Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”
NL Daily Devotion for Thursday, December 25, 2025
by Rev. Dr. Miles Hopgood, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: The birth of Christ draws us out of the ordinary into the extraordinary. Christmas Day offers us the chance to sample what it means to leave the old behind and find our calling in the new.
In the North American ministry context, worshipping on Christmas Day is one of the simpler counter-cultural things we can do as Christians. Against the dominant cultural narrative that views Christmas as a consumerist holiday centered on the family and culminating in the exchanging of gifts at home on Christmas morning, worshipping on Christmas Day testifies that this is a religious holiday centered on the community and culminating in the celebration of the gift of Emmanuel—God with us. What I am talking about here should not be confused with the so-called “war on Christmas,” a manufactured conflict which is all about ensuring that consumer practices are exclusively Christian in aesthetic. What it means to worship on Christmas Day is not an act of Christianizing the national life but an act of being called out of the capitalist consumer life and into the life of discipleship of Jesus Christ.
We see this movement in the story of the birth of Jesus as experienced by the shepherds. They are in the midst of business-as-usual when their routine is interrupted by angels declaring the good news of the Messiah’s birth. Their response is not to enact a branding campaign to fully saturate their sheep tending with Messiah-esque symbols or to start haranguing other shepherds for daring to wish them “Happy Holidays.” They leave what they are doing and go with haste to the stable to find Mary, Joseph, and the infant Christ lying in a manger. The birth of Christ occasions a disruption of their daily living, and even as they return to it, they return changed by what they have encountered. They are still shepherds, yes, but something more: evangelists of the good news, glorifying God in what they say and do, amazing all who hear them.
May God disrupt your Christmas day, but in the best possible way.
