Welcome to Themes & Theology of The Chosen. In this series, I'm examining the key themes and ideas of each episode in Seasons 1 and 2 of The Chosen. After analyzing what The Chosen has to say about these themes, I look at what the Bible says and apply biblical teaching to everyday life.
In honor of the Christmas season, I’m releasing this installment of Themes & Theology of The Chosen to my entire community of Buy Me a Coffee supporters - both members (who contribute on a monthly/yearly basis) and one-time givers. I’m so grateful for how you’ve all enabled me to grow and develop the work that I do, both on theBibleArtist.com and here on Buy Me a Coffee and I look forward to continuing our study of The Chosen in the coming year.
Note: If you’re not currently a member and are interested in becoming one, I’m currently running a special. If you become an annual member ($50/year) between now and December 10, you can give a 1-year membership (along with all of the perks) to a friend or family member at no additional cost. Annual members receive two blog posts (like this) per month in addition to all past installments of my Members-Only blog, updated and printable pdf versions of my Bible study/discussion guides for The Chosen Seasons 2-3 (and soon 4), a physical copy of Come and See, and other updates.
This December, I’m stepping away from the main series and focusing on the two Christmas specials that have been released by The Chosen team. Today’s post will look at The Shepherd, which was actually the pilot episode that was used to pitch The Chosen. My second monthly post will look at Christmas with The Chosen: The Messengers, which was released in between Seasons 2 and 3.
Later this month, Christmas with The Chosen: Holy Night will be released in theaters. From my understanding, the content of the episode itself is all drawn from The Shepherd and The Messengers. These episodes are receiving new musical scoring, and the special will also include special musical performances. Because I’m not aware of any additional story content that will be found in Holy Night, I’m not planning on examining it in my Themes and Theology series.
What does The Shepherd say about our need for a Messiah?
It’s easy for Christians - especially affluent Christians in the modern West - to begin to feel comfortable and at home in this world. That’s why the first half of The Shepherd is designed to draw us into a socio-economic, political, and religious context that is very different from our own. By exposing us to the broken conditions experienced by Jews under Roman occupation, The Shepherd helps us empathize with their longing for the coming of God’s Messiah.
Some of this work is done explicitly through on-screen text. We’re told about the Roman occupation and taxation of the Hebrew people. We’re also told that the Hebrew prophets have been silent for 400 years but once prophesied that the Messiah would come to save God’s people.
Some of the work is also done through the reading of biblical prophecies tied to the coming of the Messiah. Throughout The Shepherd, we see Jews in synagogue reading from passages like Micah 5, Isaiah 9, and Isaiah 35. These passages picture the glorious salvation that God will bring through the coming of the Messiah. This brilliant image throws into sharp relief the darkness and brokenness of the world that’s still awaiting the Messiah - a world filled with blind eyes that need to be opened, deaf ears that need to be unstopped, lame legs that cannot leap, and mute tongues that cannot sing.
Of course, the bulk of the work is done not through on-screen or recited text but through symbolism and storytelling. In the opening image our attention is immediately drawn to the lame leg and crutch of our protagonist, Simon, a poor Jewish shepherd. He’s struggling to keep up with his fellow shepherds, who make no effort to hide their annoyance.
This opening sequence is emblematic of the state of the world before the coming of the Messiah. It is full of broken people, unable to keep up with the demands of the world (and of God). To add insult to injury, those who are (outwardly) less broken look down on those who are “blemished” and judge them for their inability to keep up.
This picture of the world is reinforced in a subsequent scene, in which the shepherds arrive in Bethlehem and attempt to sell their sheep to a local Pharisee. Upon discovering a defect in the sheep that he is being sold, the Pharisee berates the shepherds for failing to deliver a perfect, spotless lamb, worthy of the righteous men on whose behalf it will be sacrificed. Having shamed them publicly for their poor showing, he then orders them to return with a spotless lamb or face banishment.
