The Greatest Gift

I need your help tonight. So, when I was a kid I had a hard time paying attention on Christmas Eve. Do you know why I could not pay attention? Two Words: Christmas presents!

Well, tonight I need your help with some presents. We are going to play a game. My friend, Nathan Carlson, who lives down in Birmingham, plays a similar game. Except instead of wrapping presents Nathan hides the object underneath his shirt. You will never guess what his game is called, “Guess What’s Underneath My Shirt!” Of course, I prefer “Guess What’s Underneath the Wrapping”!

I bet you might already be pretty good at this. If you look at presents underneath the Christmas tree and guess what’s under the wrapping paper you have been practicing. So, it’s pretty easy to play once I hold up an item and not before then, you guess what the present is. On the first two if you guess correctly, sadly you do not get to keep the prize, but what’s inside the third one you can keep it!

Round:

1.       What do you think is in this oddly shaped package? Is it a hat? Could it be something that belongs to a light? If you guessed a lamp shade you are correct! Hooray! 

2.       This package is round. It could be a Frisbee. Maybe it is a thick dinner plate, but what is that? What do I hear? Ticking! If you guessed it is a clock you are correct!

3.       Now what could possibly be in this third present? What is it? It just looks like a box? Anything could be in here! What do you hope is in here? A Nintendo system? A Tiffany diamond engagement ring? Keys to a new Tesla? If it could be the greatest gift of all what would it be? As we open this package we find that there is nothing in here.

Are there gifts that you cannot see? Have you ever been given a gift that you could not see? Two Christmases ago my mom gave my family and me a trip to Disney World. I could not see that trip until it happened. And, there are gifts even more amazing presents that we cannot see. 

When your mom, dad, grandparents, or sibling is really nice to you sometimes you cannot see it. When they say please or thank you they show you love. Sharing games or toys shows love. When they make sure you are warm and dry on a rainy, cold night they show you love. Love is not something you can always see. Sometimes it is something that you just know in your head, feel in your gut, or experience in your heart.

The shepherds long ago had felt something just like this. Do you know the story of the shepherds? We heard their story tonight in the reading about Jesus’ birth. I like shepherds because I could see myself as a shepherd. I bet any of you could be a shepherd too. Being a shepherd doesn’t take a fancy degree. 

Those shepherds long ago were tending their flocks one night. They were in a field caring for their sheep when something amazing happened. Angels came to tell them good news of great joy. Sure they were afraid because God’s glory startled them, but the Angel told them that the baby Jesus had been born!

God gave to the Shepherds an amazing present. They were given news of a Savior who would bring love to all people. And, they got to go meet the baby Jesus. So, they went to go see him. These lowly guys in a field that is who God choose to tell about this gift from above. Shepherds were the ones who first received the best gift ever given.

Do you know what else? The shepherds are not the only ones who receive that gift! God sent Jesus down to earth not just for the shepherds, but for all of us. At Christmas each year we remember the greatest gift every given, our Savior Jesus! Like those shepherds we are called by the messengers of God to go and see Jesus lying in the manger with his mother Mary and father Joseph. We are to celebrate with great joy like those shepherds that God came down to be with us. And, we, like them, are to go and tell that Good News to other people too!

You will most likely get some wonderful gifts tomorrow or maybe even tonight. But, you have already received the best gift of all: A Savior who came down to love us, to show us God’s love, and to bring us closer to God! We may not be able to see it, but believe that God loves you always and forever! Amen.

Special Delivery

The United States Postal Service (USPS) will have delivered approximately 16 billion cards, letters, and packages between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day this year! That is 16 billion with a “b” or maybe even a capital “B!”. According to their website the USPS indicates these numbers represent an increase of about 12 per cent over last year. This does not even include all the packages shipped by FedEx, UPS, DHL, and others! 

 

Perhaps like me you have noticed more delivery trucks driving around town. The other day I observed at about 7 AM a UPS truck pulling up to a house. Before the driver had even stopped another UPS worker jumped out of the truck with a package. Within 15 seconds the driver had his foot back on the accelerator as the second worker hopped back in and off they went—efficiency at work!

On top of the beauty of these workers doing their jobs effectively, something more stands out about all these deliveries. They are bringing presents, gifts, messages of hope, and other good news! At last count Kim and I have received 37 Christmas cards. (I honestly believe more will come in even after December 25^th because clergy families wait until their cards actually arrive in the season of Christmas instead of Advent—yes, we know we are a little rigid about liturgical seasons!)

The cards we have received have pictures of happy couples, children, grandchildren, and even pets smiling back up at us! Often I forget that our mail and packages do not just magically appear at our doorstep, but reading these USPS statistics, seeing the UPS workers hustle, and looking at all these marvelous Christmas cards has helped me to see that postal workers are angels or at least God’s messengers of good news. (Now, theologically speaking this is not what I believe, as angels are actually a different order of being than humans, but just play along as it’s ALMOST Christmas.) When I had this thought I quickly began thinking of how Gabriel might visit Mary if the story of Christ’s coming were to happen today.

Would Gabriel just text Mary out of the blue? Certainly not! Would Gabriel drop off a package of instructions, like a postal worker? Despite what I have already said, probably not! Gabriel met Mary face-to-face and as much as I love Christmas cards and birth announcements, the way that God had to intervene into human history was way too intimate for even the best designed stationary in the world.

