The Shepherd and the Wise Man

a reflection by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at First Unitarian Church of Alton, on Christmas Eve, 2007

                (the shepherd in black, the wise man indented in blue…)

 

Most people don’t realize how hard this work is - keeping up with each and every sheep, working out in the wind and the cold, sleeping wherever you can lay your head.  It’s not what it’s cracked up to be, this shepherd’s life.  There’s many a night when I would have given it up for one hot meal.

But there are some things to recommend it, I suppose.  Sometimes it’s pretty nice out here among the hills.  Some mornings, the sunrise can take your breath away with all the bright colors and rays of light across the sky and the promise of a new day dawning on the horizon.  And some nights, the stars seem so close you think you could just reach out and touch them. 

Oh, I don’t mind it out here so much, really.  The sheep don’t give a guy too much trouble.  I try to do my best for them;  they seem to know it, so they don’t act up too often. 

I guess the worst thing is the boredom - one day can run into the next.  Nothing special happens very often, that’s for sure, at least nothing to compare with that night a few years ago just before my brothers quit and left me out here to tend the flocks all alone.  It started out a night like any other night…

 

It’s funny - no one ever asks what it’s like to be considered a wise man.  Mostly they just ooh and aah and get out of the way when we ride into town on our big camels.  I guess we could dress differently, maybe;  all the pomp and circumstance of these fancy clothes makes it hard to blend in with regular folks.  Anyway, it’s not easy when you’re so set apart from others like this:  it can be pretty lonely with people always bowing down to you and all.  Maybe that’s why my fellow magician/astrologers and I try to stay out here in our tents outside of town, keeping to ourselves and studying our old books and looking into the heavens every night to see what the stars have to say to those of us who take notice of such things.

Some of the time, the things we think we see in the stars turn out to be nothing special - either the books have it wrong, or we don’t interpret the signs well enough, or whatever we think we see turns out to be totally explainable in natural terms after all.  I don’t want to make too big a deal out of our mediocre average, you understand, because too much misinterpretation in this business can mean we’d have to go back to tending sheep, and God knows we wouldn’t want to have to do that.  Suffice it to say that we’re not perfect by any stretch, and sometimes it can get us into pretty big trouble.

One of the times we got into trouble almost ended our careers.  It was back a few years ago…

 

It started out a night like any other night - the sheep had bedded down and my brothers and I were lying around the fire, talking, telling stories, and trying to stay warm, when all of a sudden there was this racket like you wouldn’t believe and strange lights dancing in the sky.  I don’t know much about magic or angels or anything, but I swear there was something out there making an eerie music like I never heard before.  The lights kept dancing and came down closer to us and we were all afraid.  One of my brothers went totally blank staring up at the sky - it was like he went into a trance or something.  When the lights and the noise stopped, my goofy brother woke up and started babbling about angels sent with messages and signs from God and other weird stuff, and the he got very excited telling us how we had to go into town and look for a sign of something new - a baby or something.

Like I said, we were plenty afraid, because we didn’t know what was happening and there wasn’t anywhere to run and hide.  I’d like to think we made it all up because the sheep didn’t even notice, but there was something there, alright:  all of us saw and heard something and my brother would not stop yammering that we had to go into town and look for this sign from God, or whatever it was.

 

One of the times we got into trouble almost ended our careers.  It was back a few years ago, that time we were waiting for a certain bright star to appear once again and fulfill ancient prophecies.  We had discovered, in the margin of one of our oldest books, a tiny scribbled note about a prophecy that said a long-lost heavenly body would return to streak across the sky on such-and-such a night to herald the birth of a new ruler.  Well, that doesn’t happen every night, I’ll tell you, or even every century, for that matter, so we were ready when the star showed up on the evening horizon one night.  We watched it for a little while to make sure it was the right one and then we loaded up and prepared to follow it wherever it went.

And it was the strangest thing:  that star climbed straight overhead for a few nights and then kept on going before settling on the western horizon right above a little village in the far reaches of the desert.  On our way toward the village, we had to pass through the city of Jerusalem, and darned if someone didn’t tell ol’ King Herod about us riding through his town.  When the king’s guards came and took us to the court, we thought we were done for - Herod is not exactly known for open-mindedness.  He’s not what you think, though:  looking at him, you could almost believe he’s just a normal person by the way he looks at you and smiles his little smile and asks his little questions in his kind of an aw-shucks fashion. 