Thus, just as the shepherds look down on Simon, the blemished weakling, callously shaming him for being blemished, they themselves are judged by the Pharisee to be blemished and contemptible. This is the natural state of the world without the Messiah. Weaknesses and blemishes are not only a source of inherent pain and difficulty; they are also a source of shame, derision, and ostracism. The attitude of those who have (relatively) more power is best expressed by the other shepherds to Simon:
We are not slowing down for you. Try to keep up or find your own way back.
To further hammer this point home, when Simon finally makes his way back to the shepherd camp, the other shepherds are debating why they should even allow someone so useless to stay. They then publicly shame him for his weakness by banishing him from their fire to eat cold food out in the darkness with the sheep.
This broken state of affairs is kept in place by those who are on top of the social hierarchy, like the Pharisee, who project their callous attitude upward onto God. When Simon attempts to question the Pharisee about the Messiah, the Pharisee responds:
You wonder why the Messiah hasn’t come? People like you are keeping him away with your stains.
From this Pharisee’s perspective, God’s response to the weaknesses and blemishes of humanity is to hold us in contempt and ostracize us until we are able to deliver perfection. God will not slow down for us - we need to keep up with his demands or find our own way back to him. To put it another way, the Messiah will only come when we are worthy of him. And he will do so in order to reward the strong and unblemished and lead them into triumphant victory over their enemies as a military commander. God has no use for blemished weaklings like Simon or the other shepherds - they are nothing but an impediment to the Messiah's coming.
Having grown up in a culture with values shaped by Christianity (albeit, imperfectly), viewers naturally empathize with Simon’s suffering and we are uncomfortable with the way that he is treated by others. I’m not sure if the episode would actually work with an audience from a pre-Christian society still dominated by this mindset. But because we do empathize with Simon and are suspicious of the Pharisee, we intuitively reject his understanding of when and why Messiah will come.
What does The Shepherd say about when and why the Messiah came?
The second half of The Shepherd illustrates the Gospels’ alternative vision of the coming of the Messiah. We see that the birth of the Messiah is not announced to those who have reached the heights of strength, victory, and success. Rather, it is announced to those who have descended to the depths of weaknesses, shame, and defeat. The news comes to a bunch of shepherds - already at the margin of society - but in danger of being completely ostracized. And of these, the shepherd who has the worst day of all and is ostracized even by his fellow shepherds - he is the one who first gets to see and hold the Messiah. It’s at the very darkest, most desperate moment of one of the weakest and most “blemished” men that the Messiah comes.
Thus, contrary to what the Pharisee teaches, we see that the Messiah must not have come to reward the strong and unblemished and to lead them into triumphant victory. Rather, he must be drawn by compassion to meet the needs of those beneath him. He must not intend to use his strength and perfection to shame, belittle, or banish those who can’t keep up or deliver. Rather he must intend to use his strength and perfection to strengthen weak hands and make firm feeble knees.
How exactly the Messiah will do this is communicated symbolically. The encounter between the Shepherds and the Pharisee early in the episode establishes that God can only be appeased by the sacrifice of a perfect, unblemished lamb. At the end of the episode, the same Pharisee asks the shepherds if they have found him an unblemished lamb for sacrifice, and their smile makes it clear that they have. They can see that the Christ child they have encountered is perfect and unblemished. This is why he can stand in the place of weak and imperfect sinners and serve as the perfect sacrifice, the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29).
To further illustrate why the Messiah has come, there’s an interesting moment after Simon arrives at the birth of Jesus. Joseph notices that Simon has a bloody wound. This wound is visually tied to the wound of Simon’s lamb, which made it too blemished to sacrifice. The wound also gets Simon banished from a synagogue earlier in the episode. It’s a symbol of Simon’s impurity - not only ritually but also morally and spiritually. And yet when Joseph notices the wound, his response is not to banish Simon. Instead, he uses a strip of Jesus’ unblemished white swaddling clothes to clean the wound. This is meant to illustrate how Jesus cleanses our impurity (both moral and ritual) by taking the impurity and imperfection on himself in his bloody death so that we can ultimately be made clean and spotless before God.
