WHAT GIFT DID YOU GET?
Isaiah 63:7-9

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
December 26, 2004 / First Sunday after Christmas

When I was young the chief topic of discussion among the school children after Christmas vacation was what gift did you get? Some youngsters were so eager to share the information on what they got that they didn't even wait for the question. They walked around with a certain amount of bravado, announcing an achievement meant to leave all the rest of us in the dust.

Others were more eager to keep the Christmas spirit of mystery alive with a question, "You'll never guess what I got for Christmas?" Guesses would follow, along with some hints to move the guesses along, driving to get to the oohs and aahs of the gift itself, whether guessed or not.

There would be a din of noise in the classroom as the detailed lists were reported. Some teachers even gave in to the spirit of the moment and asked their students to write essays on what they got for Christmas. It is an American tradition.

But unfortunately it always had winners and losers. On the one hand there were those with the new Schwinn bicycles or Lionel train sets. On the other end of the spectrum were those of us who got plaid socks and underwear. Some would be triumphant. Some would be ashamed.

Something of the same thing often goes on among adults, at work or in the super market. Adults, though, seem to measure Christmas by how many of your family got to come home for the feast. Some had just about everybody. Others were single people like me, who had no one come home for Christmas.

Winners and losers. So what did you get for Christmas?

I'm sure most of you have a sense of where I am going with all this, and I am going there – even though it is a way station on a longer journey.

What we are supposed to get for Christmas is the Christ child. Our text says it clearly: "It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old." It is not really about what we gave to each other, even though it is a great and good thing to give to each other. The sense of giving to each other is a healthy imitation of what is really going on. But the real gift of Christmas would be this: did you receive the real presence of Christ this Christmas? Have you come to know God in some new and deeper way? Has God answered your prayer with new insight, profound joy, deep and broad comfort?

Perhaps we don't think about the gift of God at Christmas anymore. After all, we have been celebrating Christmas since we were children, and there seems always seem to be a baby in the manger. The shepherds and wise ones seem always to find him. Its not exactly as if God is lost. We don't plan to go looking for God.

Or do we? What was Advent about? Why do we bother to worship each week, to set out on spiritual journeys if it is all wrapped up? Isn't there still a deeper longing in us that desires to draw nigh to God? And did we find that this Christmas? And if not how might we do that?

I've been spending some time this month reading some of the writings of Oscar Romero. This March we will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of his martyrdom. Romero was the Catholic Bishop of El Salvador. As a young man, in his training, and up to his appointment by the Pope, he had been part of the most blessed parts of that country's culture: wealthy, well fed, educated, provided for. But somehow his elevation led to a humility, a walking with the poor of that land. He became an advocate for justice. Then he was murdered at mass. Two of my favorite sources for meditative reading have recently pointed me to the same poem by Romero. Listen:

"No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, lock down on others,
those who have no need
even of God – for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
The someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God." ¹

Poverty of spirit. Start, if you will, with the text that the good bishop reminds us of before you go on to his other implications: Jesus first blessing in the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the poor in spirit."

If you didn't find God, or receive God, or were visited by God on yesterday – or any day in this season – it may be that you did not think you needed a visit. If you don't think you need God, if you think you have God already, you will not go looking, nor expect a new revelation, nor pray fervently for the Holy Spirit.

It is like the young boy with the train set. The boy who already has a train set is not eager to get a train set. Only the youngster that doesn't have one wishes and hopes and seeks and asks.

So it is with God. So Jesus tells us that the first blessing, the first Beatitude on the pathway to a life of blessedness is to begin "poor in Spirit." To be able to say this is what I don't have, what I need, what I am looking for. So the answer to the question "What did you get for Christmas," becomes first and foremost "What did you want?"

And that is the real issue of the spiritual journey – not only for Christmas but for our entire life: what did you want? If we are truly to receive God, we must realize the ways in which we are not God, the places in us and our world where Christ has not yet been born, the heart chambers that are still waiting to sing "Joy to the World." I come to Christmas to take its best only when aware of what I need. Then the birthing carries weight.

As Eliot says:

"In order to arrive at what you do not know
     You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

In order to possess what you do not possess
     You must go by the way of dispossession

In order to arrive at what you are not
     You must go by the way in which you are not.

And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not." ²

And so the good bishop says, "No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor." I hope you had some sense of that this year, of how you were desiring, of how you were hoping, of what it was you needed. What was it you desired? Some friends in your old age? Answers to questions that have bugged you for ages? An end to a family quarrel? Peace on Earth?

Only the desire, that poverty of existence, that quest for fulfillment can open us to the true meaning of Christmas.

Now this may all seem like an incomplete and unsatisfactory way to celebrate Christ's coming – to open us up to the gifts we are still seeking, and the presents not yet received. But trust this place. Enter this beatitude – this blessing of still seeking, still hoping; this beatitude that recognizes the holiness of desire, and will have Christmas again and again, not only on December 25. For while it is true that the one who seeks finds, it is also true that the life of seeking – earnestly, passionately, with your whole soul – the life of seeking is the one most often blessed with finding, and finding again and again; and then Christmas is eternal.

Amen.
_______

1 – Romero, Oscar, quoted in "The God We Hardly Knew," by William Willimon, Watch for the Light, (Plough Publishing House, Farmington, PA, 2001) "December 14," pages unnumbered.
2 – Eliot, T. S., "Four Quartets," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1943/1971), p.29. 1 – Kenyon, Jane, "Mosaic of the Nativity," in Watch for the Light, (Plough Publishing House, Farmington, PA, 2001), "December 10," pages unnumbered.