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There is an old adage that says,
“It is better to give than it is to receive.” Its wisdom
suggests that it is better to be the gift giver than the
gift getter. If that is true, then perhaps there is no
better season than the season of Christmas. After all,
Christmas is the season of giving. Everywhere you turn in
this season there is an opportunity to give. There are
families to adopt, meals to serve, toys to donate, change to
spare, charities to support and church plates to fill…to say
nothing of lists of presents to give to family and friends.
Christmas is the season for the cheerful giver.
Christmas—the season of giving.
The only problem with that is that the Christmas stories in
our scriptures seem to paint a different picture. With the
exception of the wise men who bring gifts, I can’t find a
cheerful giver anywhere in the Christmas stories. Instead I
find fearful yet willing receivers.
Zechariah, the old and faithful
priest, a man who had spent his life in service to God’s
temple, suddenly found himself on the receiving end. He
received word that God was about to do the improbable—he and
his wife, well past the childbearing years, would soon have
a baby boy. They would name him John, and he would the
forerunner of the Messiah. Zechariah receives the
good news of God’s graciousness.
Elizabeth is an old woman. A
barren woman. She is too old for God to work anything
miraculous in her. Then a visit from an angel with the
promise of son—a son who would become the voice in the
wilderness, preparing the way for the coming of the Lord.
Elizabeth receives the possibility that God can still
work still within her. Elizabeth receives the good
news of God’s faithfulness.
Joseph, a righteous, working
class guy, gets a late-night vision that God is about to
change his world forever. The girl he is about to marry is
expecting a child, a child that is not his, but a child he
will be asked to raise as if it was. Joseph receives the
burden, and the gift, of a child that is not his own—a child
that would be the Son of God. Joseph receives the
good news of God’s improbable plan for the world.
Mary, a teenaged, unwed peasant
girl, receives a message that she is about to bear God for
the world. And then the most incredible moment in the entire
human story occurs: Mary receives the Spirit of God into her
very person, where that Spirit will grow until she actually
gives birth to Immanuel—to Jesus, to “God With Us.” Mary
receives the good news of God’s presence.
The Christmas stories found in
our scriptures seem to flip the old adage about giving and
receiving right on its head. Christmas is the season that
should remind us that perhaps we need to be better at
receiving than we had ever imagined. Christmas—the season to
remember that being the gift getter may be more profound
than being the gift giver. Christmas—the season to be a
joyful receiver.
Truth be told, most of us would
rather be a giver rather than a receiver. Watch how people
blush, or try to explain away, a compliment. Watch what
happens when you give somebody something…something out of
the blue….something just because you wanted them to have
it. What happens? They invariably try to explain it away:
“You shouldn’t have” or “I can’t accept it. It was far too
generous.” It is easier to give than it is to receive.
Then there are the people who
find themselves on what I like to call the gift-giving
treadmill. Someone gives them an unexpected gift and so
they make a mental note to find a gift to give back to that
person in return. Then upon giving the original giver a gift
in exchange, it is back on that person to give another gift
in return for the new gift that was given. To which the
person who has now received two gifts and given only one
feels compelled to even the score, so they give another gift
in response to the gift that was in response to the gift
that was in response to the gift. The gift-giving treadmill
is often not fueled by gratitude or friendship but by the
guilt too often associated with receiving a gift.
I remember when I was a seminary
intern here three years ago. It was the Christmas season and
I had received a very generous check in a card from a member
of the church. I was embarrassed by the gift and not sure
what to do with it. I debated giving it back. I asked Dr.
Ritter what I should do. He gave this advice. “Son,” he
said, “Say, thank you. Shut up. And enjoy the gift.”
So why are we more comfortable
thinking of ourselves as gift givers rather than gift
getters? To think of ourselves as givers is to think of
ourselves as powerful, self sufficient and capable. To think
of ourselves as receivers is to think of ourselves as
dependant, needy and empty handed. And yet if we read these
Christmas stories, and if we let them read us, we will begin
to see that Christmas is not about how blessed it is to be
givers but how essential it is to see ourselves as
receivers.