But they don’t call us wise men for nothing.  We were smart enough to see the evil in that man.  We saw through his lies and told him only what we had to to get back on the road to follow the star.  We found out later -  and this is what I’m saddest about -  that Herod used the tiny bit of news he got from that meeting with us to perpetrate plenty of evil, and the horrible deeds of Herod’s soldiers still play havoc across my dreams to this day.

 

My brother would not stop yammering that we had to go into town and look for this ‘sign from God,’ or whatever it was.  We’d never left the sheep like that before - I never have again, either.  It was such a long walk into the village, but we were all so excited and bewildered and wondering what we were going to find that the distance and the time melted away.  That eerie music still echoed in our ears, and my brother kept going on about choirs of angels in the heavens.  I still wonder why he was the only one to hear it - what makes him so special?

 

As we neared the village in the middle of a night not fit for man nor beast, the wind was blowing cold from the east and the lights of town had burned down to embers.  After the long trip we’d taken, my hopes were set on this turning out to be something really astounding.  We didn’t have to wait for long…

 

We didn’t have to wait for long.  As we passed a broken-down old stable on the edge of town, we saw a light from inside and peered in at the doorway on a scene I won’t soon forget -

 

As we passed a broken-down old stable on the edge of town, we saw the light - maybe I was seeing things or maybe it was a funny reflection, but the star we’d been following for days seemed to come to rest right on its rooftop.  Now, stables as rickety as that are not meant for any but the lowliest of lowly animals, but what do you know?  Inside the old stable, there were people:  a little family huddled amongst the animals for warmth, and leaning over a manger full of fresh hay -

 

Inside the old stable, there were people:  a little family huddled amongst the animals for warmth, and leaning over a manger full of fresh hay - a man and a woman, both looking real poorly and all the worse for wear and tear.  And in the manger, there he was:  the baby my brother kept telling us about: a tiny child wrapped in swaddling clothes.

 

There was a tiny child wrapped in swaddling clothes.  The man - his father, I assume - seemed distant for some reason, and didn’t want to have anything to do with us.  The mother, impossibly young, was still wrung out from the birth a few hours before and she couldn’t seem to fathom why we were there with gifts.  Frankly, if we’d had to deal much more with those people, we’d have turned around and headed home right away.

 

While we were trying to be quiet so we could hide and watch the parents take care of the little one, my brother stood up outside the door and announced himself like he was a grand messenger of some kind.  He walked right in and started telling them about the choirs of angels he saw in the heavens and the songs he heard them singing and the message he’d gotten about coming to see the baby.  He nearly talked their ears off before he realized he should leave them alone and let them get some sleep.  He can be a royal pain sometimes…

 

That baby!  All the markings of royalty, I must say!  Just the look in his eyes was worth every step and every hardship of our trip to find him!  My friends and I don’t see too many babies in our work, but this one stood out, anyway - more awake, more aware, I’d say, than most newborns.  I’m not sure what it all meant, but the three of us old wise men were brought darn near to tears by that little fellow. 

 

At the time, I hadn’t seen a lot of babies - sheep babies, yes, but not real-live people babies.  To me, this one looked like any other baby I’d ever seen before - like any other baby on any other night in any other place.  My brother, on the other hand, was purely overcome with seeing him, like he was seeing somebody really special, like he was seeing a king or a god or something…

 

We asked the mother if she would accept the gifts we’d brought to honor the child - gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  She said if it meant something special to us to give him gifts, then she wouldn’t stand in the way…

 

I wish I could say that baby meant something special to me like he obviously did to my brother, but I’ve had a few kids of my own since then and I think they’re about as special as it gets.  You ought to see ‘em chasing the sheep out here in the hills.  One of these days they’re going to be real fine shepherds.  Just like chips off the ol’ block.  Yeah, those nights they were born were nights to remember…

 

In the years since that night with the little family, I’ve wondered if we were right or wrong to think that tiny babe was anything special.  We listen for news that might tell us he has actually become an important person and made a difference in the world, but the political situation doesn’t get any better, the world seems to go right on killing itself for one reason or another.  I guess I’ll never know how it’ll turn out,

 

I’ve had a few kids of my own since then…

 

but that night was a night to remember,

 

I think my kids are about as special as it gets…

 

and the look in that baby’s eyes -

 

You ought to see ‘em chasing the sheep out here in the hills…

 

there was genuine, abiding love there,

 

But that night was a night to remember,

 

and it changed forever the way I think about what real love is.

 

All those nights were nights to remember…