We hear the story so often that it might lose its shocking nature, but what Gabriel came to tell Mary ought to shake us to our cores! “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you” probably did little to comfort a startled Mary, especially considering that Gabriel followed this welcome up with a shocking announcement. As Frederick Buechner put it in his book Telling the Truth, “The gospel is bad news before it is good news” (New York: Harper One, 1977, 7). Initially what Gabriel spoke terrified Mary: “You are going to get pregnant out of wedlock and all those plans you had about marrying Joseph and living happily ever after… Well, they may not come to fruition, as you planned. Instead you are going to give birth to God’s Son!” Even as Gabriel said that the child would be great, the Son of the Most High and would reign forever, Mary stuck with his initial announcement that she would bear a son! “How can this be since I know not a man?” Out of wedlock pregnancy meant not just disruption of plans, but also potentially shame, disgrace, and even sometimes death! This was bad news at first! The mailman was not delivering a Christmas card, but a death notice!

I wonder how long Mary sat there perplexed before Gabriel dared to say something more. Maybe it was instantaneous, but if in her shoes I believe I would have been stupefied for quite a while. Slowly though, Gabriel explained that God’s Spirit would bring this child to Mary and to assuage her doubts the angel even told of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth’s miraculous pregnancy. Yet, even this thing could have been received as bad or at least scary news: a high risk pregnancy! And yet, the final words of this divine mail man resonate so profoundly that they transform all this shockingly upsetting news into something more hopeful for Mary: “For nothing will be impossible with God.” After these words Mary’s posture shifts.

The mother of God uttered boldly a statement that made the bad news into Gospel: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Wow. Call it righteousness. Call it faithfulness. Call it unconditional love. Mary showed us all the epitome of trusting God. She consented to God’s will and became the servant of God, not completely abandoning her questions, but something else. Instead she let her wonderings gestate until she could see her cousin Elizabeth, until she could bear this son, and until the shepherds could come announce their vision of angelic hosts! Mary allowed God to dwell within and even though she had questions she said yes to God!

Sometimes in our lives a messenger will deliver bad news, or what at first appears to be bad news. What Mary exemplifies for us is how to respond in these difficult moments. May we consent to God, may we become servants of the Lord, and may we allow God’s word to be born in us as it was in Mary. May we say now and always, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Pondering Things

The words of Luke 2:1-20 sound so familiar to me that I have a hard time not glossing over the text as I read it. Regardless of the year in our cycle of Scriptural readings we hear Luke’s Nativity narrative at the primary celebration of Christmas—maybe Christmas Eve, maybe Christmas Day, or maybe both. Not only this, but chances are if you go to a Christmas pageant, then Luke’s words will make it into the production. The repetition of the story can have a profoundly negative effect, as we miss the beauty and absurdity of the story of Jesus’ birth.

When I force myself to slow down enough to take in the details of the Third Gospel’s Christmas message I find myself hearing the words in my head in a British accent. No, I don’t think I’m crazy, this anglophile-hearing of the tale is a force of habit. Every year my family maintains a tradition of listening to the Festival of Lessons and Carolsbroadcast around the world from King’s College, Cambridge. This year—like most years—Luke 2 makes it into the service—twice! The sixth and seventh lessons tell of Mary’s and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem and the angels’ visitation of the shepherds respectively. Sadly though, the Festival’s seventh lesson stops after the 16^th verse leaving out a phrase that calls us to a bold task in this season when we call to mind the Advent of Christ past, present, and yet to come!

As the shepherds arrived at the manger they told Mary of their angelic visitors. Shepherds finding a baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger seems difficult enough in the town of Bethlehem, but that these instructions came from an angel makes it all the more outlandish. Now imagine being Mary who after just giving birth in a barn now finds herself being visited by a pack of smelly shepherds! If some farmers or factory workers burst into a maternity ward demanding to see a patient today security would be called. And yet, as strange as this seems the shepherds’ message and Mary’s response—that bit that is helpful to us—might be even weirder.

The sheep-herders tell Mary that her child will be the Messiah and that this message came from angles nonetheless. We might expect that Mary would kick these messengers out of the stable for being lunatics who claim to have been visited by God, but something else happens. Mary who had also been visited by the angel Gabrielle had the ability to accept these words instead of reject them because she had such faith in God that even the unbelievable to her was believable. Unlike others who were amazed and perhaps too perplexed by the shepherds’ words to receive them, Mary pondered all these things in her heart. She let the words pass her defenses and into her soul!

We, like Mary, are called to allow the crazy message of Jesus’ birth to hit us square in the heart. Even though our instinct might be to just gloss over what we are hearing because these words come around to us this time each year, we are called to model our faithfulness after bold Mary who in turn shaped her life of trust after God’s own! The God of all—the infinite, the omnipresent, the omniscient, Almighty One—became the vulnerable baby lying in a manger. That little child, who could not speak a word, cure others, or even take care of himself came to be the Messiah, the Savior of us all. The wild juxtaposition of the God of all coming to dwell in an infant child who had to rely on others strikes me as a crazy act of faithfulness on God’s part. God trusted in human beings to take care of the baby Jesus. This is wild and it is something that I must ponder, not just with my head, but also in my heart. 

May we spend time this season hearing Luke’s message of Jesus’ birth and like Mary ponder all these things in our hearts!