Looking for a Sign

Luke 2:8-20

December 21, 2025 • Mount Pleasant UMC

So I have to confess something to you all this morning. I’ve been denying it for months, but it feels like Christmas week might be the right time to come clean. Here we go: I lost some of my travelers during our “Journeys of Paul” trip this past September. I’ve been saying I didn’t, but I did. Whew, boy does that feel better. Like a weight off my shoulders! Here’s what happened, though. There were gobs of people getting off the ship all at the same time, and when you are trying to find your tour bus, it’s like being in a cattle chute. So our group got separated into two smaller groups. We were in Turkey, Istanbul to be specific (not Constantinople). And as we came out of the ship terminal into the bus terminal, and there were people yelling, trying to give directions. The problem, I discovered, is that the people were yelling one thing but the signs, the directional signs, said something else. The question became: do I listen to the voices or pay attention to the signs? So I lost a group because my group went one way and the other group went another. I sure hope they find their way home one day. (I’m just kidding—we found them a little later.)

Signs can be incredibly helpful. Speed limit 65. No turn on red. Do not enter. The lunch line forms here. Signs can tell us which way to go, what to do and where to find stuff—if we’re looking for them. I wonder how many times I have failed to see the sign that was right in front of me? I distinctly remember when I went to visit Ball State as a prospective student and my parents and I decided to drive around town. There are a lot of one-way streets in downtown Muncie, and we ended up going the wrong way on one street because we missed the sign. There was another time when I was a youth pastor and we were headed home from a weekend-long retreat. I was driving the van and I was so tired that I stopped at one of those signs that is meant to tell you a stop sign is ahead. So I misread the sign and stopped too early. I was hoping no one noticed, and it was pretty quiet in the van as most everyone was sleeping, but the all of a sudden, Kathleen in the seat behind me burst out laughing. She never let me forget the time I failed to read the sign. So signs can be helpful, if you read them correctly—or at all.

This morning we are going to encounter a group of folks who were looking for a sign, an unlikely bunch of people to be the first witnesses to the birth of the savior of the world. They are not unlikely in the respect that we never hear about them; quite the opposite. They are pretty much in every nativity scene and movie and story you can think of. No, it’s not because we’ve never heard of them; they are unlikely because they never should have been the first ones to receive the news of Jesus’ birth. But I believe the angels came to the shepherds because they, out of all the people around Bethlehem that night, were most ready to receive because they were actually looking for a sign.

“Bethlehem was known for its sheep and shepherds” (McKnight, Luke, pg. 34). After all, its most famous resident, David (who became king) started life as a shepherd boy—a tender of sheep. And his most famous song, probably first sung in the fields around Bethlehem, begins like this: “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing” (Psalm 23:1). And yet shepherds in the first century were not well thought of. They were banned from testifying in court, as their word was not considered trustworthy (Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 48). Their work also made them ritually unclean, which meant they could not participate in the community worship in the synagogue. They were excluded from both legal and religious society. And yet, their work was essential and not only in raising sheep for food. There are many scholars who believe these particular shepherds might have been raising sheep who were to be offered as sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem, just a few miles away. If so, that means they would have extra responsibility to keep the lambs from harm because only a perfect specimen could be offered as a sacrifice (cf. Keener, Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, pg. 194). So they were essential, vitally important to the community’s life, but they were also despised and outcast. They are, in fact, the first marginalized group mentioned in the Gospel of Luke (a group with which Luke is especially concerned with) (cf. Card 48).

And they are working the night shift according to Luke. They were “keeping watch over their flocks at night” (2:8). One thing this tells us is that Jesus wasn’t born in December. It would have been in a warmer season, probably spring when the lambs were born. That was the only reason they would have to “keep watch” all night long. Someone had to be alert in case one of the birthing mothers got into trouble. But since no one knows when Jesus was actually born, the Roman church settled on December 25 later so as to overshadow a pagan festival that happened at the same time (cf. Keener 194; Card 48). If someone wants to argue with you about the date of Jesus’ actual birth, just walk away. It’s not worth exchanging words over. But the point is: the shepherds were up at night, which they wouldn’t be except at this particular time of the year. And it’s because they were up at night that they were able to be found by the angels.

Angels, plural. Mary had one angel appear to her, announcing her upcoming pregnancy. Joseph had one angel speak to him in a dream, telling him that Mary’s story was true. The shepherds, people not allowed to mix in polite company, are sent a “great company” (2:13; cf. Card 48-49). How many angels are in a “great company”? We don’t really know. I’m going to guess that if such a “great company” appeared here this morning, we probably wouldn’t be able to count them either. Nor would we take the time. But it was a whole big bunch. It seems unbelievable, or we might even say unlikely, doesn't it? The outcasts hear the news from heaven itself via “a great company” of angels.