When it came to that first
Christmas, the only thing Joseph and Zechariah could do is
the only thing Mary and Elizabeth could do. It was the only
thing the shepherds could do. And when it comes to the
miracle found in the manger at Bethlehem, it is the only
thing we can do. All we can do is receive the gift that was
given to us in that manger some two thousand years ago. We
can’t buy it; it’s not for sale. We can’t earn it; we don’t
deserve it. All we can do is receive it.
So what is this gift that
Christmas calls us to receive? It is the good news. It is
the good news that our God has broken through, that our God
has come to us. It is the good news that in Jesus, God has
become one of us. So great is God’s love for us that God
entered the human story, took on all of our pain, all of our
hardship, all of our sickness, all of our insecurity and
even all of our death. In a world were there is so much bad
news—headlines filled with war and job uncertainty—Christmas
is about the good news that God has walked, and will walk,
with us every step of the way.
So how do we experience this
good news? How do we find the comfort and peace of this
Immanuel, this God with us? Again the Christmas story makes
it pretty clear. All we can do is receive God’s presence.
Like Elizabeth and Mary, we must open ourselves up to have
the very spirit of God enter us and change us. Maybe that is
why we would rather be givers. When we see ourselves as only
givers, we can focus on what is going on outside of us
rather than what is missing inside of us. And truth be told,
there are some places we would just as soon not let anybody
get near and there are places we would rather not let God
touch. There are some insecurities, some hurts, some wounds
that we just don’t want anyone, especially God, to see. It
is not that we especially like those dark little places, it
is just that sometimes we are more afraid of the changes God
might have to do within us if there is truly going to be
transformation. Will Willimon describes the essence God’s
love for us like this: “This is often the way God loves us:
with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transforms into
people we don’t necessarily want to be.”
That is why it is sometimes
easier to be a giver rather than receiver. It is easier to
invest our lives in someone else’s pain than to risk letting
God have a shot at touching ours. That is why the Christmas
stories of Elizabeth and Mary begin deep within them. Before
this good news could be unleashed on the world, it had to
nurtured in their souls.
The story from our scripture
today, often called The Visitation, offers us some insight
into how we can receive the good news this season points us
towards. I love this scene. Here we have two women, one
young and one old. Because of their respective ages, the
improbable thing that God is doing in them would have raised
more than a few eyebrows. What God is doing in them isn’t
something they probably feel comfortable talking about to
many others. That is why they need each other. They both
understand. Elizabeth’s insides literally jump for joy when
she finds a sister in the midst of a similar God experience.
Just as they each received God into their midst, they now
receive each other and each other’s unique God experience.
We understand this, don’t we?
Sometimes we have to find someone who is going through the
same things we are. Someone we can talk to. Someone we can
share with. Someone who will laugh with us, and not at us,
when we start talking about the crazy God thing going on
inside of us.
I have a couple of friends like
that. People I can call and talk to when I have a God thing
going on deep inside of me. People who will listen and ask
questions. People who will share and encourage. People whose
insides will leap for joy, who are excited for me and with
me, because of what God is doing in my life. Just like Mary
and Elizabeth helped create space for each other, these
friends of mine help create in me the space for the Spirit
of God. They never try to squash my dreams or belittle my
fears. They never tell me I am too young to dream the dreams
I dream or too old to have the fears I have.
The visit of Elizabeth and Mary
is one of the Bible’s most beautiful expressions of what it
means to form community, to be together, gathered around a
promise, affirming that something is really happening,
celebrating the good news that God is indeed present in
their lives. The Visitation gives them the courage to accept
the change that God is bringing about in them and through
them.
Our scripture tonight begs the
question: Are we doing any significant visiting this
Christmas season? Are we making any space for real and
meaningful conversations about the things going on inside of
us? Do we have a friend we can get together with who listens
to us and to whom we can listen? Is there anyone who will
receive the God things going inside of us, and is there
anyone we can receive the good news going on inside of
them?
We cannot underestimate the
power of real, meaningful, heart-to-heart conversations
about the things that really matter to us. Author and
thinker Margaret Wheatley has written a book about the power
of transforming conversation. About these conversations,
these “Elizabeth and Mary, God doing something inside of me”
kind of conversations, she writes:
Many large-scale change
efforts—some of which have won the Nobel Peace Prize—began
with the simple but courageous act of friends talking to one
another about their fears and dreams. In reviewing a number
of these efforts, I always found the phrase, “Some friends
and I started talking.”
