? The Africans. We had a fantastic time. They
couldn't believe it. It was so natural and right for us to do that.
We just wanted them to know that they were more than our servants -
they were our friends. And in fact, they were the ones who taught us
the most about society in Zimbabwe in 1994.
So I hope those are just some ideas to get you started. Yesterday,
President Bush and his wife went to the warehouse in Maryland where a
million-and-a-half dollars' worth of warm clothing, blankets, and
winter supplies were being shipped to Afghanistan. These items were
paid for by children of America who rose to the challenge Bush issued
a couple of months ago, for every child to give a dollar. What he was
attempting to do is to help the overlooked in our culture meet the
needs of the overlooked in the Afghan culture.
Let no one be overlooked in your life this month. It was said in the
Book of Acts (17:6) that through the ministry of the apostles, the
world turned upside down. Would it be possible for us - in the way we
honor the overlooked in our midst - to turn our world upside
down? Make the poor rich? Lift the lowly to high places? To
honor the overlooked, that's our challenge. Let us receive it and the
power of God to live it out. Amen.