A shepherd's story, for Christmas

This is the story of Benjamin. 

He’s been a shepherd all his life; he started as an apprentice to his father when he was eight, and in the years in between he has slept out on hillsides more nights than he can count. Now he’s forty. He’s getting a bit old for sleeping on the ground. His sons, like him, have been his apprentices; now they’re coming up to twenty, they’re doing more of the night work. He still takes the sheep, and the fleeces, to market, though, and he still looks after them in the daytime. And if there’s a wolf around, he won’t find Benjamin an easy mark. 

One market day, Benjamin took the fleeces in to Jerusalem as usual. It was the usual bustle of market day – people selling, people buying, crowds pushing their way towards the Temple, a stream of people trying to get out of the Temple, street preachers and Roman soldiers and who knows who else. He never gets used to it.

But this morning, his attention was caught by one of the street preachers. He was telling a story about shepherds. 

‘Imagine you’re a shepherd,’ he was saying, and Benjamin snorted mentally. He didn’t have to imagine, did he? What’s the betting this bloke was about to tell some romantic fairy tale that had nothing to do with what it was actually like to be a shepherd?

‘Imagine you’re a shepherd, with lots of sheep to look after. You need some help to look after your sheep. So you hire someone. And imagine you leave the sheep with the man you’ve hired, and a wolf comes. The man gets scared. He doesn’t know the sheep. He runs away. And the sheep get eaten.

I’m not like that. I’m a good shepherd. It’s my job to save my sheep from the wolves. And I’m never going to run away.’

Benjamin was impressed. This man knew what it was like to be a shepherd. He’d had exactly that happen when his sons had been ill and he’d hired a man to take shifts with him. He’d come back to find the gate open, the man gone, and the wolves gone too with three of his best sheep.

He went closer. He listened. And as he listened, and as he watched the man, he remembered something that had happened when he was a small boy.

It was his first winter out with his father, looking after the sheep on the long nights on the hill. It was cold and they’d joined forces with some other shepherd families, keeping the sheep all together for warmth, lighting a fire for themselves. He’d been half-asleep when a light in the sky had woken him. For a moment he’d thought it was dawn, but it wasn’t gradual or grey; it was more like a fire, but bigger than any fire he’d ever seen. And the music! He’d never heard anything like it. And out of the unearthly sweet music and the dazzling light he could hardly look at, came a voice.

Don’t be afraid.

This is good news.

Go to Bethlehem and you will find a baby – a baby born today to be the Lord, the Chosen,the one who will save.

You’ll recognise him. He’s got no crib. He’s in the feeding trough in a stable.

And the sky had blazed into life, and squinting into the light Benjamin had seen outlines ofgolden wings, glowing faces, and heard the whirr of wings and a song that filled the sky withjoy, that made him and all the others grin at each other in pure delight.

Then the sky was dark again and Benjamin looked up at his father. Can we go?

Of course we’re going, said his father, and all around them the other shepherds were picking up their cloaks and starting to run. Benjamin was never sure what had come over them. It felt as if they were in a dream, being pushed by some force bigger than themselves as theys crambled down the hill, as they ran through the streets, as they came to a stable round the back of an inn and skidded to a stop outside its door.

Benjamin’s dad had knocked, and the door had been opened, and they had crowded in – the sense of urgency that had pushed them down the hill dissolving, replaced by awkwardness.

What business had they here?

Then Benjamin had looked and there, in the donkey’s trough, a newborn baby. He’d seen his sisters when they were just a couple of hours old; this baby looked no older. His face was scrumpled and red, and his tiny fists closed. But as Benjamin looked, his eyes opened – deep brown, and wiser than a newborn’s eyes had any right to be – and he looked straight at Benjamin, and Benjamin felt calm, peace and the delight he’d felt on the hill. He knelt down and put his hand into the trough, and the baby gripped his finger.

‘Hello, baby,’ whispered Benjamin. ‘You’re special. I’ll never forget you.’

Benjamin blinked, and looked back at the preacher. There it was; that same sense of calm, of peace, of delight, that he had felt only once before.

The stories were over. The crowd was melting away. Benjamin felt as if he was in a dream again as he went up to the man.

‘This is going to sound silly,’ he said, ‘but I think I met you once before. I think I saw you when you were a tiny baby. I think angels told me you were special. I think that’s what you mean when you say you’re the Good Shepherd. I think – I think you are the Saviour of the World.’

The preacher smiled. ‘Come and see,’ he said.