Sharing Life

I'm celebrating my 31^st birthday today. Connected to that, I received a check in the mail yesterday from my grandma. My birthday gift this year is slightly larger than it was last year.

It's part of a trend. Every few years, she increases her gifts by a modest amount. If the trend holds, my brother Jamie will receive a check for the same amount when he turns 28 in March.

That sort of thing used to make me so mad.

“He should have to wait three more years,” I would have thought. “I didn't get that much money when I was his age. It's not fair.”

I counted and compared all manner of things in this way.

Bedtimes.

Weekly allowances.

Grams of sugar per serving in breakfast cereal.

For most of my childhood, our mother wouldn't buy anything sweeter than 6 grams of sugar per serving. When she finally softened a little and started bringing home Cinnamon Life, we both got to eat it right away. That didn't make any sense to me. According to my math, Jamie had another three years, two months, and five days of regular old Life Cereal for breakfast.

My enjoyment of Cinnamon Life was decreased because my brother got to have it too. And illegitimately. Unfairly. Three years early.

I, on the other hand, deserved the Cinnamon Life. After all, I'd waited till the ripe old age of twelve. Just like you're supposed to.

It would be pain-causing enough if I were merely obsessed with getting things. What makes this being human all the more difficult is that it's not just the getting things that I like. It's also the feeling that I deserve what I'm getting – money, stuff, praise – and the fact that, hopefully, the people who don't deserve such things – like my younger brother – don't get them.

Here we are on Epiphany. Twelve days after Christmas. The Wise Men have arrived, bearing their gifts from afar. Today we celebrate the late comers who nearly turn Jesus' life over to Herod.

We don't hear any more about the shepherds, but I wonder where they are and what they're thinking. Perhaps they're still nearby. The glow from the Angels' visit has dimmed somewhat by now. The good news of great joy is still pretty good, but not quite as new, and the shepherds have returned to work keeping their flocks. Their Christmas vacation is over.

Are there hearts still brimming with love and charity? And, if not, what do they think at the sight of the Wise Men?

Who invited them?

Where are they from?

Are they wearing capes?

Do they get Jesus too?

Because we were here first.

If sharing cereal with family is hard, how hard might it be to share God with strangers?

And if the shepherds were still hanging around, what might the Wise Men have said to one another on seeing them there?

Balthazar, are you sure the star has stopped completely?? 
Maybe it's just slowed down a little bit. 
This can't be the place, can it?

Even if the shepherds and Wise Men thought or said such things, as human beings might well have, there is great hope here for us. After all, the Wise Men make this great, holy pilgrimage not to a temple or shrine, but to a home, to a bedside. They find God not in stone, but in flesh.

Growing up I understood going to church to be a good thing, and fighting with my brother to be a bad thing. Now I see that I’ve probably learned as much about God’s love from having a brother as I have from going to church. Through all the silly fights about things like cereal, and a few more serious ones, we are best friends. God’s love resides with us in all of our humanity. It is to this – God with us – that the Wise Men pay homage.