Christmas Day (Year A)
December 25, 2010
Luke 2:1-14
Opening presents on Christmas morning when I was a girl was always a slow and wondrous thing. They were opened one at a time, each of us taking turns, with lots of hugs and appreciation in between. When it was my dad’s turn he would hold up the gift, turn it around, shake it and feel it and try to guess what it was. He was really good at it – it was very hard to surprise him. He would have done really well at our recent moms’ group Christmas gathering.
It was a White Elephant party, or some people call it a Yankee gift exchange. Where each person wraps up some wacky item that has been taking up space in their house and they get piled together. (These should be the kind of gifts about which my father would jokingly exclaim: “Ahh…. Just what I always knew I never needed!”) Then everyone draws a number and in order you can either pick a new unwrapped gift and open it, or you can choose to steal something that someone else has already opened. It was so interesting to see which presents were chosen first. Most popular were the elegantly wrapped presents with shiny packaging and fluffy bows. And the biggest presents. And the one that came with more than one package.
But of course, the very nature of this kind of gift exchange is that what you see is usually not at all what you get. A couple years ago, I picked the huge, bizarrely shaped, package. And it ended up being a plastic urinal that little boys can use as they learn how to potty. A friend shared a story of going to a gift exchange where they didn’t unwrap the presents but instead could steal each other’s wrapped packages. The most popular present was a huge, beautifully wrapped box that ended up being empty. And the least stolen was a small box wrapped in newspaper that ended up being a valuable gift card.
What a great psychology experiment! Clearly our expectations for what is inside have everything to do with what we see on the outside.
And we don’t just do that with presents. As a non-wine connoisseur, I tend to pick wine from the grocery store by which labels I like the best. Contrary to the old adage, I often pick books by their covers. And of course, we do it with people all the time. We make judgments about people, consciously or not, by how they look or dress, what they do for a living or the car they drive.
And we do the same thing with God.
Before Jesus was born, many religious people were waiting for a messiah. But they expected someone very different than Jesus. They expected a powerful political ruler, a traditional king with armies and fancy robes. But of course, it was just the opposite. Everything about his birth story was scandalous and unexpected. Jesus’s parents were wandering and homeless. Jesus was born in a dirty animal stall in a small town outside the important city. The angels who announced his birth appeared to the poor and lowly shepherds at the bottom of the social ladder.
And Jesus’ life was that way as well – just the opposite of what people expected from their Messiah. Dining with sinners, befriending prostitutes, challenging the religious authorities, calling his followers to leave their comfort zones and follow him.
A strange gift in strange wrapping, indeed.
Even now, our tendency is to want to cover up the simple, rough package and the uncomfortable gift inside with something inoffensive and fluffy and light. To turn the shocking birth story, and our shocking Messiah, into something sweet and quaint. We sing Away in a Manger about the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. The cattle lowing but no crying he makes. We forget that the animals would have been smelly, the hay scratchy, the stable cold and exposed to the elements. You’d better believe that baby would be crying!
And we make it sound so easy for the other players in the story as well. Mary and Joseph adoring their new baby in wonder, the shepherds following the angels’ singing to Bethlehem, the magi adventurously following the star. But what must it have really been like? My baby is new enough that I can say quite frankly that I do not envy Mary, recovering from labor and childbirth with no clean water, no mattress, no friends or family to help. Or Joseph, having to deliver this baby himself, to try to comfort his very young and inexperienced wife. The shepherds minding their own business out in the fields when suddenly they are interrupted by who-knows-what in the sky scaring the you-know-what out of them. The magi confused and exhausted from their long, dusty journey.
We try to forget that Jesus wasn’t just God wearing human skin, but was fully human. He cried, he struggled against temptation, he got hungry and cold, he worked hard to maintain his connection with God. I think sometimes we hope that if we package Jesus just right, we can turn him into something sweet and innocent and cuddly and comfortable. All ensconced with a big bow. A package that emphasizes peace and love and lets us slip the rest under the bed with all the other unwanted gifts. Something that would let us have the poinsettias and the candlelight and the music without the rough, sandpaper-like challenge that Jesus presents to the way we live and love. We’d get him all wrapped up just the way we want him and then leave him that way, safely adorning our mantle (or our altar).
But that’s exactly what Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the wise magi didn’t find in the manger on that first Christmas Day. Thank goodness. Instead, God chose the most unlikely packaging for the best (and least expected) gift yet. Right in the midst of the uncomfortable, the imperfect, the frightening, God arrived. Just like God always does. Emmanuel – God With Us. Right in the midst of our humanity.
This baby born in a manger bursts out of the package we try to keep him in and blows away our expectations for God. Ours isn’t a God-Up-There-Somewhere who answers our prayers by lifting us out of our lives, or an other-worldly God who just watches us with disinterest. Ours is a God-With-Us who comes in the midst of everything we’ve got – the beautiful and the ugly, the proud and the embarrassing, the righteous and the unrighteous.
So go ahead, open it up. It’s just what you never knew you always needed.
