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The Undiscriminating God

When I was a little kid-way back before The Big Chill of cynicism spread over the whole world, I really used to get into the Christmas crib. I mean, into. There was no TV, and our imaginations got a lot more exercise, so I'd very often actually feel I was squatting there in the scene. We were all huddled close because of the cold, only half-aware of the dung-smell, glad for the warmth of the cows and sheep and dogs. These shepherds were our kind of people, lower-class folks who worked the graveyard shift every night. And of course you'd have to have a teflon heart to resist a brand-new baby. So for the first week or so, the crib was "homey."

Then, on the feast of the Epiphany, since our lives weren't disturbed by the need to notice the mid-season series replacements or Angelina's current stud, the arrival of these three wise men was news. Even though we began to realize they'd done it every year before, like Santa Claus and the groundhog. There was something exotic about them, emerging into our threadbare world: their spiky gold crowns, their fabulous presents, and the elegant black king-who was the youngest and tallest, sinewy as a panther, his color as foreign to our ordinary life as his kingliness.

Nor in our ignorance were we aware that in the one gospel in which they appear, there's no indication they were kings, or even three, or that one was white, one black, one yellow, and certainly no hint their names were Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. Their arrival said "something right," even if we didn't have the wherewithal to decipher it.

Later, as I had time and provocation to mull it over, I saw that the "rightness" came from these men's very differences from me and my family and our neighbors. This was all the more obvious in cribs and cards in which the designer had relinquished his or her yearning for colors and flounces to the obvious facts and left Mary and Joseph and the shepherds their dun-colored, unimpressive burlap clothes-so that, on Epiphany, when these privileged guys showed up, the message was louder and clearer. God intended this baby-and all the liberation he would bring about-to be not just for the formerly privileged Jews but for "foreigners," with customs unsettlingly strange to first-generation former peasants from Ireland and Italy and Poland-who had yet to become comfortable even with one another, much less with impenetrable Orientals and dusky blacks who lived in different ghettos from our own.

But there was another difference-and another insight. Kings or not, their gifts declared these new night visitors were undeniably rich. What about "It's as easy for a rich man to get into the Kingdom as for a camel to get through the eye of a needle?" What about those impassioned speeches from the pulpit about the seductiveness of wealth-not infrequently attached to an appeal for a new boiler in the school? It seemed that the stigma of riches didn't seem to be quite that important to this Child-nor its enticements an insurmountable obstacle to these well-do-do men.

Oh-so-gradually, it began to appear that this Savior was less fastidious in his expectations than his seminary-trained interpreters had led us to believe. And if even rich people had a chance, well, maybe even those of us tainted with sin could make it, too-as long as we didn't get arrogant or complacent about it.

But the final insight (at least so far) came from ruminating about what these wise men carried beneath their crowns, the serpentine grey tangle encased in their skulls. These men were not like the shepherds, unschooled in anything but mysterious and sacred revelations exclusive to their ethnic culture. These were men of the world, sophisticated, learned, as accustomed to the dusty nooks and scrolls of libraries as these peasants were to the wells and rock-falls of the Bethlehem hills. Unlike the Jewish shepherds, they didn't have the Kingdom dropped into their backyards. They had to struggle on a long journey to discover it, make their way toward the Incarnate Truth by taking careful readings and meticulous measurements, plagued by doubts in the fallible insights arising from their hard-won intellectual skills.

Long ago, when I was studying theology, we went periodically to St. Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital in Washington for lectures, and one time a middle-aged patient came out on a small stage, gave a little curtsey, and said, "Jesus died to prove he was man, and rose to prove he was God. Thank you." And she bowed quickly and went off into the wings. Her uncluttered mind was in no way disturbed by doubts. She wasn't troubled by questions like "How could a good God allow innocent suffering?" or claims that the laws of probability justify the claim that sooner or later intelligence could emerge from the primeval muck with no help from God. How fortunate she was! She had become like an uncomplicated child, able to embrace the Kingdom of God without puzzlement or second thoughts or doubt or uncertainty.

But those of us blessed/cursed with learning can take heart from today's gospel. It shows beyond argument there's room in this Child's Kingdom for the learned, the crooked, the puzzled, the cantankerously skeptical. The Holy Family seems to have welcomed them as unquestioningly as the simple, barely literate, unsophisticated shepherds and found their gifts-both their presents and their abilities-no less welcome.

Copyright © 2008, McQuaid Jesuit