Lorenzo Cortez Vargas is a shepherd. He spends his days and nights driving some 2,000 sheep across miles of vast, empty, rolling high plains in Wyoming and Colorado. He’s a long way from his home in Chile, having come to America under a temporary migrant-worker program that allows companies to hire foreign workers if no Americans want their jobs. Nobody wants Lorenzo’s job.
He lives completely alone in a 5' by 10' crude trailer called a campito. He has no running water, toilet or electricity, except for a car battery rigged to a small radio. He has only a wood-burning stove to fend off the brutal cold and howling winds of winter. Lorenzo bathes in melted snow or in water that’s trucked in. He lives on canned food and the occasional meat that other ranch workers bring, but the food often freezes or spoils. He’s miles from even the smallest town and isn’t allowed to have visitors — not that anyone knows he’s out there or could find him.
Lorenzo works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Even if he had days off, he’d have no place to spend them. For their trouble, sheepherders (or borregueros) such as Lorenzo earn $650 to $750 a month, if they’re paid at all. Lorenzo doesn’t have a health plan to help him guard against the tick-borne illnesses he’s constantly exposed to or the injuries he might sustain being thrown from his horse.
Most of the approximately 1,500 borregueros working in the American West agree that the living conditions are worse than those in their home countries. But the wages are somewhat better. They endure daily hardships without much complaint because they don’t want to lose their jobs. Says Lorenzo, in Spanish, “They never tell you exactly what it’s going to be like. But you’ve got to stick it out here. What are you going to do?”
Jennifer Lee, a lawyer advocating for improvements, calls what Lorenzo and other sheepherders endure a form of “indentured servitude.” But ranchers argue that improving borregueros’ living conditions and raising wages would put them out of business. The rising cost of feed, fuel and other necessities has forced a 60 percent decline in the number of sheep raised in the United States since 1993. Peter Orwick, executive director of the American Sheep Industry Association, says that as bad as the lives of borregueros are, they’re still better than the ones they had at home. “If it weren’t an attractive job for them, they wouldn’t be here,” says Orwick.
An attractive job—interesting phrasing. Truth is, shepherding has never been an attractive job.
Shepherds step to the forefront on Christmas Eve because of Luke’s story, but it is the only time they really step into the limelight. Nobody really grows up aspiring to be a shepherd. They usually come to it because it’s the only thing available, or it’s how the family survives—albeit just barely. Whether it’s in Bethlehem in the first century, or Colorado in the 21st, shepherds are the kind of people that the rest of the world forgets. Shepherds are certainly not white collar workers. They’re not even blue collar. They’re no collar.
Luke begins his account of Jesus’ birth by mentioning Augustus Caesar, the Roman emperor, who ruled most of the civilized world. From his home on the Palatine in Rome, Augustus and the bulk of his subjects would have given no thought to shepherds. In the Roman world, everyone who was not a citizen was called “the head count”—just an amorphous mass of the poor and slaves. Even within the Roman head count, shepherds didn’t count. Their nomadic existence made them invisible to nearly everyone—an existence that is still lived today by the Bedouin bands who roam all over the Middle East.
Of course, if Augustus didn’t care about shepherds, it’s pretty likely that they didn’t care about him, either. Didn’t really matter who was in power, their job, their lives, were always the same—always about the sheep.
The shepherd’s whole world was sheep—moving sheep, birthing sheep, protecting sheep. A shepherd knew the economic scale—that the sheep were more valuable to their owner than he was. He was to put himself between any danger and fight for the life of the sheep, even if it meant his own death. Can you imagine risking your life to save an animal—not your family dog or a thoroughbred horse—but a sheep, whose sole purpose in life is to eat, digest, get sheared, and look bored? When you’re lower than a sheep, you’re pretty low.
