Oh yes.
We can cast ourselves as almost anyone in the Nativity story at different points in your life, and we can look fruitfully at how God weaves what look like disadvantages and challenges into his unfolding story. You could cast yourself as Gabriel, busy with errands. You could cast yourself as Mary, undignified with a huge belly. You could cast yourself as Joseph, just about holding things together in a bamboozling world.
What about a shepherd now?
You can cast yourself as a shepherd because God has also cast… he's cast his net wide to invite everyone in to the story, everyone into the stable.
There are all sorts of reasons why - hearing this story properly, for the first time - you'd be shocked to discover who else is on the guest list. No Pharisees, no teachers of the law, just shepherds and foreign miss men (and anyone passing by the stable). From the very start, the life of Jesus and the kingdom of God is open wide to pariahs and the unacceptable.
We forget that. We forget that because we all know the story, and we've made the deeply unlikely entirely cosy. What's cosier than a tea towel and more towelling and a dressing gown cord? But what was smellier and sweatier than a shepherd's jockstrap?
Not how the Blessed Virgin Mary greeted the shepherds, we hope.
But remember. Shepherds. Like security guards or nightclub bouncers, it's a job that you can do if you've spent some time at Her Majesty's pleasure when no-one else will look at your CV. Some of the shepherds may well have been ex-cons (that's how Moses wound up shepherding in Midian, by having killed an Egyptian and fled for the hills). Or totally uneducated. Or born on the wrong side of the sheets and sent off into the hills to be forgotten (good question: why was David shepherding when Samuel came a-looking for a future king?).
Certainly rough. Probably smelly.
And who's the modern equivalent? That set of people would certainly include scruffy people with dogs on a string, or the people whose Tourette's keeps them out of polite society, or the sex offenders trying to forget and to live quietly. People who - if they sat next to you in church - would have you checking your purse and trying not to breathe through your nose.
Jesus welcomes everyone. God makes a point of welcoming everybody. The invitation to shepherds says, more clearly than sky-writing or spelling it out in tulips, EVERYBODY WELCOME!
Simple as that. No sub-clauses.
And let the welcome spread from our noticeboards to our faces.
That's the tagline of my present church, the beautiful St Mary's in Moston. I take very slight umbrage to the statement, not because I'm less than inclusive, but because all churches say that everyone is welcome in principle, but when it comes to practice you may find that everyone receives a warm welcome, but for some it's warmer than others.
My real beef is that there are groups of people - and I'm not just talking LGBT but that's top of my list - who've learned to treat this "everybody welcome" schtick with the suspicion it sometimes deserves. When you're not welcomed, or when some aspect of your personhood is not welcomed, that devalues the "everybody" and the "welcome" - and it means that it's no longer enough just to say it. We need to show it. "But it says on the sign…" is not excuse enough for not going out and being proactive. It's our job to show we mean the stuff we say and pin up on notice boards.
(armchair not included: actual seating may vary… okay, it's pews)
So if people in the world have been reasonably led to believe that they're not quite welcome, it is our responsibility to show them that they are welcome here. Divorced and single, bereaved and gay, trans and asylum seeker, tattooed and pierced and fresh out of prison.
Yes, your notice board says EVERYBODY WELCOME. Good on you. Now make sure people know that it's true. Break some walls down yourself and pave the way with welcome mats. Use your imagination… your press… your everything…
Like this...
Thank you for reminding me to pull myself together/
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