The three wise men (as everyone knows but tends to forget) did not visit Jesus in the manger as a baby. They found him much later, living in a shanty on the outskirts of Bethlehem, when he was two years old. This is important.
They
knew they were looking for a child, and this was a matter of some awkwardness
for them. They often wondered:
What behaviour would be appropriate in the presence of a child-king? They pictured themselves kneeling, presenting
their gifts, and then perhaps sitting stiffly on the edge of wooden chairs and
nibbling biscuits. Their
conversation would be mainly with the parents, of course, while the child
looked on serenely, wonderingly.
With careful humility they would avoid his large, omniscient eyes.
This
is not how it turned out. These
men were bachelors, remember.
Monkish types.
Contemplatives used to sitting on their duffs and reaching after the
ineffable with their noggans. What
could they possibly know about the terrible twos?
How
surprised they were to find their little king blazing around the house in a
torn toga, chattering up a storm, and leaping onto their laps to tweak their
beards! Even more surprising, they
found they did not react to these improprieties with horror. Instead they felt all the stiffness
draining out of them, lifetimes of reverent caution (i.e. distrust) dissolving
like sugar lumps in tea. They were
charmed, delighted, won. Truly and deeply. In no time they found themselves regressing, relaxing back
into the childhoods they had never had.
They got down on their knees, all right, but it wasn't to worship - it
was to give the kid camel rides, and then to roll over like great fat bears
while the boy who had made the universe used their bellies for
trampolines. Yes, they fell down
before their king, yet not in some formal act of prostration, but bowled over
like ninepins by the thunder of a child's chortle.
Even
the stars - which to these men objects of utmost seriousness – were like so
many marbles to the Boy King. Had
they not given themselves to following one of them, believing this to be the
great high purpose of their lives?
And where had the star gotten them? Rolling around in their sumptuous robes on the dirt floor of
a hovel, that's where. Squealing
like pigs, hooting till their sides fairly split, squirting out buckets of
snotty tears. Ripping open their
fine silks and brocades so that the holy little hoodlum could blow trumpet
kisses into their bare tums.
Did
the magi know beyond doubt that they had found their king? O yes, they knew! They knew it when the little guy sat
astride their backs, smacked them on the rumps and cried, "Giddy up,
Frankincense! Mush, Myrrh! Heigh ho, Gold - away!"
"Jesus,
hon," his mother kept saying, "Don't embarrass the nice men."
But
he was born to embarrass nice men, to embarrass them with riches. All day long the great sages lay in the
dirt collapsed in ecstasy, slain by the spirit of an urchin. All night they lay there too, babbling in
tongues, humming snatches of psalms and Mother Goose, burbling musically like
babes. That night the greatest
astrologers of the ancient world literally saw stars - saw them for the first
time, as they are, rolling round heaven to a toddler's tune.
These
men who had come to pray, ended in play.
They came to give gifts, but ended by leaving what they had always
longed to get rid of: starched collars, phony crowns, jaded adult wisdom. The wise men were turned into wise
guys. Jokers. They became fools - fools for Christ.
