And There Were Shepherds

HESTER DONALDSON JENKINS

There is no more lovely episode in the story of Jesus' birth than that of the shepherds, to whom came the angel choir singing of the coming of the Christ. Painter, musician, and poet have vied with each other in celebrating it worthily. In a quite different fashion one student of Christian Science has essayed to follow its meaning.

It is a story of shepherds. In the Hebrew Scriptures God is often spoken of as a shepherd, and Jesus called himself "the good shepherd;" but in this story the shepherds stand for the simple workers for God, whose flocks are the thoughts and deeds they carefully tend. These shepherds were "in the same country" with the Christ-babe: the light would not have shone upon them had they been in dark Egypt, or far from their father's home; but they watched their flocks "in the same country."

Jesus uses the endearing term "little flock" to his disciples, and Mary Baker Eddy speaks of her flock and the flock of her students. The word "flock" suggests love, tender-ness, and devotion. Sheep are defined in the Glossary of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 594) as, "Innocence; inoffensiveness; those who follow their leader." Metaphysically, sheep might mean the pupils of a teacher, the children of a parent, the employees of an employer, the patients of a practitioner. All of us have some of these sheep to tend. It was the business of the shepherds to tend the flocks; they were thus doing their duty when the glory came.

They did their duty by night. Does this imply that they were conscious of darkness, that all was not joy and illumination? Still, even if so, they watched; they did not sleep or lose their alertness. Our Leader would seem to indicate why the glory came to them, when she writes in the Preface to Science and Health (p. vii), "The wakeful shepherd beholds the first faint morning beams, ere cometh the full radiance of a risen day." Wakefulness is always rewarded. It was so here; for "lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them." How wonderful to have one's watching and working—one's alertness through the dark night—so blessed!

But here comes in the strange response of the shepherds —"they were sore afraid." This seems at first thought amazing. But as we stop to study the fact, is not this fear often shared by mortals? We long and watch and wait and abide "in the same country;" but when the radiance breaks upon us, we are sore afraid. We fear that it is not real, that it cannot last, that it is deceiving us. We cannot trust God enough to welcome the glory He sends to us; we doubt His angel.

But the shepherds recovered themselves when God's thought in angel guise bade them, "Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy." And their recovery enabled them to hear the chorus in the heavens, and to obey the call to go to Bethlehem. Was this a call to leave the flocks, — school, family, work, — or merely their cares and fears, and to move towards the Christ, Truth, that was turning a manager to glory? Obedience removed their fear, doubt, selfishness. They knew something of what the babe stood for when they saw him, even lying in a manger, and they "made known abroad" what they had seen and heard.

Is not every faithful worker in Christian Science like these shepherds? Is not his faithful watching rewarded by a great illumination? And is not his fear turned to recognition of peace and good will, and his obedience led to a sight of the Son of God? In the matchless words of our Leader (ibid., p. vii), "So shone the pale star to the prophet-shepherds; yet it traversed the night, and came where, in cradled obscurity, lay the Bethlehem babe, the human herald of Christ, Truth, who would make plain to benighted understanding the way of salvation through Christ Jesus, till across a night of error should dawn the morning beams and shine the guiding star of being."

And after the spiritual illumination and the appearance of God's angel and the heavenly song come to us, we must go on to the fuller recognition of Christ, Truth, and then, and not till then, are we ready to make "known abroad" God's word — fitted to become God's messengers. The shepherds took up the angels' song and repeated it: they carried on the message of heaven, harmony. Let us do the same!

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