It lived up to the hype. Daniel Craig is suitably craggy and rugged, perhaps lacking a bit of Sean Connery’s appeal to the opposite sex, but …..

Casino Royale is good. The plot is plausible and the action is fast paced. The baddie is Le Chiffre, who provides a global money-laundering service to terrorists.

But Le Chiffre it seems has used this money to manipulate the stock market for his own gain, and has predictably lost. Now, he instigates a high stakes poker game at the Casino Royale in Montenegro, so he can make up his losses before his terrorist backers realise he has let them down.

The problem is laid out and Bond, James Bond, takes the evidence offered, investigates the problem and sets the world to rights. Hurrah for 007.

And for our hero, James Bond, there are some surprising sources of evidence for him to sift, and some surprising twists and turns in the story and some surprising responses to his appearance and activity.

I want to suggest tonight that our shepherds are just a bit like James Bond. Now I just sense a slight hesitation in agreeing to this proposition – surely a step too far? Bond is a male chauvinist pig, an emotional desert and a spiritual black hole, but he’s also courageous, resourceful, persevering, decisive, patriotic, agile, multi-skilled, intelligent, witty, and as one woman proclaimed absolutely gorgeous.

Well, the shepherds in our Christmas story are not like Bond in every detail. They are:-
· Not licensed to kill, other than the occasional roast lamb for lunch
· Not trained to be secret agents
· Not, I guess, male chauvinist pigs, emotional deserts and spiritual black holes
· Probably not absolutely gorgeous either.

But I do see them as courageous (they didn’t run from the angels), resourceful (they worked out how to leave their flocks), persevering (they searched for the baby lying in a manger), decisive (they decided to go) and so on.

So like James Bond, they took the evidence offered, investigated the message and they saw the baby in that manger as he who will set the world to rights.

There they are on their hillside, chatting round their camp fire, keeping watch over their flocks by night. An every day scene of every day shepherds in an every day world. Into this idyllic pastoral scene comes the angel of the Lord with a choir of thousands. The shepherds are told to go and find a baby lying in a manger – in an animal feeding trough. Like James Bond the evidence is laid out.

Now our shepherds have a choice. They can say thanks very much to the angels and a jolly good night to you too. Or they can decide to investigate these amazing pieces of evidence – a Saviour born, good news to all, in a manger?

They decide to investigate. They leave their flocks, they leave their work and livelihood and set off to see if what the angels have said has any grain of truth. Maybe, just maybe, they had second thoughts, or at least a big discussion about what to do. Maybe they wondered if this wasn’t the biggest hoax of all time. But they decided to investigate, not to put it to one side.

They find everything is just as the angel said: a baby has been born, a baby is lying in a manger, just as the angels proclaimed, so logically is what the angels declared: here is the Saviour of the world, the one who will make things better for all of us.

Hard to say why they went to Bethlehem, why they decided to leave the life they knew on that hillside and find out for themselves if the angels’ words carried any truth, even an inkling of hope, but at least a sense that there must be more to life than this.

But I suppose if a group of angels suddenly appeared before you, you might take their message seriously, you might decide to investigate for yourself, you might decide to risk the comments of your friends, if …..

Well, if you haven’t had a choir of angels invading your living room recently, maybe you’ve had just an inkling, just a desire, just a faint echo in your heart that there is more to Christmas than the cards and the presents and the tree in the corner of the room.

There might be in your heart a faint echo, perhaps louder these days, of a God: a sense that this world is not fair and that some decent justice needs to be done; a sense that there is a spiritual dimension to life that just can’t be yet grasped; a sense that life is good but not fully complete; a sense that the beauty of our world is there and yet so often tarnished.

Some of these echoes might have been stirred in those shepherds’ hearts some 2000 years ago, as the angels proclaimed the good news of God come to earth.

And yet this Jesus thing is 2000 years ago – how can it be relevant today? This Jesus thing – God becoming a human (to die a terrible death and to conquer the grave in new life) – how can that be possible?

The shepherds had little to lose in investigating. If the angels were wrong, they would clearly prove it. If the angels were right, they would clearly prove it. They were in a win-win situation.

And you, like James Bond, and like the shepherds, have some evidence before you – it may be the echoes of your heart, it may be the ‘something’ in a friend, it maybe the words of carol sung tonight – but you have nothing to lose in investigating who is this baby in a manger, whose birth we celebrate every year.

If the echoes of your heart, if the story heard tonight, are right, then you are in a win-win situation if you investigate.

The shepherds investigated and were so amazed at what they found they couldn’t help singing about it. Each Christmas is a reminder to investigate, to put aside our prejudices, the ‘this is a silly idea’, and check it out.

If you’d like to do that, quietly and without fuss, just stop and chat with me afterwards. I’d love to send you something to help you investigate – to check the evidence and make your own mind up on this Jesus, on this baby lying in a manger, on this Saviour of the world.