The late Bishop Gerald Kennedy used to tell a story about a census taker who was going door to door. He knocked on the door of a small, unpretentious house and was met at the door by a weary mother. "Lady," he said, "I want to know how many there are in this family." "Well," she said, "There's Johnny, Matilda, Reginald, Charles..." "No, no," he interrupted, "I don't want their names, just their number." with much indignation, she replied, "They ain't got no numbers. They all got names."

When God Almighty condescended to be born into a peasant family in a Third World country, he drastically inflated the value of every human life. Everybody became a somebody. Every human being created by God has a name. The writer Luke begins the story of Jesus' birth by talking about a Roman emperor and his…