The Least Of Us

That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people.

“YOUR HANDWRITING IS BEAUTIFUL, JULIE.”

Glancing at my paper name tag, I grinned. “Thanks! Unfortunately, this is as legible as it gets. I am a lefty.”

And with that small confession, we found ourselves in an extended conversation about all things left-handed.

My colleague is originally from India, and it turns out that a generation or two back in that country (as well as in the United States), parents and teachers were forcing lefty children to become right-handed writers and eaters.

From my grandmother’s stories, I knew about tying a child’s left hand to force them to adapt to a right-handed lifestyle, a method used in parts of the United States, but I did not know that practice had been happening in India at the same time.

So, I asked the question: “Why?”

I had been told children were forced into right-handedness in the United States because of symbolism around evil, the devil, and being on the left side of God, although I have since learned that is only one of several reasons behind the practice. In India, at least one of the reasons had to do with notions of clean and unclean, the left hand being the unclean hand.

As my colleague and I considered the diverse cultural reasons for an identical practice, she smiled softly and said, “I guess our cultures share a tendency to suppress those who are different.”

Her words hung between us for several heartbeats before the outside world intruded with the emcee returning to the podium. With a quick agreement to find time for a future coffee, we said our farewells and headed for our respective tables.

Since that fleeting conversation, I have thought a lot about human nature’s tendency to demand conformity and create power dynamics. We create “in” and “out” groups within schools, workplaces, churches, and beyond. We determine hierarchies of popularity based on notions of beauty, wealth, and power. And mostly, these ideas of conformity and power have nothing to do with godliness. In fact, many of our customs are in explicit violation of Scripture.

Jesus’ earthly ministry is replete with stories and examples of turning our rules regarding conformity and power upside down and inside out.

On one such occasion, Jesus sought out a conversation with the chief tax collector in the region, Zacchaeus, pausing beneath the tree this man was perched in and inviting himself to stay at his house (see Luke 19:1-9). Tax collectors were notoriously corrupt and worked for the hated Roman authorities. Because Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector, he drew even more derision than his subordinates, yet it was his house in which Jesus asked to sleep.^a

Another day, Jesus defended a woman caught in adultery, sparing her life as he wrote some unknown thing in the sand that caused her accusers—the religious leaders of the day—to drop their stones and go home (see John 8:1-11) even as he both forgave and redeemed her.

When asked to define who our neighbors are (and are not), in light of the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves, Jesus told a story with a Samaritan (hated people group and enemies of the Israeli people) as the hero. This man stopped to help a robbery victim while a Jewish priest and a powerful community leader intentionally passed by, unwilling to assist (see Luke 10:27-37).

The exhortations in the Old and New Testaments to care for widows, orphans, foreigners, the poor, and the powerless leave no doubt as to God’s view of our ungodly obsession with hierarchies and power (see Deuteronomy 10:18-19, for example).

But the two stories I love the most for showcasing just how little God cares for our popularity contests and the chasing of human prestige are the stories that bookend the beginning and end of Jesus’ time on earth: the announcements of his birth and his resurrection.

We’ll come back to his birth announcement in a moment, but first let’s consider the Resurrection. Many of us are well-acquainted with the general Easter story: Jesus was crucified on Friday, and on the third day (Sunday), he rose again, having defeated sin and death on our behalf. On the morning of his resurrection, he had a conversation with one person, Mary Magdalene, entrusting her to take the message back to the disciples that he was alive (see John 20:11-18).

In that culture and at that time, entrusting a woman to bear the message of his resurrection to the disciples and the world was the height of foolishness. Women were property, unable to testify in court, unable to bear witness, deemed utterly unreliable and untrustworthy to carry messages of any importance, let alone to tell the world that Jesus lived! Oh, how I cannot help but weep every time I read how Jesus valued and loved women and especially how he entrusted Mary to carry the good news of his resurrection back to the disciples and to the world!

The declaration of Jesus’ birth, all those years earlier, was entrusted to a similarly disenfranchised people group: the shepherds.

Luke 2 tells us that a whole host of angels filled the night sky to announce the birth of our Savior with a spectacle worthy of such an occasion—to an audience of shepherds (see verses 8-14). Just as with women, shepherds at that cultural moment were bottom-of-the-hierarchy nobodies, humble peasants unable to testify or bear witness. Yet they were sent to meet the baby Jesus lying in a manger and to proclaim the angels’ words to all who would listen.

If there was ever an invitation to give up our endless pursuit of popularity and to resist placing people into artificial, man-created categories that determine worth through beauty, position, wealth, and connection, it is embodied by the humble shepherd in your Nativity set.

I confess to dismissing the shepherds in Nativity sets I’d placed around my house for decades, casting the humbly dressed figures off to the side, sometimes even leaving them in the box entirely. Nowadays, a tiny shepherd sits all year long on my kitchen windowsill, an ever-present reminder that God loves all his children and that we have a scriptural command to do the same.

Heavenly Father, forgive us for chasing after popularity and power. Forgive us for perpetuating “in” and “out” groups in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, extended families, and churches. Help us to see others as you see them: lend us your eyes, ears, and heart as we engage with those around us. Amen.