Shepherds vs. Kings

Shepherds vs. Kings. It sounds like a game we would play in youth group as an opening icebreaker. You divide the kids into two groups and they battle it out until one person from each side remains. Everything is settled with a friendly game of paper, rock, scissors.

But that's not where my mind is today.

My mind is on the Feast of the Epiphany, which we celebrate this weekend. I was listening to one of Bishop Robert Barron's Sermons, and he mentioned that the Three Kings who visited Jesus were most likely checking their astronomy books and reading the signs of the times. In this manner, they weren't too unlike the skeptics of today who are loyal to science and want hard proof of God's existence. The question how God can be real if the Bible doesn't include the dinosaurs. They can spout scientific theories and proofs at a moment's notice. They struggle with just taking a leap of faith, but once they are committed, they are committed for life.

Lucky for those of us lacking in scientific acumen (like myself), the wise men weren't the only people who saw Jesus. He appeared first to the shepherds. Shepherds! Could there be a group of people more different from the wise kings who came bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh? I imagine they were a lot like the stereotypical rural folks of today. Simple, maybe not as well educated, dirty, sunburned, and sweaty from working in the fields all day.

Two groups of people from two different ends of the spectrum brought together by a baby. It gives me hope that there's still a lot of hope for us today. Everywhere we look, there's division: rich and poor; rural and urban; educated and uneducated; liberal and conservative.

But even in this scene of shepherds vs. kings, there can be a question of "what about the rest of us?" Those of us who are neither rich nor poor; but comfortably middle class. Those of us who didn't come out of college with a masters degree but also didn't stop at a high school diploma. Those of us who can afford mobile devices but not the newest iphone 11. What about us ordinary people who are sitting not at one or the other ends of the spectrum but who are perched on the middle?

Scripture tells us that after the Wise Men's visit to Jesus, they went back home another way, unable to return the way they were because of a conversion. I imagine the same must have been true for the shepherds in the field. Would it have even been possible to be unchanged after encountering the Savior of the world?

I bet it didn't change for the ordinary people either. The people like the rest of us. They were there, too. When I think about how beautiful it was to have two entirely different types of people at the Nativity in the wise men and the shepherds, I think it's even more beautiful that two ordinary people, Mary and Joseph, were also there, right in the center of it all. We have the benefit of hindsight now, and we can recognize how special Mary and Joseph are in this story. But as I meditate on the people who raised Jesus - the ones in charge of feeding him and bathing him and rocking himself to sleep - I can't help but think that they weren't too different from us. Maybe there were days when Mary had to stand in a line that was too long at the market (or wherever they got food back then) and maybe St. Joseph brought flowers home to his wife like good husbands do today. But even in the midst of their "ordinary" days, they had to know that something was different after bringing this child into their home. And it's similar for the rest of us. Whether rich or poor, shepherd or king, something extraordinary happens to us ordinary people after we encounter Christ and welcome him into our homes.

The question is, what is that thing? How do we show the rest of the world that we are different because we have met Jesus Christ? And how do we invite others into that relationship? It's something good to consider in this New Year.