Sunday 13th December 2009: Evening Sermon: Christmas Gifts
John 3.1-21
Heard on Tuesday morning radio that: Britons are expected to spend £602 on presents, food and drink this Christmas. If I were an RE teacher I think I would just put the word, Discuss after that statement.
Gifts and giving are obvious images for the approaching season. We all have our own method of Christmas shopping – the most popular amongst us men seems to be a quite simple one – leaving up to the wife – well I speak personally you understand.
I sense that we enjoy both giving and getting at Christmas. As a child I probably enjoyed getting more! But as a parent – well giving has its own special pleasure.
The legend of the real Father Christmas is one based on the theme of giving. You’ll know he is supposed to be a Turkish bishop called Nicholas from the fourth century. One day he heard of a poor family who could not afford the dowry for any of their daughters – and that was a disaster in their country. Bishop Nicholas wanted to help, but without anyone knowing it. So, as each daughter grew up, he dropped a bag of gold at her window by night. The father saw him on his last visit, but the bishop swore him to secrecy. Later Nicholas was made a saint and so the custom began in some countries of giving presents either on 5th December, St Nicholas’ Eve, or the 6th, St Nicholas’ day itself.
400 years later and saints were becoming unpopular in England so a merry old character from children’s plays, Father Christmas took over the job. When Dutch settlers went to America they took with them the legend of St. Nicholas or Sinterklass as they called him – and of, course, Sinterklass gradually evolved into the English name Santa Clause.
History lesson over. And in some countries by now, present giving over too.
Now I think all I want to say this evening is that at this season of the year we recall the RECKLESS GIVING OF A PRECIOUS GIFT.
Let’s split this sentence up – Reckless Giving?
Well, yes, in the sense that it was generous and total.
Our reading tonight has that well known verse, God so loved the world that he GAVE his only begotten son. Our God is generous.
The significance of the incarnation is that it displays the self-giving nature of God. He became flesh, took upon himself the form of a servant and came and lived among us.
Remember the other year we enjoyed that autumn TV series called the 7 wonders of the Industrial age. I remember one programme all about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge that links Brooklyn with Manhattan. It was begun in 1870 and used totally new technology – the pylons had to be really deep and the span so long. Washington Roebling was the brilliant engineer behind its design. He was rich and now with this commission he was powerful. He could have stayed in his New York office directing operations. Building the bridge pylons was dangerous – the men were submerged below the river in some thing called a Caisson, a watertight chamber filled with compressed air. There they dug, and even exploded rocks. In these Caissons men got sick with Caisson fever, or even died from flooding or fire. Washington Roebling spent the first two years of the construction of the bridge down in the caissons with his men. Not behind a desk but in the caissons. He never asked them to do something he wasn’t prepared to do. In the end his health failed – in a sense he had been reckless in his leadership. He had given his all.
God showed his great love for us by coming amongst us – going, as it were, into the caisson with us – this is the wonderful reckless giving of a generous God – not counting the cost but giving us his son to be the Saviour of the world.
In two parables taught by Christ I think we see the opposite of such self-giving generosity. The Prodigal Son was a Reckless Spender – his self-centeredness became his destruction. Whereas the Good Samaritan is a Reckless Giver – as he leaves the recuperating Jewish traveller he says to the Inn Keeper – take care of him and I’ll pay whatever the bill comes to. Jesus says that kind of love for neighbour was exemplary.
In the Nativity story Joseph surely fits into this category too. As troubled as he was at first by the news that his espoused was with child, after hearing God speak in a dream, Joseph goes against the culture of his day and stands by Mary. Here is a faithfulness that is counter-cultural. Colleagues and friends would have been privately mystified or openly critical of this carpenter. But Joseph gives something of himself at this point of the story – he gives commitment to God and faithfulness to Mary.
So this theme of Reckless Giving is evident in the opening pages of the gospels. The God who gave himself so completely in Jesus and those in the unfolding events at Nazareth and Bethlehem who so willingly played a full part in the Incarnation.
The Wise Men were generous in their giving. Of course there was the gold, frankincense and mire – I wonder what happened to these precious things, did Mary and Joseph keep them, invest them, pass the on to Jesus or spend them in financing the flight to Egypt – tantalising mysterious!
But as I think of the wise men I don’t only think of the objects they brought – I think of their long journey from the East – a pilgrimage that may have taken years and great expense. It incurred dangerous travel and a disastrous meeting with Herod. The eagerness of these Wise Men is stunningly reckless in its depth and commitment. They travelled far – for nothing would keep them back from paying their homage to the newborn king. They, I think, have much to teach us about true worship.
Most of our giving, of course, is calculated. Normally we will calculate how much we put into the offering, we’ll organise our diaries so we give our families time as well as our church.
But we probably all know times that haven’t been normal. We get a telephone call to say a friend or family member if very ill – well it won’t matter what’s in the diary that day, we’ll drop everything and if its appropriate go to the bedside.
Such giving, such loving echoes the Reckless giving and loving of our generous God.
Now secondly we said this was the giving of a PRECIOUS GIFT.
Precious because it was the gift of a Son.
Tonight we have our advent communion – and as John Betjeman put it:
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this simple truth compare –
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
It was a precious gift. My mind goes forward some thirty years to the baptism of Christ in the Jordan by John. As he emerges from the water those looking on heard a voice from heaven saying, This is my beloved son – in whom I am well pleased. My beloved son – a precious gift.
Worship is important at Christmas and I know for many of you its central.
In many ways I’m a bit of a fan of Oliver Cromwell – but I can’t be doing with his abolition of the feast of Christmas. He got it the wrong way round when he decried that on December 25th the shops should remain open and the churches closed. Charles II soon sorted that one out.
Worship is the way we give something back to God. In worship as we contemplate his great gift to us, we offer him ourselves.
The Rossetti family moved to London as Italian refugees. Mr Rossetti taught Italian at Kings College and his son Dante Rossetti became a painter. Christina was his beautiful daughter; so beautiful she modelled for the painter Holman Hunt. Christina was a devout Christian and wrote poems, which we have turned into hymns and carols. She turned down marriage twice, once because her intended became a Roman Catholic and once because her suitor finally declared he had no faith and was an agnostic.
Against that background that famous last verse of her poem in the bleak midwinter becomes even more poignant – What can I give him, poor as I am, If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb, if I were a wise man I would do my part, Yet what I can I give him, give my heart.
The precious gift of the Christ child merits our worship.
It also merits our generosity too.
All the aid agencies mount fund raising campaigns at this time of year – to help us correct that figure of £602 per person spent on self-indulgence. We have our focus this year on St Margaret’s Hospice.
I love the story of a Bishop of Winchester. It was 980Ad and his name was Ethelwold. He sold the gold and silver plate from the Treasury at Winchester Cathedral. Got rid of it all – in order that he might give the money to the poor. Well I guess they called a few emergency committee meetings with just one item on the agenda – The Bishop. And this is what he is reported to have said to his critics: There is no reason why the senseless temples of God should abound in riches, and the living temples of the Holy Ghost starve for hunger.
Our generous God calls us to be generous people.
An image for the season – Giving.
Tonight we have focussed on God and his Reckless giving of a generous gift.