The Gift of You
“...the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth....And from his fulless have we all received gift upon gift (grace upon grace).”
December 21, 1980
Growing up, my family had a saying about people who got too big for their britches or who thought they were a lot hotter stuff than they really were. "She thinks she is God's gift to the world." Or: "He is convinced that he is God's gift to women." Obviously, we did not mean it as a compliment. Funny, it has occurred to me that we are not too far off the Biblical base to say those people and even you and I are God's gifts to the world in a good way. Even you and I... beautiful-ugly, loving-hating, competent-bungling you and I...just may be God's gifts of love to the world! Stick with me while I clarify what I mean.
A woman teased me recently by saying that she feels she has not heard a sermon now unless the preacher throws in a Greek word or two to impress folks. Well, here is your homiletical dose of Greek today. Seriously, most of you have heard before that the word in New Testament Greek we translate as Grace comes from the word "charis" (charity) literally meaning gift. So, when John says that from the fullness of God we humans have “received grace upon grace," a more accurate translation is "gift upon gift.” From the fulness of that source of our existence we call God, we have received gift upon gift: life, love, forgiveness...
Sometimes we forget that primal raw gift from God: life. It took that divine cosmic force billions of years to bring off life. True, there are still a few bugs in it. But without it, we would be NOTHING. For John and the New Testament that life-giving power is not a distant deity out on the Riviera of the universe sending an occasional angel or thunderbolt to keep folks in line. That fullness of power and love is struggling with us in the daily joy full, tearful process of existence. The proclamation of Christmas and the Christian faith is that cosmic creative force bubbled up and out of a human being: Jesus Christ. God's gift of himself to us in Jesus is not some superstitious, supernatural, intelligence-insulting claim. We believe it is the deeply natural revelation of what God is like and what he wants us to be like. Now, we return to the claim that we too are God's gifts to the world.
The New Testament makes clear that the coming alive of God's love and power in the flesh and blood life of Jesus is not a one-time super event. God's embodiment of his love in Jesus is his intention for every living human being! The incarnation, the enskinment, of God's love in Jesus is what God plans for every last one of us. So, in our Christmas celebration of God coming alive in a flesh and blood human, we need to get deeper into the meat of the matter: The fullness of God's gifts to the world John speaks about includes the love God gets into the world through the flesh and blood doings of you and me who are also his gifts to the world! It is through you and me that God may make contact with someone!
Here are some notions of how we all function as God's incarnations, his gifts to the world:
(1) There is the gift of your PRESENCE. Remember when you were little and had to go to the doctor? The dreaded fear was getting a shot. If you were like me, then you wanted Mom and Dad to go into the exam room with you. In the event of a shot, it was still you who was stuck. But somehow that your parent was with you made it a little better, a little easier to take. That's the way we humans are. No one can ultimately fight our battles, feel our pain, or die our death for us. Yet if someone who cares is nearby and with us, we are strengthened and supported to take those un-takeables life sometimes like frisbees throws our way.
Some of you have heard my little talk “What Do You Say When You Don't Know What to Say?". There are times when people we know are facing troubles: deaths of loved ones, serious illness, marital problems, or some other personal problem which tears people apart. We care but we may pull back a little because we fear coming into their presence, we fear not being able to say something helpful or perhaps literally not being able to say anything at all. Alas, at times we pull back from those to whom we need to pull close.
Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is famous for her work with dying patients and for her description the stages through which terminally ill people go in coming to terms with their fate. Asked what in the world she said to these people day after day, she answered that she really said little, maybe only, "It must be tough for you today.” Then she listens. Her point was that what people need most is not our words of wisdom but our presence. In a way, it is an insult to a person's pain or problem to think we can breeze in with a sermonette or two-minute positive attitude pep talk and solve their problems anyway. The tragedies and complexities of life are seldom that simple. Perhaps, the most loving gift you can give someone you care about who is in trouble is this: "I don't know what to say, but I just wanted to be with you for a little while."
We are talking about the heart of Christmas-Christian faith. God is Immanuel, that longed for "God with us" who comes to share our hurts and joys. In Jesus' day, like now, people wanted the Messiah to swoop down like Superman and miraculously solve all their problems with each other, melt away the fears of living and dying, and fight their battles for them.