And yet, maybe being the lowest of the low means that you have no place to look but up. And maybe that’s why God seems to favor shepherds. Abraham, the one who God called to bring forth a nation, was a shepherd. Moses, the prince of Egypt, escaped into the desert and became a shepherd for forty years. It was out there in the middle of nowhere that God got his attention through a burning bush. Had to be an exciting event in a shepherd’s life! Perhaps most famously, David, Israel’s great king, started out as a shepherd, fighting off lions and bears. He became “a man after God’s own heart” largely because, out there in the fields, he could only look up.
So when God wants to let the world know that its Savior is born, God doesn’t send his messengers to the Palatine Hill in Rome, where Augustus looks down over his empire. He doesn’t go to Jerusalem, where Herod looks down on the masses from his palace. Instead, he sends those angels to the only people in the land who can look nowhere but up.
Notice how Luke puts it: “The glory of the Lord shone around them.” The glory of the Lord was supposed to only reside in the Temple, miles away in Jerusalem. Only the privileged priests were allowed to see it, though it hadn’t been seen for several generations. Everyone was praying for the day when God’s glory, God’s presence, God’s power would reside in that magnificent building once again. But when God announces his coming, his glory shines around shepherds in a field. They are the first to receive the news that will change the world forever. God will dwell with his people, but not in the places of power. He will abide with them in the fields, in the tiny towns, in the forgotten places.
“I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people,” says the angel. Good news. For all the people. Including shepherds and, indeed, especially shepherds. “To you is born this day in the city of David [in a shepherd’s home town] a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” To you is born—you whom the world has forgotten, you out here in the middle of nowhere, you who are lower than sheep—to you, for you, is born this day, a Savior, who is the Christ, the Messiah, the Lord.
And where is he born? The angels give the shepherds a sign that they, of all people, will surely understand. He is in a barn. His cradle a cattle trough—the kind of place they knew all too well. This was a sign, indeed, for only a Savior born in a stinking barn amidst animals and shadows would truly be able to understand what it was to be as low as they were. It is on people like the shepherds that God’s peace and favor truly rests. It’s not necessarily on people of power and prosperity, it’s not on the religious and self-righteous. God’s favor rests on those who can only look up. People like shepherds, people like Lorenzo—people who matter to God.
The good news of peace, the good news of God’s favor, might rest on us tonight as well, but only if we are willing to reorient our view to the level of shepherds—or maybe even that of sheep. It’s interesting that in the Scriptures, God not only seems to favor shepherds, as we have seen—but God himself is a shepherd, too. The truth is that we can only really know the peace, joy, and favor of God when we see ourselves as his flock—when we see ourselves in need of saving.
“Know that the Lord is God,” writes the psalmist. “It is he that made us, and we are his. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”
“I am the good shepherd,” says the grown up Jesus, God’s own son. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
He lays down his life—for us. For all of us. The king in the manger is a shepherd, worshipped by shepherds. And, ironically, he is also the sacrificial lamb that takes away the sins of the world. This shepherd-king doesn’t ascend to a throne, but rather to a cross. It is there that he pours out his life—pours out his forgiveness, his grace, his love—his favor on all those who will look up, and see him hanging there.
Later tonight, or perhaps early in the morning, we will gather with your family around a tree, open a few presents, and share the laughter and joy of another Christmas. Before we do that, though, we will gather around a table. We will lift bread and lift a cup. We will look up and be reminded that this Jesus, this shepherd and lamb, offers his broken body and shed blood for all of us. When we look up, we recognize that we are all in need of his saving grace. We recognize that all of us, from the lonely immigrant shepherd in a forgotten field, to the rich and famous, are the sheep of his pasture. Doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done. His forgiveness, his grace, his favor rests on you tonight, if you will only look up and receive the gift of his life given for you. It is the greatest gift you will ever receive—good news of a great joy, for all people.
And as you travel home tonight, looking up at the stars, I hope you will think about and pray for Lorenzo out there somewhere beyond the horizon. After all, God favors those shepherds…because he is one.
Source:
Frosch, Dan. "In Loneliness, Immigrants Tend the Flock." New York Times. February 21, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/us/22wyoming.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1.