Friends, let me tell you
something. This scripture is true. I am experiencing the
Elizabeth and Mary encounter right now in my life. One of
the most privileged parts of my work at the church is the
visitation of those who are in the hospital. When you first
start out in the ministry, you might think that you are
bringing God into these hospital rooms, that as a minister,
you are the one who is the giver—giving the prayers, the
words of encouragement, the hugs—and the patient is the one
who receives your “spiritual goods and services,” so to
speak.
But it doesn’t take long to
figure out that isn’t the case at all. As with so many other
things in our lives of faith, this notion of giving and
receiving gets flipped by being present to and with people
in these vulnerable moments. They teach more about hope, and
more about prayer, and more about what and who is important,
and more about where God is in the midst of the most
difficult of times than you could ever possibly offer them.
The minister gets ministered to, and the paradox of “in
giving we receive” is never more true than in those moments
in the hospital.
Over the past three weeks I have
been regularly visiting Kristen in hospital.
Kristen is a young mom with two small kids, 3-year-old Sam
and 1 year-old Charlie. She has been married for fifteen
years to Todd, and she is in a fight for her life, battling
a rare and aggressive stomach cancer. Everything going on
around them looks scary and confusing and dark, but
everything going on within them speaks of hope and purpose
and light. They have come to a place where all they can do
is receive. Receive advice and care from doctors and
nurses. Receive meals from friends. Receive support and
child care from family. Receive prayers from anyone who will
remember to do so. But most importantly, they have come to
the place where they can receive from their God the hope and
assurance that no matter where the journey is taking them,
all will be well.
You can just see it her eyes.
She has a courage that is not of this world and faith that
has allowed her to fight with every fiber of her being, and
yet at the same time let go and put her life in the hands of
her Maker. Just like Mary and Elizabeth, she has created an
open space within herself to receive anything and everything
God will give her.
And you know what? They are
ministering to me and to all who come into contact with them
and their story. They are teaching me to be open to the
transforming work of God in my life and to the power of
prayer. During this Christmas season, they are reminding me
what and who is important. They are challenging me to be as
open as they are to the changes God can bring about to a
life in God’s hands. It is an amazing thing. Every time I
leave the cancer ward of the hospital, not happiness (these
are happy visits,) but I joy jumps inside of me.
You see, Kristen and Todd have
discovered the humbling blessing found in becoming
receivers. They have opened themselves to receive the good
news—that in Christ Jesus, their Lord and Savior, that in
this baby born in the manger at Bethlehem—God is present to
them and for them and promises to never leave them and to
never forsake them. I hope that we too will receive the
Christ child into our lives once again this Christmas.
But what are we do with a gift
so great? Why don’t we just take Dr. Ritter’s advice and
“Say thank you. Shut up. And enjoy the gift.”
Notes: At the close of the
service, the congregation received the sacrament of
communion and then went to a side table where there were
colorful strips of paper. On these strips, members of the
community wrote out prayers for Kristen and her family and
the strips were then fashioned into a paper “prayer chain.”
The close of the service had the entire congregation holding
the chain and praying over it. The next day I delivered it
her. That Monday afternoon, December 5, Kristen was having
the best day I had seen her have since I had been visiting
her. She was sitting up in her bed. Her smile was full and
her eyes were bright. She had been able to see her boys for
the first time since Halloween. We talked and laughed and,
holding the chain, we closed in prayer.
Kristen returned to the
God she knew and loved on December 15, 2005. I had the
privilege of visiting her just the day before. I will not
soon forget this courageous, young woman who held on dearly
to the life God had given and yet was willing to put that
life into God’s hands in these final hours. From her, I have
received an incredible blessing. I ask for your continued
prayers for her family.
Will Willimon’s sermon, “The God
We Hardly Knew,” was very helpful in looking at the
importance of receiving. He began his sermon with these
words from the martyred El Salvadoran archbishop Oscar
Romero:
No
one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly
poor. The self-sufficient, 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.
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