The shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told to them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told to them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them. (Luke 2.16-20)
Contrary to popular opinion and long-standing tradition, the fishermen at the Sea of Galilee were not the first disciples. In fact, as the text that we have before us today makes clear, the first disciples preceded the Galilean fishermen by several decades. The first disciples of the man called Jesus were the shepherds who raced to the stable in Bethlehem to see with their own eyes the newborn child, whose birth angels, without the benefit of Facebook, had alerted them to.
Hearing the news, the shepherds–eager to see these unusual goings-on–said, “Let’s go to Bethlehem, now, and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” We’re told by Luke that the shepherds “came with haste,” their eagerness shown in the speed in which they rushed to the barn in Bethlehem.
So, what makes them the first disciples? Well, several things do. First, as already pointed out, they came in haste, a response to an invitation that Luke always presents as the attitude of the true disciple. Later, when Rabbi Jesus asks the fishermen to follow him, Luke tells us that they dropped their nets immediately to follow him.
That same action is already anticipated in the story of the shepherds who dropped everything to go where the child Jesus is. While they may not have dropped their nets, they certainly dropped their concern about the sheep, just as the fishermen dropped their concern about the fish they hoped to catch. They put all their former concerns behind them so that they could get to Bethlehem.
Like the true disciple, the shepherds let their feet do the talking. As Luke moves forward with the story of Rabbi Jesus, we will find the same response among others who do not hesitate to follow the Galilean Teacher. The fishermen will leave their boats and their nets without delay just as the tax-collector will leave his tax booth to answer the call.
The opposite is true of those who are not true disciples. The rich young man cannot drop his obsession with money and, as a result, stays stuck where he is. In time, Luke will have Rabbi Jesus make clear that hesitancy is antithetical to discipleship. “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God,” the Rabbi tells his disciples.
Similarly, on a different occasion, when he issued his invitation to another would-be disciple, the man answered the Rabbi, “Let me bury my father first.” Not surprisingly, Rabbi Jesus tells the man, “Let the dead bury the dead,” a rebuke to the man’s refusal to let go of his former life in service of the life that the Rabbi promised. Unlike the shepherds, this man hesitated, not making haste to go where he had been asked to go.
Another telltale for the case that the shepherds were the first disciples is the fact that they were ordinary people called in the moment to do something extraordinary, the prototype for all those that later followed Rabbi Jesus on the way to Jerusalem. In fact, the shepherds were considered minimal wage workers, often frowned upon for their rustic ways and rootless lifestyle.
Sadly, later rabbinic writers were quick to label shepherds as sinners, probably because of their failure to abide by the many laws of Judaism, their work making such observances near to impossible to fulfill. Like those “lowly ones” who followed Rabbi Jesus during his years of ministry–categorized by the Pharisees as tax-collectors and sinners—the shepherds lived on the fringes, forgotten and foreign.
These were Rabbi Jesus’ first companions, field laborers who worked the sheep and who slept among the herd. It is not unintentional that Luke puts them around the crib as the child cries out in the cold night. When grown, the Rabbi would have the same impoverished and unimportant peoples of the world as his companions, and it would be to the likes of these unassuming and insignificant lost souls that Rabbi Jesus would offer his good news of salvation.
Truth be told, the child, born to homeless parents, would spend his last years homeless, telling his followers that they, like him, would have no place to lay their heads if they chose to walk the roads that he walked. He would become one with the poor, the powerless, and the people of no consequence in a world ruled by potentates, politicians, and the prosperous.
Yes, these first companions were simple people, unsophisticated and unschooled. But, like the many others who answered the call to follow the Galilean, they would drop whatever they were doing and make haste to respond to his call, answering the call first and foremost with their feet, the preeminent sign of the disciple, one who walks the walk.
If these many clues were not enough to mark these shepherds as the first disciples, Luke provides still one other characteristic that earns them the title of follower. Luke tells us that the shepherds “made known the message that had been told to them about this child.” And what was the message that they proclaimed? It was the same that the angels had told them. “Today in the city of David a savior was born for you.”
At the end of his gospel, Luke will have the women who followed Rabbi Jesus from Galilee become the first witnesses to the empty tomb, gathering around the tomb as the shepherds had gathered around the crib at the start of the story. And as the shepherds were quick to witness to what they had seen, “returning and praising God for all they had heard and seen,” so these women also will be quick to witness to what they have seen, returning to the twelve praising God for all they had seen and heard, these women becoming true disciples at the close of the gospel as the shepherds became true disciples at the opening of the gospel.
All subsequent followers of Rabbi Jesus–even to our day and time–are obligated to do the same if we are to be true to our calling. We are to make known the message that has been told to us about this child, born in Bethlehem, destined and determined by the Most High God to be the Savior of the world. It is the foremost responsibility of the follower–to proclaim. And the shepherds were the first to do it.
Luke will spend the entirety of his later text expanding on the same points that he has planted in these few pages, presenting to us in the shepherds the first example of all those who would respond in like manner to the Galilean Teacher, answering the call to follow with the same simplicity of heart and conviction of mind.
Today, as the New Year is set before us, we are told again the story of shepherds who responded to the call and who raced to Bethlehem to be the first of the followers of the newborn Savior of the world, running ahead without reluctance and with total abandon, their example providing us with the ways and the means to do the same with our days.
They have shown us the way to answer the call. Now, if we have any of the heart of these first disciples, we will do the same with our lives, letting our feet do most of the talking for us, going where we are sent, living as we have been shown, and proclaiming what we have seen. It is a good way to start the New Year and, if we are of the right resolve, as these shepherds on the outskirts of Bethlehem were, it is a good way to live out the year.
–Jeremy Myers
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