Years ago, when I first got married, I inherited
a couple of cats, and I hated them. I was raised with dogs and always thought
of cats as sort of a fake pet, not really worthy of attention. I’m embarrassed
to say it now because they eventually grew on me, but in those days I spent a
lot of time just making fun of them and putting them down in front of our
friends and family. (Did you know that there are whole book collections of
jokes about cats? I have some of them.)
One Christmas Eve about 10
years ago, our family came to visit, and among them was my little niece,
Rachel. That night we had an early dinner (because I had to do the Christmas
Eve service) and while we ate, I remember saying a little too much about the
useless felines that inhabited the house. Rachel was aghast. She had kittens of
her own and she loved our cats, and here I was rudely telling stories about
them.
After dinner we all went
over to the church for the service, which was lovely. We sang and prayed and
welcomed the Christ child into Bethlehem and into our hearts. I spoke
of how amazing it was that God would choose Mary and Joseph for this miracle:
two nearly-homeless, unmarried kids, from south Israel who were just
coming through town to pay their taxes. Neither came from good families and
neither ever amounted to much (Joseph probably died young because we never hear
much about him again). But God chooses the outcast, the denigrated, and the
lowly to be the bearers of his Good News, and there you have it.
Paul, I told them, says that
the wisdom of the crucifixion is completely lost on the smart, the rich and the
powerful. They just don’t get it. Those who do get it tend to
be the ordinary people: fishermen, tax collectors, beggars, blind, lepers, or,
as we used to say, “the lame, the least and the lost.”
That was my sermon. I’ve
done better, but I thought it was pretty good.
The next day when we were
all gathered around the tree, giving out presents in the name of the one who
gave his all for us, I noticed something different about the lovely crèche on
the side board in the living room that two of my parishioners had made for us.
It just didn’t look right somehow. We were busy all morning opening gifts and
drinking coffee, but I kept looking back over to the side board because something
just seemed… different. Finally I realized that all of the animals
had been turned around. “Now what?” I thought.
Finally, when we broke for
a late morning brunch, I went over to take a closer look and realized that
everything had been turned around. The donkeys and camels were now looking up
and around into the room. The wise men were standing next to them pondering the
sky or a star or whatever. Even the shepherds were now out at the edges of the
manger peering intently away from the crib that should have been the center of
attention. But when I looked more closely, I saw that not only had some things
been moved, new things had been added. There, right next to the crib full of
straw and the baby Jesus, were two little clay cats that we received as a gift
years earlier, which are normally kept in another room on a dresser. Someone
had moved them into the manger and made them look right into the crib, with
their little kitty noses almost touching the baby. What on earth had happened?
I looked around for the culprit and caught little Rachel staring at me and
giggling uncontrollably.
“What have you done,” I
yelled in my most ominous-sounding voice.
“I was just doing what you
said,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You said that in the Bible
the meaning of Jesus was hidden from the smart people. That the big people
don’t understand him and the little ones do.”
“Uh, well that’s sort of
right...” I said, not knowing exactly where this was going.
“So, that’s why I turned
all of your people and animals away from the baby Jesus.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Everybody
but the cats.”
“Well,” she said. “If they
are as bad as you say they are, that means that God wants only that cats will
get it.”
And last week, that little
conversation was again on my mind as we were preparing for the day of the
manger and the visit of the so-called “Wise” men. The wise people of the world
seem increasingly dismissive of the wisdom of the cross. They – we, actually
– often just don’t get it. All of us who claim to be Christian, love to praise
the baby in the manger and then go about the business of lifting up the
powerful and putting down the weak, of making the rich get richer and the poor
get poorer. We’ve been doing it for decades and it’s beginning to come back and
haunt us. Maybe we can pray this year, as we never have before, that the wisdom
of the lame, the weak and the cats might come into our lives and guide us
forever.
Rev. Stan
