“Gifted”
1st Sunday after Christmas
John 1:1-5, 14, 16
Every Christmas morning when I was a boy, my father took the same picture. He would position himself in the living room and aim his camera at the doorway that my brother and I would come through to see what Santa had brought. The picture he got every time was of our faces as we first glimpsed what was there.
The funny thing is how the pictures changed over time. In the earliest one, I am three, maybe four. We’re in our pajamas, I’m holding my brother’s hand and half-asleep, with a look of just dawning wonderment. I appear to be less taken by the presents as by the wonder that he had been there! But over time the expressions change. We are not sleepy-headed but ecstatic, clearly focused on the loot and rushing to get at it – maybe also conscious that we were being photographed, so giving a little bit extra for the camera! We look like we just won the lottery.
When it comes to the business of gift-getting, we’ve all got a range of responses. We can smile or gasp or laugh or cry or nod our heads – we can be amazed or quietly pleased or positively bewildered. That’s when it’s most interesting, isn’t it, when the gift is terrible, and there sits the one who picked it out, watching. So what do you do? You paste on your best fake smile and nod your head and just – lie! As lying goes, it’s the good kind, because this experience really is just as much about them as it is about you.
Here’s something I got this Christmas – a used coffee mug that Rob picked out at the school flea market – I think it cost him 25 cents and it says “Honorary Texan.” I never would have chosen it, but he did, knowing I like coffee. Do you think I had to fake anything to show how thrilled I was to be named an Honorary Texan by that little boy’s gift? And here’s what Charlie gave me – a little used paperback novel and a CD in a case without the cover. As it turns out, the novel is by an author I know to be good (and apparently so does Oprah!), and the CD is “Baby’s First Mozart.” I wouldn’t have picked them, but he did, knowing I like music and books. Do you think I had to pretend anything when I opened that bag and pulled out baby Mozart and a thumbed-over novel? Of course not. All my expressions of delight were for Charlie’s and Rob’s sake but they were all for my sake too, for any gift given in love makes the way you receive it a gift both to them and to you.
By the way, the sweater I’m wearing was a Christmas gift from Stacey. I didn’t ask for a brown sweater but she picked it and I like it – and I didn’t wear it today to show it off, but then again, I am showing it off. Isn’t it nice? It’s love I’m wearing, and it’s thanks I’m wearing. Her gift given is now my gift given!
I often hear it said that Christmas is not about receiving but about giving, but I’m not sure it’s true. Rightly receiving is wonderful giving, as giving is, of course, a wonderful receiving. So it’s fine with me that people usually ask, “What did you get for Christmas?” instead of “What did you give for Christmas.” because the getting can be the most tremendous thing, opening to possibilities of life-giving response. That famous prayer of St. Francis says, “For it is in giving that we receive,” and I’m ready to add: And sometimes it is in receiving, deep and true receiving, that we begin to give.
In Will Campbell’s book Brother to a Dragonfly he tells of his Grandma Bettye, who in rural Mississippi in 1933, on the Sunday after Christmas came to church wearing a flannel bathrobe. It was a Christmas gift, and she sat on the front pew wearing it. She said it was the prettiest thing she’d ever seen, and the Lord deserved the best.
This morning we’ve heard two biblical texts. The first comes from John’s Gospel, always read at Christmas: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth…. And from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” Did you know that in the Greek New Testament, that word we translate “grace” is just the ordinary Greek word for “gift”? So try hearing it this way: “And we beheld his glory full of gift and truth… and from his fullness we received gift on gift.”
The other text we read is from Colossians, and says: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another, forgive each other. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together…. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts… And be thankful.”
Put the texts together and this is what you get. God has given us gift and gift on gift. Now, you who are so loved, clothe yourselves in gift – compassion, kindness, forgiveness – above all, clothe yourselves in this love, and be thankful. Wear the gift!
Maybe too often we get it backward. Give more! Work hard at being more kind! Come on, be patient with him! Forgive her – now! It’s exhausting and doesn’t seem to work so well, or doesn’t work for long. But might it work the other way? Gift and gift on gift! It’s not about our giving, it’s about our deep and glad receiving of God’s gift. So you try on the gift and wear it, because it’s the finest thing you know, and you’re glad to be clothed in it. In the end, it is simply and entirely saying thanks.
Charlie was right, I like to read. The novel I’m reading now is The Winter Vault, by Anne Michaels. There is a nine-year old girl whose mother dies. Her father loves her dearly and they are very close, all the more for their shared grief. But without her mother she lacks something her father cannot give her; she has lost the one person who might have guided her in how to be a girl among her peers, in all manner of ways. This, along with everything else, makes her inward and shy and alone at school. But she has an aunt in England who comes to visit – a lively, free-spirited woman, who gives to her a pair of bright red woolen mittens, trimmed with ribbon in Scottish plaid. Years later, the girl, now a young woman, says these words to the man who would be her husband:
“I remember how frightened I was to wear those mittens in the schoolyard. What if someone said something to make me not love them as much? I thought everyone would laugh at me – something so jolly and pretty could not belong to me, could not be for my hands! It was wrong, gauche, a display of happiness above my standing. But of course no one noticed them at all. And those mittens had a kind of magic in them: they had not been ruined by words. Long after my aunt returned home, her gift continued to make me bolder and, very slowly, I began to wear what I liked….” (p. 59).
It does not matter how simple the gift. It does not matter that we would not have chosen it, or that others might not think much of it. The gift to us is God’s love for us – bright red mittens and everything more – wondrous gift, and gift on gift. So we put shyness aside and wear it every day. And it will make us bolder, clothed as we are in the extravagant kindness of God.