So the angels announce the news: a baby has been born and he is the long-awaited messiah or savior. “Christ” is the Greek word for “messiah,” which is the Hebrew word for “savior.” And most people of the time were expecting a military ruler, a conqueror to defeat the Romans, so it’s not just to whom the angels announce it that’s shocking. It’s what they say about the baby, or rather about the baby’s location. How will the shepherds know they have found the right baby? Well, Bethlehem wasn’t that large and so the chances that there would be more than one newborn in the town tonight are slim to none. But that’s beside the point. These people are looking for a sign, and so the angel gives them a sign, a way they will know one hundred percent that they have found the right child. Actually, the angel gives them two signs in one.

First sign: he will be “wrapped in cloths” (2:12). The King James Version that a lot of us know by heart says he will be wrapped in “swaddling clothes.” Some scholars say these were cloths that were used to wrap a baby up tightly, making sure his limbs stayed straight. In fact, Luke (who was a doctor) uses the medical term for that practice. But if that’s the only thing they were for, why would the angel need to mention them? If this was something every new parent did with their baby, it really wouldn’t be any kind of unusual or unique “sign,” would it? No, the point here is that these “swaddling cloths” are rags, maybe some pieces of cast off clothing that a relative had or that Mary and Joseph had brought with them. And these rags, I believe, were signs of his poverty. Mary and Joseph had very little to their name. They didn’t have fancy onesies to put him in. What they had were rags and so, like all families who might be struggling, they used what they had. The hospital would never have let them take Jesus home in rags, but for the shepherds these rags became a sign (cf. Card 49).

Remember, a sign points to something, so what do the rags point to? What are they meant to tell the shepherds and us? Well if they tell us about his poverty, that Jesus was born into a family that had nothing, then even those rags are a sign of his identification with all of us. His family was not wealthy, not important, they did not stand out in their little town of Bethlehem, let alone back home in Nazareth. Joseph was a common laborer, a tekton, a builder who probably got jobs wherever he could. Jesus wasn’t born into a palace or even a middle class home. He was born into poverty and lived in poverty. Even at his death, he had only one thing of value: a seamless undergarment woven in one piece from top to bottom (John 19:23). That was valuable enough that the soldiers around the cross gambled to see who would get it. And yet this baby would stand before rulers and governors, entertain (as I talked about last week) wealthy magi from another country, and gather people from all walks of life as his followers—from a wealthy tax collector to poor fishermen. The rags were not only a sign to the shepherds of which baby they were to look for. They are also a sign to us that he came for everyone, from the least to the greatest (as the world defines such things). Later, the apostle Paul would put it this way: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Not rich in terms of our bank accounts, but rich in spirit, heirs to all that God has to offer. Songwriter Michael Card put it this way: “His poverty made him our perfect provision, the one hope for our every need” (“A King in a Cattle Trough”). The rags remind us that Jesus came for all.

But that wasn’t the only sign. The angels also gave a second sign that is part of the first but also separate. “You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” (2:12). Lying in a manger. Now, fair warning: I’m about to ruin your manger scenes. In fact, I was told one time when I shared this that I ruined Christmas. So let me apologize in advance. But if you come with me to Israel, you can still see many examples of mangers from that time and earlier because mangers were, by and large, not made of wood. Honestly, wood is not as available as stone in Israel, so mangers were mostly made of stone, like the one on the screen. All of our manger scenes, including this one, that show Jesus laying in a cute, wooden crib are wrong. Jesus was laid in a feeding trough, a place where the cattle and the sheep and whatever other animals might have been kept in the stable had their dinner. It would have been the most convenient place to make a bed for him in a hurry; it was available and roughly baby-sized. But it’s not where babies were normally placed right after birth, and so that’s the sign: look for a baby laying where babies didn’t normally lay. It’s another sign that he is a not a normal king, not what anyone expected.

