Christmas Day, 2011
Luke 2: 1-20
Today we gather with friends and family and this our church family to lift our hearts in song, rejoicing in the great gift of the Christ child. Today the gifts have at last been opened, and the scurrying around of the preceding weeks is over.
When we think over the gifts we’ve received, there is a sense that the view that the gift giver has of us is shown in what they’ve chosen to give. A friend persists in sending frilly presents, even though we’re not really the frilly type. Or you’re given a gift that the giver would himself have enjoyed.
It’s enough to make you wonder about the three kings--would they have brought gifts to the baby Jesus if they knew what they were starting? Sometimes the gift giving gets out of hand, as it did for the true love in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”
A variation on the Twelve Days of Christmas was sent to us by a friend.[i] It consisted of a series of letters from Agnes, the recipient of 12 days of gifts from John, who was, at least at the beginning, her true love. The first letter read,
Dear John, Thanks very much for the lovely gift of the pear tree and partridge, which arrived today. You’re wonderful. Love, Agnes
The second day was similar: Dearest John, The pair of turtledoves remind me of you and me. How thoughtful. Love always, Agnes
But by the third day, things had taken a turn. Dear John, The thought was nice, but really, I don’t know what I’ll do with three French hens in the garden. They’ve made a mess of the roses already. Bye for now, Agnes.
By the fourth day, the calling birds were causing neighbours to complain. She liked the five gold rings, but the swans a swimming and geese a laying, not so much. “What is it with this bird motif, anyway?” she wrote.
As he continues to send maids a milking and lords a leaping, Agnes’ letters get more and more annoyed, until the last letter is from her attorney, telling him to cease and desist; she is suing him for damages to her garden and emotional distress.
It shows how the gift giving can get out of hand. John was only trying to show how much he loved her.
Sometimes we feel like this at Christmas. We look and look for the right gift for our loved ones, something that will show how much they mean to us. On my side of the family, people want to tell you what to get for them, better still, to come with you as you select the gift for them, with their input, or even better, get the gift themselves, and you just them send a check. It can be a challenge.
We get a sense that God must have felt this way at times. It’s as though God wondered, how can I show people I love them?
Writer Frederick Buechner puts it this way: “God never seems to weary of trying to get his love across. When the Creation itself didn’t say enough--sun, moon, stars, all of it--he tried flesh and blood.
“He tried showing it in Noah, but Noah was a drinking man...He tried saying it in David, but David was too pretty for his own good. Toward the end of his rope, God tried saying it in John the Baptist with his locusts and honey and hell-fire preaching, and you get the feeling that John might almost have worked” except for his rather odd diet. So God tried once more.[ii]
God came as one of us. He had sent prophets to tell of his love, but people still didn’t understand, still felt his judgement more than his love.
For some of us, it is easier to feel judgement than love. I remember a father telling me he had gotten what he thought was a special gift for his teenage daughter. She was into make up, so he got her some make up he thought she’d like, and one of those lighted make-up mirrors with the little lights down either side. He meant well, but she took it the wrong way--as though she wasn’t pretty enough and needed help, and the day ended with tears. Sometimes you can’t win. Sometimes, we’re more prepared to feel judgement than we are to feel love.
We’re like that a bit with God’s love as well. It’s hard to take in the message of Christmas, that God is for us, that we are loved.
I remember there was a sign on the Lutheran church just around the corner from my house growing up. It was lit up at night, and we used to see it on the way home from parties in high school, parties where we went with trepidation, wondering if we were dressed right, whether we’d be accepted, whether that special person would even notice we were alive. And coming home, we would see it in the distance, with a neon cross just above it. The sign said, remember, “God loves you.”
The good news of Christmas is that on the first day of Christmas, God sent not a partridge in a pear tree, but the best gift God could find to show his love for us. On the first day of Christmas, our true love sent the baby Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.
So for today at least, “let us believe that on this first day of Christmas, and on the second, and on every day of our lives what our true love sends to us is his holy self, decked out in flesh like ours…God himself is born [and cradled] in our arms.”[iii]
Let us pray: High and Holy God, with the wondering shepherds we praise you for all that we have seen and heard concerning the holy child Jesus. We thank you that you love us enough to come as one of us, that nothing in our lives is outside your understanding. Keep us in your joy this Christmas, in the name of the Christ Child. Amen.
