Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3: 2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12
I occasionally listen to the This American Life podcast from NPR and always wish I did more often when I do. One of their recent episodes (well timed for many, I'm sure) was called "Nobody's Family is Going to Change" based on a children's book with the same title. There are a lot of good reasons to recommend it, but there's one that struck a particular chord with me. The first story of the hour is told by a queer journalist, who was raised Jewish, about her struggle to come to terms with her born again Christian brother. Again, a lot of fascinating stuff in the story, but what really caught my imagination was the story of her brother's conversion.
Her talked about the depths of despair and confusion in his life. The climax came when two different Christian groups gave him conflicting information about the state of his personal salvation - so he does what you do: go up to the top of a hill and demand that God speak to him now or he won't leave. He even beats his head with rocks, after a few hours, because in his words, he will, "find God or die trying."
I kept thinking, as I listened to the story, about how hard God, in turn, must have been trying to talk to him during that long night on the hilltop. They both finally had a breakthrough around 3 a.m., because he felt a sudden inexplicable joy and spoke in tongues for the first time (it's unclear how permanent the gift was). He felt what the first reading promises, "your heart shall throb and overflow" at the splendor of Jerusalem. The snark in me, of course, imagines his guardian angel and even God Himself sighing, in frustration at not being able to get through, and saying, "Oh fine! Just give him the works and be done with it! He can hardly ignore speaking in tongues!"
Then again, my own relationship with God is based on laughter. So, you know.
This story throws new relief on the story of Elijah waiting for God to speak in the desert. Because maybe God was in the earthquake and the fire and the lightning and the thunder as well as the gentle breeze. I imagine God looking down on that cave and working so hard to get through to his prophet - to find the voice that Elijah would hear most clearly. God speaks to us how we are prepared to hear Him. All around me, I see Him working so hard to find the voice that will speak to each of us.
So I love that last we heard about the shepherds - ordinary men out in the meadows, about their work, who suddenly see the heavenly host with an explicit message and clear-cut directions - and this week we have the wise men - scholars who study the heavens for portents looking desperately into the unknown trusting to faith in a more equal proportion to trusting their wits. Those are two extremes on an infinite spectrum - look at them together and you see that God will find any way we can handle to speak to us.
Because I fall closer to the wise men side of things - because I like to riddle things out for myself and talk things through with other people on the path and a heavenly host would frankly terrify me, I can forget that the joy the shepherds had that night was indisputably greater - and what they did to reach Jesus in the manger certainly caused fewer problems for everyone else.
In an parish in my home diocese, there was a saint that many met and still remember, St. Katherine Drexel, who in a famous story was greeted by a visitor to her order as she scrubbed the floors herself. Upon being asked why the Mother Superior was scrubbing the floors, she said she gave orders by example. That's a woman who knows exactly how God speaks to her and keeps close to that state of mind.
How strange and amazing it must be to walk where a saint so recently trod - and what a reminder. We think of saints as people who, out of the blue, received a startling vision and reformed their lives or as the Great Thinkers and Writers of the Church. The truth, however, is that we all fall somewhere on the spectrum of the shepherds to the wise men - and God is fighting desperately to reach us at every place in the spectrum. The saints are the ones who, when they finally heard Him, spent their lives working at the task He set them in the way they were best prepared to hear.
We are called to listen - and to prepare to get to work. However he gives the orders.
