A Sermon for Christmas
The Rev. Patricia A. Gillespie
Isaiah 62:6-7,11-12
Psalm 97
Titus 3:4-7
Luke 2:1-10
Many of us have spent a lot of time in the past few days wrapping up Christmas gifts. It can be fun and challenging: a chance to make something beautiful or a clever way to hide a surprise.
Often families have traditions about wrapping: At our house the kids look forward to listening to "Nana" wrap gifts She doesn't like wrapping, and her animated complaints about the too-short paper or the tangled ribbons have become essential parts of our family tradition. And everyone waits to see Paul's "Ronko-wrapped" gifts, featuring the shopping bags they came in and lots and lots of duct tape. Tiny things are wrapped in huge boxes, and odd shapes appear under the tree. And then there was the year I was twelve and tried to wrap a hamster for my brother so I spent all night catching the hamster and putting it back in the chewed up wrappings.
The idea is to disguise a surprise, so that no amount of rattling, sniffing, or holding it up to the light will give away the surprise. Sometimes it's a treasure. Other times the idea is to get a person to accept something they'd never accept any other way. Like those Christmases I gave my brother a rock. Or the year I gave my mother a puppy in a bottomless box that wiggled across the floor.
Most of us can tell stories about oddly or creatively wrapped surprise gifts. Packages wrapped so that we could never guess what's inside.
But we all know that Christmas isn't really about the gifts we give or how we wrap them; it's not about rocks, or bicycles, or even puppies. Christmas is about the gift that God gave us.
God's surprise package. What an incredible idea this is: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son ..." "To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord." "And the Word became flesh and lived among us."
How do you wrap such a gift?
The gift is God, the Holy One, whose name cannot be spoken, whose picture cannot be made. How can anyone wrap an invisible, unspeakable gift? How do you wrap up Unconditional Love and Forgiveness?
Since the beginning of the world, God has been trying give us this gift. And since the first self-conscious person walked this earth people have turned away from this gift.
We have been thoroughly lacking in imagination. God, the Holy One, whose name cannot be spoken, whose picture cannot be made, is trying to give us something of Godself. God has been sending us beautiful wrappings. You could even call them "sacramental" wrappings – "outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace." Rainbows after floods and burning bushes that never burn up are supposed to point us to the real but invisible gift: God's love for us.
But we didn't get it. We mistook the wrapping for the gift. How, then, do you wrap an invisible, unspeakable gift?
One of my children, when I asked for Christmas sermon help, said of Mary's pregnancy with the Christ Child.. "It's just like using Mary for gift wrapping."
God's surprise package: How do you wrap up God? God really takes the people by surprise and wraps the Gift up in a young woman from Nazareth: "And the Word became flesh and lived among us"
Jesus is the gift. Jesus is different than those other ‘gifts' The Gift is the One Holy God, no longer invisible and unnameable. This baby is a Gift that we can see and touch and name.
But this is something more than wrapping. Mary may be the "gift wrapping." but her child is the Gift itself. This baby in the manger is the fullness of God. There is no need to unwrap the gift. The human wrapping and the divine gift are united. God and baby are one.
God sent us a gift in a wrapping that is hard to refuse. With a baby we don't get distracted by all those questions we had about God's other gifts We don't ask: "Is it real?" "Can I trust it?" "Are there strings attached to this gift?" God knows that most people when presented with a baby just take it and love it. And that's the kind of response that God is looking for from us: "Just take the baby and love it."
Mary responded that way to God when she said "Let it be" and accepted the child growing in her body.
The shepherds responded that way, too. Just take the baby and love it. This is God with us. The shepherds knew how to accept the gift. When they were told about the child, they went to see and then "returned, glorifying and praising God."
And the Gift is still given. The one holy and living God continues to be born into our world today. God the Word is still becoming flesh. The Messiah, the Christ, lives and becomes visible and nameable in each child that is baptized. That is, in each and every one of us. There is no need to unwrap the gift. The wrapping and the gift are one.
All we need to remove to discover the surprise Gift is our fear of accepting God's presence in us.
"Do not be afraid," the angel said, "for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy."
The Gift is the Christ. The Gift is God's self-giving love for us and in us. And this, God's surprise Gift, is all wrapped up in our lives
This is, indeed, good news of great joy.
May we, like Mary accept the gift and let it grow in our lives. May we, like the shepherds, then return, glorifying and praising God. Amen.