The First Gift of Christmas

Mary gave birth to her first son, wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a manger - there was no place for them to stay in the inn. Luke 2:7

In the movie, The Christmas Box, a woman asks her handyman the question, "What is the first gift of Christmas?" Now, you need to know that these two persons didn't hit it off at all. They didn't even like each other. When she asked a question, she was usually trying to teach him something – generally, something he didn’t want to especially know. "What is the first gift of Christmas?" she asks him. His first response is a "smart answer:" "A tie." The woman looks sternly at him, and insists he be serious, so he tries again, more earnestly: He says, "The first gift of Christmas is love." She tells him that that is a good beginning, but only a very small part of the answer and that he should take time and think it through. And, in fact, the experiences and dreams he has that lead him to the correct answer, is what the book is about. A lot of time passes. Finally, thanks to his own child and some close brushes with angels, he gets it: "The first gift of Christmas is a child."

I can almost hear the murmur across the church. "So what's new? We always knew that the first gift of Christmas is a child. Isn't that why we buy toys? Isn't that why we put up Christmas trees? Isn't that why we build manger scenes and put the baby at the center? Don't we always say that Christmas is for children? Isn't that why we spend what we do not have to make them happy?"

But the question is not, "Why do we celebrate Christmas?" or, "To whom does Christmas belong?" The question is, "What is the first gift of Christmas?"

Sometimes we give theological responses to that question. "We have been given One who will be known as `Wonderful Counselor,' `Mighty God,' `Eternal Father,' `Prince of Peace.'" We even quote from Isaiah, "His royal power will continue to grow; his kingdom will always be at peace. He will rule as King David's successor, basing his power on right and justice." And all that is true, but when all the theologizing is done, when all the philosophizing and romanticizing is done, we must still admit that the first gift of Christmas is a child -- a real, human child.

Mary gave birth to her first son, wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a manger - there was no place for them to stay in the inn. Luke 2:7

Gifts are given with the hope that they will be well received and accepted. Gifts are given with the hope that they will be found useful. Gifts are given with that hope that they may be enjoyed. The child Jesus was given to us and to all of creation as the first gift of Christmas. However, no one was ready to receive the gift.

Mary and Joseph did not have a place for the birthing of the child, neither did they have clothes for him. They probably thought that a relative in Bethlehem would receive them, or that they might find room at the Inn. But none of the family would receive them – perhaps because Mary was pregnant out of wedlock. The Inn Keeper would not give them a room. The decree ordering everyone to go to the place of their family’s origin meant there would not be enough rooms for everyone, so he was, no doubt, being a good entrepreneur, saving his rooms for better paying customers. The town of Bethlehem took no mercy on his parents or him – there was little concern for a poor family having a baby. No one would give up their own room for them – just another mouth to feed, another unimportant, poor family, and out-of-towners to boot. “Let them fend for themselves.” Neither was the nation ready for him – we are told that, when Herod heard about him, he was troubled, and “all of Jerusalem with him.”

We live in a culture that claims to love its children. We are concerned that every child have the right to life. Yet how welcome are they once they enter the world? More and more of them live in poverty – over a quarter of America’s children now live in poverty. More and more of them are being denied basic things like health care and a decent education. They are treated as sexual objects - just look at the advertisements on television or in magazines. They are exploited as a source of revenue. When they become a burden however – when it means change from our pockets or time spent caring for them, when it requires our attention or our commitment to them, they are expendable, a nuisance, a burden.

The Christmas story, however, does not end on a note of hopelessness - rather, it drips with hope. The angel's first words to the shepherds were, "Don't be afraid! I am here with good news for you, which will bring great joy to all the people." The first gift of Christmas is a child who comes whether we are ready or not for him. God does not wait for us to be ready – or he could never send his greatest gift to us. I remember when we had our first-born. I was getting ready to go into seminary. We wondered, from month to month, how we were going to pay the rent and keep a roof over our heads. We couldn’t afford a child. Luke didn’t seem to care about that – he came anyway. Just so, God sends his greatest gifts to us, not when we are ready, but when they are needed – when he determines it is the right time. When Jesus came into the world, the world as not ready to receive him, but that didn’t matter to God. What mattered was that the world needed him, and so God gave him to the world, to save and redeem the world, to be a gift of his mercy and grace and love.

The story goes on to tell how the shepherds went to Bethlehem to "see this thing that has happened, which the Lord" told them. Then the shepherds returned to their homes "singing praises to God for all they had heard and seen." They thanked God and sang his praises, not only because they had seen God at work, but because they had been invited to participate, because God had already begun his work, “throwing down the mighty from their thrones and exalting those of low degree,” and that meant them.

Christmas offers us another opportunity to welcome the child, to welcome our gift. Christmas says that children are good news. Christmas says that children must take a central place in the nation's heart. Christmas says that children will come, even if no room is made for them. Children are sent as a sign of hope. It is a hope that guarantees the continuity of humanity, it expresses God’s ongoing care for creation and provides a balance between the past and the future, memory and prophecy, anticipation and reflection. It is a hope that guarantees our very salvation. And this is the first gift of Christmas.

A pastor once told me about a time when he was preparing his sermon. His little daughter came in and said, "Daddy, can we play?"

He answered, "I'm awfully sorry, Sweetheart, but I'm right in the middle of preparing this sermon. In about an hour I can play."

She said, "Okay, when you're finished, Daddy, I am going to give you a great big hug."

He said, "Thank you very much." She went to the door and (these are his words) "Then she did a U-turn and came back and gave me a chiropractic, bone-breaking hug." He said to her, "Darling, you said you were going to give me a hug after I finished."

She answered, "Daddy, I just wanted you to know what you have to look forward to!"

A final meaning of Christmas is that God wants us to know, through this First Coming, how much we have to look forward to in the great Second Coming. That Christmas is a “foretaste of the feast to come.”

In the Christ child, God becomes vulnerable. God's care is left up to human persons! And as the baby Jesus is seen again and again in each child, we cannot help but shudder with awe, realizing the great responsibility and trust which God has placed into our hands -- our very own individual hands, our families' hands, our communities' hands, and our nation's hands. The Christ Child comes to us as a gift – in the form of a child – so that, as Martin Luther said, we can come to know God with a human face, and knowing him, not simply fear, but love him. This child comes to us so that we may know that he is, indeed, for us, and so that, in this child, we may have life, and love and hope.