Every year, as the third Sunday of Advent approaches, clergy everywhere begin to panic. This
is the day we light Mary's candle, and the story of either the annunciation or the ancient song of praise we call
the "Magnificat" set the stage for the final themes of the season, a joyful response and the amazing
love of God. The panic is caused by the fact that we are now into the familiar part of the Christmas story, so
intrinsic to the very nature of even those who are barely churched that the words are almost committed to memory.
What can one possibly say that hasn't been heard a hundred times before?
So earlier this week, when the mail arrived with a small package from one of you, it was a welcome break from what
had become a real mental block regarding these readings. I opened the package to find a book of daily articles
about Advent, a family gift to my benefactor who was enjoying it so much that they ordered another copy for me.
I turned immediately to the article for that day, and read the following quote from Oscar Romero, the martryed
archbishop of El Salvador we had studied this past summer in our series on "Voices of Dissent."
"No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor.
The self-sufficent, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look 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. That someone
is God. Emmanuel. God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God."
It was followed by a reflection by William Willimon, the chaplain of Duke University, and a long time favorite
author of mine. The gist of the article strangely enough was about receiving an "unexpected gift" from
someone you really didn't even know that well. It went on to talk about how uncomfortable most of us feel being
recipients of someone else's kindness, with increasing discomfort related to our lack of personal knowledge or
relationship.
We don't like to feel indebted, especially to a stranger. We don't even do well when given a nice compliment. It
invokes a sense of obligation, and we often feel the need to respond, to reciprocate in some way. This seems especially
true when we come to the subject of Christmas giving. We feel the need to be generous, even extravagant, not so
much based on our knowledge of Matthew's or Luke's account of the first Christmas, as perhaps on Charles Dickens'
A Christmas Carol, where even Ebenezer Scrooge becomes acceptable only when he also becomes a benevolent giver.
Willimon writes, "We are better givers than getters, not because we are generous people but because we are
proud, arrogant people." The gospel Christmas story by contrast is not about how blessed it is to be givers,
but about how essential it is to see ourselves as receivers.
Being "givers" implies power, competence, self-sufficiency, people whose own goodness motivates them
to share. The Gospel accounts go to great lengths to show how our power, generosity, competence and capabilities
had little to do with God's work in Jesus. In fact, God wanted to do something for us so strange, so utterly beyond
human imagination, that God had to resort to angels, pregnant virgins, and stars in the sky to get it done.
We didn't think of it, understand it, or approve it. All we could do at Bethlehem was receive it-a gift from a
God we hardly even knew!
Most professional counselors have been trained to spend the bulk of their time listening, giving little if any
actual advice, but helping the client clarify their own issues and encouraging them to believe the answer is already
inside them. It's a societal ideal to believe we have the solution to what ails us.
Rabbi Michael Goldberg in his book Jews and Christians, is impressed with the contrast between the gospel accounts
of the nativity where he sees the actors as basically passive, verses the story of the Exodus, with all the enlistment,
prodding and activity involved in liberating the Jewish people. He sees the gospel accounts teaching us to be receivers,
God turning the world upside down in order to give a simple gift. The first word of the Church, the people born
out of so odd a nativity, is that we are receivers before we are givers. "We must be born again." Discipleship
teaches us the art of seeing our very lives as a gift.
It's so much easier to believe we are self-made men and women. Even acknowledging how much we owe to our parents,
to the generations that preceded us is humbling indeed. To look into a mirror and admit "My God, I look just
like my dad or my mother," or to come to recognize how much a long term marriage or relationship has shaped
our very being, is to live every day in the red-debtors to someone we have just begun to know.
We need people. We need such indebtedness. We need each other, if only to discover how very similar we all are.
Do you think that's weird? I don't think so. I know for certain that my family was no more crazy than yours. Once
in a special Advent Sunday School class we shared stories of family holiday gatherings, and I remember very well
how many of those shared experiences sounded just like mine.
One woman shared with us that one of her brothers brought a new partner to each holiday meal. The family got so
used to the new faces and names every year that they had her stand at the edge of their annual holiday picture,
so that she could be sliced off for the photo albums! Around the circle we went and each class member had a story
to tell, a memory to share, a family episode that stretched full comprehension. We concluded that the oddities
were part of the spice of all our family gatherings.
Sometimes we most need the person we hardly knew.
John Wesley said a long time ago, "Nothing is more repugnant to capable, reasonable people than grace."
We never get to earn it.
When Isaiah brought these wonderful words we so associate with our celebration of Advent and Christmas to Israel
the nation was in terrible darkness. These servant songs of liberation and hope were brought as words of counsel
to the man who was then King, Ahaz. Isaiah tried to warn him of the folly of putting his trust in alliances with
foreign powers for protection, rather than trusting in God. With the nation of Assyria breathing down his neck,
Isaiah promised him a sign. A virgin would conceive and bear a baby.
Like Ahaz, the gift God offered was not the gift we thought we needed. That is exactly the way God works. It is
the things we didn't need, we didn't want, we never thought to ask for…often given by the stranger we hardly knew,
that transform us into the people we didn't necessarily want to be, but were always destined to become. We are
the empty-handed recipients of a gracious God, who rather than leave us to our own devices gave us a baby.
For everyone of you who sits before me this morning, who knows in your heart of hearts how something you did or
failed to do changed your parents' life, or how your child, once so small and helpless like the babies we baptize
today, has changed your life forever, also knows how dangerous receiving can be. Yet this very life we were, we
bore, we are, is the true source of great joy when seen as a gift of God.
As in all solstice practices, Advent is a symbolic way of pushing back the darkness. The lights we hang on trees,
put on windowsills and trim our houses with are just another attempt to do the same thing. Here, in the midst of
winter we light the one pink candle, almost a symbol of a spring yet to be, a testament of a God who even in the
darkest hours of our lives, in this time of waiting, knows our greatest need.
That my friends, is a cause for great joy!
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ON THIS HOLIEST OF HOLIDAYS
On this holiest of holidays
the family gathers
to feast on food
and fellowship
and memories.
Sweet and sour memories
of past Christmases we've shared.
And the memories that we're making
adding to the family tree.
Please, seize the moment.
Enjoy this time together.
Freeze these images in your mind.
Though life is kind,
we can't be blind to the fact that
time quickly passes
and with it those we love.
Above all, the greatest gift we can offer
is ourselves to one another.
So, listen. Tell a story. Cry a little.
Laugh a lot. Play a game. Make some music.
Hold a baby, maybe two.
And before the day is over
let's take time to pray.
We will know His Christmas Presence
by acknowledging God's love
and the wealth we share as family
including those who wait above.
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