But it’s also a sign of the status or position he chose in life. Again, I love the poetic words of Michael Card: “How do you worship a king in a cattle trough when you cannot bow any lower than he?” (“A King in a Cattle Trough”). Jesus came to be a servant. He is the king who bows; he is the savior who serves. Again we turn to the words of the apostle Paul: Jesus, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant…he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8). Throughout his life, Jesus’ disciples struggled with the idea of a king who came to serve. They dreamed of power and glory and honor. Two of them (or their mother, depending on which Gospel you read) came to him once and asked for places of honor in his kingdom. They wanted to sit at his right and his left—in essence, becoming number two and number three in the kingdom. Jesus told them, “You don’t know what you are asking.” And then he told all of his disciples, “Whoever wants to become great along you must be your servant…The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:20-28). And one of the last things Jesus did before he went to the cross was to wash his disciples’ feet in a stunning act of servanthood. “I have set you an example,” he told them, “that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:15). We worship a king in a cattle trough who came to serve and not to be served. The truest worship we can give him is when we serve someone else, when we feed the hungry person or give the thirsty person something to drink. It’s when we clothe the naked, look after the sick, visit the prisoner and invite in the stranger (cf. Matthew 25:31-46). We are not saved by doing those things, but those things are how we worship the king in a cattle trough. The manger is a sign, pointing toward the lifestyle the followers of Jesus are to have.

Something else both of these signs tell us is that God shows up in the midst of the mundane, the ordinary. Bethlehem was an ordinary town. The stable was usually just a place where animals slept and ate their dinner. And God showed up there, on an ordinary day to ordinary people as an ordinary baby. It’s hard for us to imagine, really, no matter how many manger scenes or movies about the nativity we see. God wrapped in rags in a feeding trough. What a sight!

I have had the opportunity to visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem several times, and every time has been different. Sometimes there is scaffolding as repair and refurbishment is being done on this ancient structure. Other times there have been services held in the church that interrupted the tourism. How dare they! And it’s always crowded, no matter what time of day I’ve been there. There are always hundreds of people wanting to get in. But to get in you have to bow. The entrance is smaller than our doors here in our church. In the early 1500s, the large doors were sealed up and all that was left was a tiny opening, meant to keep out looters and to slow down the pilgrims who wanted to get in. It’s called the “door of humility,” so you have to bow to even get near the place where tradition says Jesus was born (cf. Billups, An Unlikely Advent, pg. 93).

Once you pass through that door you enter a massive sanctuary with the primary worship space at the far end. The ceiling is intentionally designed to look like barn rafters. And over to the right is a line. A long line. A line you might stand in for hours if it’s really busy. It’s the line to go down into the grotto. The traditional place of Jesus’ birth is under the altar, in a cave, down a set of steep and somewhat narrow steps. So the faithful wait in a sort of hushed reverence to go down those steps and to see the silver star that marks the supposed place where Jesus was born. Now, I have to tell you, it’s gaudy, and a bit smelly from all the incense that has been burned there over the years. The decorations are not to my taste and look nothing like what we think of as Christmas decorations. And people are rude and pushy, all trying to get to the star. It’s not the sacred experience you might be hoping for. The last time I was there, there was a guide with a small group who brought his people in through the exit so they didn’t have to wait, and my guide got very upset with him for going the wrong way. I don’t know what they were saying to each other but I could tell from the tone it wasn’t “Merry Christmas.” It was more than a little uncomfortable. And yet, with all of that going on, with all the noise and the chaos, when our group moved over to the side, took a moment to think about where we were and then began to quietly sing, “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright…” There were tears. Despite all the obstacles, there is something holy about this place where Christians have gathered for centuries to remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus. It may or may not be the actual place where Mary gave birth, but that really doesn’t matter in the end. Because all the signs point to a savior who came in the middle of the mess, in the midst of the muddle, who came for you and for me in our ordinary lives. He came as a king in a cattle trough. “This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” (2:12).

Last Sunday afternoon, we went to see the Community Theater’s production of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” which is a story until about a year ago I was completely unfamiliar with. And I don’t want to ruin the story—you really should see the movie version that came out last year—but in essence it’s the story of some kids who (eventually) really get who Jesus is which in surprising ways turns an ordinary church Christmas pageant into something extraordinary, even holy. The line that always sticks with you is what the “angel of the Lord” shouts out during the pageant: “Hey! Unto you a child is born!” Unto you! Unto us! Because he was born to us, to you and to me, to the poor and the wealthy, to the shepherds and the wise men and to Herod and to Elizabeth and Zechariah. The signs all tell us that the king in the cattle trough was born for all of us and wants to be born in all of us. All you have to do is ask him into your life.

Here’s the truth this Christmas and I want to close with this: through the baby in the manger, the invisible God is made visible. Through the king in the cattle trough, the unknowable God is made known. Through the child wrapped in swaddling clothes, the incomprehensible love of God is made tangible (adapted from McKnight 35). “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord” (2:11). He is born for you and for me to bring us back to God (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:18). Thanks be to God! Let’s pray.