What they and we got is a Jesus who comes to be with us as we do what we have to do and face what we have to face. So, you and I may just be the ones God needs to use to be his gift of presence with someone in a tough situation, no slick words needed or appreciated, just a human body who cares and is close by. "O come, O come, Emmanuel" might be a prayer a person with your face and name can make come true for someone. My God, even a you, imagine that might become someone’s Emmanuel. Because you were willing to be present with someone in trouble, you may just be the connecting link that convinces him or her that God is with them. Out of the fullness of God comes the gift of you and your presence.
(2) You are able to be God's gift to the world through the gift of your BLESSING. Remember Issac's rambunctious boys Jacob and Esau? Twins, they came into the world fighting. Because Esau was born a few minutes before Jacob, he spent the rest of his life paying for it. First, Jacob tricks a hungry Esau into giving him his inheritance for a bowl of beef stew. Later, in a costume cooked by his mother, Jacob goes into his blind father Issac pretending to be Esau. Jacob cons his father into giving him Esau's blessing, the parental approval to carry on for him reserved for the first born. The blessing was irreversible and non transferable. So, when Esau came to get his father's blessing, which was rightfully his, we witness one of the most anguished scenes of the Old Testament: "Bless me, even me also, O my Father!... Have you but one blessing, My Father? Bless me, even me also, O My Father.” The answer is no and "Esau lifted up his voice and wept.”
The meaning of the blessing may have changed some since the days of Issac's feuding sons. Yet to have the blessing of people who mean the most to us even though we may not call it by that name is no less crucial. I know people who like Esau have gone through life with deep hurt because a brother or sister had a parent's attention, approval, and affection in a special way they never received. It is hard to wrap a definition around the blessing because it goes so deep.
When Dianne and I married, we drove a 9-year-old Plymouth which sent out exhaust smoke signals each time we accelerated and which was adorned by a huge dent on the side where a Volkswagen tried to occupy the same space at the same time with it. Six months or so after we married, we managed to trade up to a four-year-old Mustang. The paint job was so bad that it looked like it had acne. But we decided that a paint job, a couple of hubcaps, and some tender care could make it a good car. Proudly, we drove the "new" car over to show it to my parents. My father shook his head in disgust, judging that I had bought a lemon. My pride melted like the morning dew in the summer sun. He directed me to get in the car and off we went to my Dad's mechanic so he could tell us in technical detail how bad the car was. After bumping and thumping the car a while, the mechanic announced to my father's dismay: "The car is in pretty good shape other than the paint job." Dad said that maybe I had done okay after all. I realize now that what I wanted was my Dad's blessing upon my attempt to enter the adult world symbolized by the purchase of a car. I realize now that he was probably a little hurt that I hadn't gotten his help to pick it out. But then I needed his blessing.
Sometimes comic, sometimes serious, we need the blessing of people close to us. Many go through life feeling they have let down and failed to meet the expectations of parents and other crucial personages. Recently, a teenager in our church said to me: "I know my parents love me. But it seems like no matter how hard I try, what I do is never good enough for them. They always make me feel like I disappoint them.” That youth needs a blessing. Not a Good Housekeeping seal for everything she does, but a basic parental blessing that shows they approve of her, accept her, even when they don't condone all her acts.
It works the other way, too. There is a story about a little boy who became angry at his Dad because of a spanking. Later, the boy knelt for his bedtime prayers as his parents watched. "God bless mother, bless baby sister, bless grandmother, the dog, and the parakeet.” Jumping in bed, he quipped to his dad: "Dad, you notice whose name wasn't mentioned?" Hey, children and youth, your parents need your blessings, they need your hugs that show you love them even when they too make mistakes. Husbands and wives, employers and employees, on the list goes, desperately need one another's blessing, the signal that are okay in my book.
In psychotherapy, there is a phrase which is related to the Biblical understanding of blessing. It is called "unconditional positive regard.” Counselors have learned that unless a person who comes for help experiences the unconditional positive regard, the "I-like-you-no-matter-what, of the counselor, then that person will not be able to let down his defenses long enough to look at his life, his mistakes, and the decisions he must make to improve.
