They found Mary and Joseph and the child in the manger. The word "manger" had deep prophetic associations. The prophet Isaiah had written:
(Isaiah 1:3)
Here taking place is the miracle of recognition: We are recognizing the manger of our Lord: where God is and who God is.
The story ends by saying that after seeing Jesus the shepherds returned praising and glorifying God, this the shepherds’ song, and giving witness to what they had seen, these who were not allowed to be witnesses in courts of law.
II
The church has called the angels’ song "The Gloria," and in the historic liturgy of the church it is sung every Sunday after the confession of sins and assurance of pardon:
What better time to sing "Gloria": when we’ve experienced forgiveness of sins and a new kind of peace inside our own skins.
But the "Gloria" is more than a set piece of liturgy; it is God’s deepest hope for this human historical world so enmeshed in discord and mutual despising.
What if the glory of God in the highest heaven is peace on earth, and the good news of great joy to all people is God’s eudokia, good pleasure, favor on all earth’s children?
What if we were to give up our religious pride, our claims of spiritual superiority, and hear the angels’ song of God’s favor on all people - Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew - and hear the proclamation of peace as God’s greatest gift and greatest claim upon us?
How then would we live? Would you let the grace of God given to us in Christ dwell in every molecule of your being? Do you know how much God loves you? Will you receive that love that you might become that love? Would you let that love determine how you relate to every person God made?
What if breath itself is praise enough for God, and the preservation of one child’s life and health as holy as a Pontifical High Mass or a Billy Graham Revival Meeting? Can the peace announced by the "Gloria" affect our war-riven world?
Peter Steinfels, the superb New York Times religion writer, wrote a few years ago about the twentieth-century’s attempts to deal with the issue of religion, war and peace. If religion had been so involved in the worst of our wars, one argument went, why not eliminate religion? So the first movement of the century was toward a secular society: a world devoid of God and religion. This would free the world from war. Let reason, not religion, prevail. But in religion’s place came political ideology, and two World Wars proved the fallacy of that solution.
Then came the solution of ecumenism: If we could just unite the world in one church or one religion, that would be the answer. But the new rise of ethnic and national, not to mention religious, identities saw this dream fail.
Our best hope, Steinfels offered -- and this may be the challenge of the twenty-first century -- is for every religion to get into touch with its own shalom tradition, peace tradition. Once we’ve learned from our own deep pools of wisdom, let us talk together. Almost every religion I know has a tension within its own history and own sacred scriptures between a conquest tradition and a peace tradition. Let us work in our own religious houses to reconnect with our peace traditions, then talk to others who are doing that work in their houses. Then let us learn one another. The poet William Stafford wrote:
CONCLUSION
If you visit Bethlehem today -- you may not be able to because of the dangers -- it is still a small town, now mostly Muslim. If you go to the Church of the Nativity, you have to bend low to enter the place where they say Jesus was born. As you enter the tiny room, it looks for all the world like a cave. Candles are lit to break the darkness with soft light. And if you bend low enough you can almost see a child there and almost hear a young woman ask, "Here, would you like to hold him?"
And if you do, you will be holding there in your own arms not only the holy child, but every child -- maybe even your own dear child-self -- and you will experience the miracle of Incarnation.
I once brought a small child with me to visit a nursing home. As the woman we visited held the child in her arms and smelled his sweet skin, she said, "It’s been so long since I’ve held a child."
"I know," God says to us there in that tiny darkened room in Bethlehem.
"Here, this is the way to hold the world."