To put it all together, the Messiah comes not at a moment of triumph and glory but rather at a moment of defeat and darkness. And he does so because his coming is not a reward or capstone for those who seem strong and unblemished on the outside; it’s an act of condescending compassion and grace designed to cleanse the impurities of blemished sinners and to be offered as a perfect sacrifice in their place.
What does the Bible say about the coming of the Messiah?
A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to preach on Luke 2. Because it feels apt, I offer an excerpt from that sermon in lieu of my normal biblical commentary:
And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. (Luke 2:3-7, ESV)
After Caesar Augustus makes his decree, it has ripple effects across the empire. A census in Roman times was a tool that the empire would use to figure out how much tax they could extract from the various nations that they had conquered and subjugated, including Galilee and Judea where God’s people dwelled. Now these taxes were particularly hard on poor and lower class people like Joseph and Mary. Travel was slow and costly, and all the more so for a couple near the end of pregnancy. But Joseph was apparently afraid to leave Mary back home in Nazareth on her own. Perhaps in the wake of her inexplicable pregnancy while out of wedlock, she could have been abandoned by friends and family and become a target of misogyny and violence. So ultimately Joseph and Mary are forced to travel over ninety miles on mule just so they can pay the tax to their oppressors.
Yet when they arrive at the home of Joseph’s family, it’s full. Scholars say the phrase translated “there was no place for them in the inn” is probably better translated “there was no space for them in the guest room” – which is a little surprising, you know, you would think family would make space for a pregnant woman, but again maybe there were some unfair assumptions and judgments being made about Mary’s pregnancy.
And so Mary and Joseph have to stay with the animals, either in a section of the home designated for that or as tradition says out back in a cave. And that is where Jesus is born, to poor parents, under the oppression of a foreign empire, after traveling for days, socially distanced and ostracized by many of their friends, in what I can only imagine was a dirty, smelly space, not meant for a baby.
This is where God’s Son enters into our world, this is where we are called to wait for him – not in a glorious temple filled with golden treasures, not in a tower climbing up to heaven, not in the form of a strong emperor, not on the upward path that leads us to more and more influence and power. No, God’s son chooses the lowliest, humblest space imaginable, he descends into one of the most vulnerable conditions possible. It’s hard to think of a much weaker position that he could have put himself into.
And this is the good news of Christmas: all of our striving, all the masks we feel compelled to wear, all the effort we put into building influence and followers in order to elevate ourselves and pursue god-like power – it’s unnecessary. Because God’s son has descended down into the depths of human experience, we don’t need to climb our way up. We can await his presence, wherever we currently are. No matter how low, not matter how humiliated, no matter how weak vulnerable we may feel, we are not too low or humble or weak for God’s grace to reach us.
Reflection Questions
Which of the characters in the episode did you identify with the most? Why?
Throughout human history, those with power and prosperity have often judged and showed contempt for those who are weak, disabled, or marginalized. Can you think of examples of this in your contemporary culture? Can you think of a time when you yourself felt disdain for those who were weaker or more "blemished" than you?
Have you ever felt too weak or "blemished" for God? How can the story of the shepherds and God's decision to let Jesus be born to a poor and lowly family be a source of encouragement?
If someone interested in Christianity asked you to summarize the message or meaning of Christmas, what would you say?
Practices
People Must Know: Ask a non-Christian friend what they think Christmas is all about. Then share your understanding of Christmas as a Christian.
People Must Know: Host a Christmas gathering with a mixture of Christians and non-Christians. In addition to other activities, spend some time watching The Shepherd together. Later, ask your friends what they thought of the episode and what resonated with them.
Thanks for joining me for another installment of Themes and Theology of The Chosen. I will make sure to release my next installment (focused on The Messengers) sometime before Christmas so that you can reflect on it in anticipation of Christ's birth. Until then, Godspeed.
Grace & Peace,
Kevin Keating