When Jesus met the woman at the well, a woman who apparently had gone through husbands like a person with a cold goes through Kleenex, he loved her and blessed her. In no way did he condone all she had done in her life, but he accepted her. Jesus knew what we still have a hard time believing: people do not stand much of a chance of becoming who they need to be until they experience the blessing of being loved just as they are. The gift of your or my blessing can do that for someone. Because they experience that we love them, accept them, even when we may not like all they do, then they just might be able to believe that God loves them just as they are. And when people get the notion that God and a special person loves them as-is, then there is no telling what kind of beautiful changes and growth will come of it!
God forgive us. Some of us are too proud to admit that we need a blessing. Others of us are too insensitive to notice the persons around us languishing for our blessing. Why not for Christmas this year give someone the gift of your blessing. Talk about a gift that will keep on giving! They may even feel God blessing them because he sent you to them. Out of the fullness of God's love comes you to bless someone who needs you!
(3) Third, you and I become God's gifts to the world when we give the gift of our SERVANTHOOD. I don't think Jesus was kidding when he said that how we respond to people who are hungry, sick, or poor is the same as responding to him. Curse them and you curse Him. Draw near to them and find him close to you.
Shusaku Endo is a Japanese Christian writer. His book Silence is a historical novel set in 16th century (Shogun era) Japan when Christian missionaries came seeking to convert the Japanese people. At first the missionaries were well received, and some Japanese became Christians. Things changed however when Japanese leaders got the not altogether wrong feeling that the Europeans were not interested in their souls only but also conquest of their land. Leaders like a certain Hideyoshi began to capture and torture missionaries. They quickly learned not to simply kill them, because this made the missionaries martyrs who inspired the people all the more for dying for their faith. They began to torture the missionaries until they apostasized, renounced their faith, thus demoralizing the Japanese Christians because the missionaries acted too shamelessly and weakly.
The central character in Silence is a Portuguese missionary by the name of Father Sebastian Rodrigues. Rodrigues goes to Japan for three reasons. First, he went searching for his teacher and idol Father Ferreira who had mysteriously disappeared doing mission work there. Second, he went to bring Christ to the people. Third, he went searching for Christ in his life. Rodrigues was tormented because he could picture Christ but his picture never spoke to him; it was always silent and distant.
After searching for Ferreira, Rodrigues hears a rumor that Ferreira, that bastion of strength and faith, has apostatized when captured and tortured by Hideyoshi's men. He himself is finally captured. To his surprise he is imprisoned in a cell with Ferreira. There Ferreira relates what has happened. The captors lead him into a circle of people. They brought before him a piece of wood on which was fastened a copper face of Christ called a fumie. Then they demanded Ferreira kick the fumie and renounce his faith. Rodrigues mercilessly attacks him for not dying for his faith as a martyr. Ferreira explains that he could hear the cries of the Japanese Christians being tortured until he apostatized. Rodrigues with angry sorrow charges that it would be better for the Christians and Ferreira to die than renounce their Lord. Yet he answers: "For the love of Christ and his people, I apostatized.”
Finally, Rodrigues too, is taken into the circle of people and commanded to renounce his faith, curse Christ, and kick the fumie. For a while he resists. Yet he hears the wails of Christians being beaten until he apostatized. The man who has been driven by a silent Christ out of compassion for the people's pain kicks the face of Christ and renounces his faith. Then with a truth that fiction can sometimes express better than non-fiction, Rodrigues hears the Christ of the fumie speak: "Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know the pain of your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born in this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross.”
A 20th century Japanese writing about the 16th century expresses what Jesus said in the first century. God is not found in a safe aloof vacuum. He is to be found when we stop making excuses, swallow our pride, and do what we can to relieve the pain of other humans. And there do you find in the Bible that a person must deserve to be helped in order to be helped: The Bible says a lot about God's love for sinners even while yet sinners. It says nothing about people having to be saints before they can earn God's or his children's concern.
The promise of the Christ who said what you do to the least of these you do to me is when we try to feed, help, and love hurting humans in Christ's name, when we risk the gift of our servanthood, then we find that the God we long for very close, blessing us, and being present with us. God, help you and me be his gifts to the world. For the world's sake, for our own sake, God help us.
Amen.