O God, you make us glad by the yearly festival of the birth of your only Son Jesus Christ: Grant that we, who joyfully receive him as our Redeemer, may with sure confidence behold him when he comes to be our Judge; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Did you get any good gifts this morning? Maybe some new clothes, Legos, or chocolates? Since we’re already thinking about what we have received, this morning let’s reflect on the gift we receive at Christmas. We heard in Hebrews, “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.” As the hymn puts it, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her King.” What a tremendous gift we have been given in Jesus!
As
we think about gifts, usually the best gifts come from people who really know
us; people who notice the comments we make, the habits we have, the things we
are interested in. One theologian has laid out what makes for the perfect gift,
and it has three parts. The perfect gift is, first of all, something that we
need. Living in North Carolina, a snow blower would not be a perfect gift for
me, because I don’t need one. But a nice
assortment of teas? Yea, that’d be great.
Secondly,
a perfect gift is something that we aren’t able to get or don’t know to get on
our own. Maybe someone with connections gets you backstage passes for when your
favorite band has a concert. Lastly, the perfect gift is incongruous with our
ability to reciprocate, meaning that the perfect gift is not something that we
can ever earn, which would make it not a gift but rather a reward. These gifts
are given not because someone has to give the gift, but because they want to.
When
we consider the gift of Jesus, it is exactly these three perfections. The hope
of God is something we desperately need in a world riddled with death and
despair. The mercy of God is not something we can obtain on our own. And it is impossible
for us to deserve or earn our belovedness, as we know from the letter of First
John, God first loved us, which is another way of saying that it’s all about
grace. Jesus is the perfect gift given from the infinite and abundant store of
God’s love.
And
these opening verses from Hebrews tell us something about the nature of this
gift – that God wants to be in a relationship with us. Hebrews, which is widely
considered to be a sermon that was written down and became a part of the New
Testament, tells us that Jesus is the love language of God. It begins by saying
that through the generations, God has spoken in many fragments and fashions.
God has spoken through people like Isaiah, Amos, Ezekiel, and Micah to remind
people of God’s call of love. God speaks through acts of generosity, through
beautiful sunsets, through the miracle of birth. God has been revealed in the
lives of Desmond Tutu, Teresa of Calcutta, and Thomas Merton.
These
are all wonderful revelations of God, but none of them are the fullness of God.
The prophets capture one sentiment of God’s speech. Nature shows us glimpses of
God’s beauty. The saints are witnesses who point us towards God. Miracles give
us a hint of the power of God. But we do not look at a landscape and think “This
is God,” nor do we call even the holiest of people “God in the flesh.” To be
sure, anytime we receive a revelation or whispering from God, it is a good and
holy gift. But none of those are the fullness of how God wants to be known by
us.
John
1 has a similar message about the uniqueness of Jesus – “In the beginning was the
Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with
God. All things came into being through him… And the Word became flesh and
lived among us.” The preacher of Hebrews puts it this way, “But in these last
days God has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through
whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the
exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful
word.” That phrase, that Jesus is the “exact imprint” of God is, in Greek, the
word “character.” Jesus shows us the character of God.
This
is such an amazing sentiment that I worry that I don’t have the words to convey
the depth, loveliness, and grandeur of it. God was not satisfied being known
only in the beauty of a bird’s song, not only by the courage given to Esther
and Daniel, not only by the words of Ruth and Jeremiah, not only by the
miracles seen in Moses and Elijah, not only in the rituals of David and Solomon,
not only in the promises made to Abraham and Mary. As wonderful as those all
are, God chose to be with us in Jesus, so that we would know the fullest
expression of God’s character of love, peace, and mercy.
God
chose to be in a relationship with the world in Jesus because God did not want
to be only the object of theology or the recipient of our praise. God was not satisfied
being known about, rather God chose to be fully known in Jesus. And so, no
longer do we only have glimpses of God, but we have the full representation,
God in the flesh, the Word come among us.
So
that could be no doubt that God loves us, God has spoken to us in Jesus. In his
birth, we see the gracious humility of God to be born into vulnerability and poverty,
showing us something about the path of true godliness. In his life, we see that
God intends to cast out the evil that infects our hearts and minds, that God
intends to feed the hungry and heal the sick. In his Passion and Death, we see that
God will go to any and every length to make it known that nothing stands
between us and God’s love – not our sins, not our doubts, not our mistakes, not
even our deaths. In his Resurrection, we see that God’s love has no limit and
no boundary. In his Ascension, we see that the one who sits at the right hand of
God is the very one who loves us to the end, which gives us hope and confidence
that all shall be well. In his sending of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost,
we see that he makes good on the promise to be with us always, to never leave
us, but to always be with us as our strength, our wisdom, and our comfort.
As
the perfect gift giver, God knows that what we need to thrive in a relationship
of trust and love, we needed a human connection. And so the Almighty descended to
us, throwing off the cloak of invisibility and invincibility. He was born in the
midst of a complicated political occupation, was laid in a feeding trough as
his first crib, had to flee as a refugee to Egypt, and would grow up to be misunderstood,
rejected, and murdered. God was not surprised at this outcome, he had worked
with humans before. God knew how fickle and faithless we can be. And yet God
came and spoke the language of love in Jesus because God wanted to make this
eternal love known in time and history.
God wanted a relationship
with us and did not hold back in making this perfect gift a possibility. Jesus
gives us the sort of relationship we need so that we can truly know God. In
Jesus, God did what we could not do for ourselves – showing us the abundance of
love. And because this gift of love comes as pure grace, there is no deserving
or earning this love, instead we simply get to enjoy it, share it, and flourish
in love.
As the perfect gift, we
can absolutely use the gift of God’s love in Jesus. In the name of Jesus, we
can offer forgiveness, even if we would otherwise struggle to do so. In the
example of Jesus, we can trust that we are never alone, never forgotten, never
without hope. With the stories and teachings of Jesus, we have been shown the way
of love. In the cross of Jesus, we have the assurance that we are loved. We can
use the name of Jesus in prayer, such as the Jesus Prayer which goes “Lord
Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” We can receive the gift of his body and blood
in the Eucharist. We can cherish the gift of knowing that for us and for our
salvation, love is the perfect gift of Christmas.