December 25, 2010
Luke 2:1-14
Opening presents on Christmas morning when I was a girl was always a slow and wondrous thing. They were opened one at a time, each of us taking turns, with lots of hugs and appreciation in between. When it was my dad’s turn he would hold up the gift, turn it around, shake it and feel it and try to guess what it was. He was really good at it – it was very hard to surprise him. He would have done really well at our recent moms’ group Christmas gathering.
It was a White Elephant party, or some people call it a Yankee gift exchange. Where each person wraps up some wacky item that has been taking up space in their house and they get piled together. (These should be the kind of gifts about which my father would jokingly exclaim: “Ahh…. Just what I always knew I never needed!”) Then everyone draws a number and in order you can either pick a new unwrapped gift and open it, or you can choose to steal something that someone else has already opened. It was so interesting to see which presents were chosen first. Most popular were the elegantly wrapped presents with shiny packaging and fluffy bows. And the biggest presents. And the one that came with more than one package.
But of course, the very nature of this kind of gift exchange is that what you see is usually not at all what you get. A couple years ago, I picked the huge, bizarrely shaped, package. And it ended up being a plastic urinal that little boys can use as they learn how to potty. A friend shared a story of going to a gift exchange where they didn’t unwrap the presents but instead could steal each other’s wrapped packages. The most popular present was a huge, beautifully wrapped box that ended up being empty. And the least stolen was a small box wrapped in newspaper that ended up being a valuable gift card.
What a great psychology experiment! Clearly our expectations for what is inside have everything to do with what we see on the outside.
And we don’t just do that with presents. As a non-wine connoisseur, I tend to pick wine from the grocery store by which labels I like the best. Contrary to the old adage, I often pick books by their covers. And of course, we do it with people all the time. We make judgments about people, consciously or not, by how they look or dress, what they do for a living or the car they drive.
And we do the same thing with God.
Before Jesus was born, many religious people were waiting for a messiah. But they expected someone very different than Jesus. They expected a powerful political ruler, a traditional king with armies and fancy robes. But of course, it was just the opposite. Everything about his birth story was scandalous and unexpected. Jesus’s parents were wandering and homeless. Jesus was born in a dirty animal stall in a small town outside the important city. The angels who announced his birth appeared to the poor and lowly shepherds at the bottom of the social ladder.
And Jesus’ life was that way as well – just the opposite of what people expected from their Messiah. Dining with sinners, befriending prostitutes, challenging the religious authorities, calling his followers to leave their comfort zones and follow him.
A strange gift in strange wrapping, indeed.
Even now, our tendency is to want to cover up the simple, rough package and the uncomfortable gift inside with something inoffensive and fluffy and light. To turn the shocking birth story, and our shocking Messiah, into something sweet and quaint. We sing Away in a Manger about the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. The cattle lowing but no crying he makes. We forget that the animals would have been smelly, the hay scratchy, the stable cold and exposed to the elements. You’d better believe that baby would be crying!
And we make it sound so easy for the other players in the story as well. Mary and Joseph adoring their new baby in wonder, the shepherds following the angels’ singing to Bethlehem, the magi adventurously following the star. But what must it have really been like? My baby is new enough that I can say quite frankly that I do not envy Mary, recovering from labor and childbirth with no clean water, no mattress, no friends or family to help. Or Joseph, having to deliver this baby himself, to try to comfort his very young and inexperienced wife. The shepherds minding their own business out in the fields when suddenly they are interrupted by who-knows-what in the sky scaring the you-know-what out of them. The magi confused and exhausted from their long, dusty journey.
We try to forget that Jesus wasn’t just God wearing human skin, but was fully human. He cried, he struggled against temptation, he got hungry and cold, he worked hard to maintain his connection with God. I think sometimes we hope that if we package Jesus just right, we can turn him into something sweet and innocent and cuddly and comfortable. All ensconced with a big bow. A package that emphasizes peace and love and lets us slip the rest under the bed with all the other unwanted gifts. Something that would let us have the poinsettias and the candlelight and the music without the rough, sandpaper-like challenge that Jesus presents to the way we live and love. We’d get him all wrapped up just the way we want him and then leave him that way, safely adorning our mantle (or our altar).
But that’s exactly what Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the wise magi didn’t find in the manger on that first Christmas Day. Thank goodness. Instead, God chose the most unlikely packaging for the best (and least expected) gift yet. Right in the midst of the uncomfortable, the imperfect, the frightening, God arrived. Just like God always does. Emmanuel – God With Us. Right in the midst of our humanity.
This baby born in a manger bursts out of the package we try to keep him in and blows away our expectations for God. Ours isn’t a God-Up-There-Somewhere who answers our prayers by lifting us out of our lives, or an other-worldly God who just watches us with disinterest. Ours is a God-With-Us who comes in the midst of everything we’ve got – the beautiful and the ugly, the proud and the embarrassing, the righteous and the unrighteous.
So go ahead, open it up. It’s just what you never knew you always needed.
Comments
Post a Comment