“The Gift”

Scripture Lesson: Luke 2:1-20

Christmas Eve

Sermon Transcript for December 24, 2008

By Pastor Andy Kinsey

“For unto us a child is born,
unto us a son is given.”

- Isaiah 9:6

Prayer of Preparation

Christmas Eve! The excitement! The mystery! The relief!

Whew! Finally, Christmas! The Advent of God has come! The expectation, the anticipation, the waiting – have ended! The glory of the Lord has been revealed! And unto us a son is given!

The hopes and fears of all the years meet – converge – in a lowly manger in a forgotten part of the world!

Christmas! The Word made flesh! Mystery! Incarnation! The very life of God in human form – so fragile, so delicate, so breathtaking! All wrapped up in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

How to capture the moment? What to say? What words to use?

If we are to capture the heart of this holy moment, this special time, what would we say?

Many words, of course, come to mind. Love! That, of course, is good word! What the word needs now is love, sweet love! Peace! Yes, the world needs peace! Hope! Yes, we need hope! Faith! Yes, faith!

But if we could share a word – one word – that speaks to heart of the matter on Christmas Eve, what word would we share?

The word I kept coming back to again and again was gift! If there is a word – one word – I believe captures what God has done in Christ on this holy night, it is the word gift!

For as the prophet Isaiah foretold, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” (9:7).

And in John’s Gospel, there is the famous verse: “For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (Jn. 3:16).

Gift! God’s unconditional, unmerited gift of love! In Scripture, we call it grace – the ultimate act of God’s self-giving love!

That’s what goes to the heart of Christmas: Gift-giving, gift-receiving love!

Think about it! All the effort we go through this time of the year. Fighting crowds, standing in line, waiting for hours driving in traffic, dealing with the commotion of people coming and going,– for what?
Because it’s good for our health?!

No! To give a gift!

Tomorrow, or this evening, whatever our family tradition may be, we will gather around the tree with loved-ones, family and friends, giving and exchanging gifts – receiving those gifts we don’t know quite what to do with, wondering why in the world we received one more sweater, finding the right words to say –

Well, well, well, another sweater!
Now, hey, there’s a gift!
Perfect for wearing in the basement!
Gosh, I hope this never catches fire!
Boy, this is going to inspire jealousy. I can see it right now!
And to think I received this gift the year I vowed to give all my gifts to charity!

Finding the right words to say as we unpack all those gifts!

Or, as parents, we will look at that one special gift under the tree asking ourselves about those three dreaded words printed on top: Some Assembly Required. And we will pray drops of blood throughout the night asking God for patience as we watch our children unwrap it!

The way a young father did who had ordered a tree house for his children one year. Perhaps you heard the story about the time a young father had to put together a tree house for his children. All the parts were laid out on the floor, and he began to read the instructions, only to realize that, to his dismay, the instructions were not for a tree house but for a sailboat! The day after Christmas the father sent an angry letter to the company complaining about the mix-up, and back came this reply:

“Dear Sir: We are truly sorry for the error and in the inconvenience. However, it might help to consider the possibility that somewhere there is a man out on a lake trying to sail your tree house.”

(Thanks to Reverend Don Shelby of First UMC in Santa Monica for this story.)

Dear friends: Christmas is about the gift God gives to bring all the different pieces of your life together!

It is about the gift God gives to reveal to you that you don’t have to go through this life alone, that there is another Way –

A way of light in the midst of darkness
A way of assurance in times of uncertainty
A way of life when death comes…

If Christmas means anything (anything at all) it means that God has come to take up residence in this life and to assume all the hurts and pains and joys and hopes of our lives, to get our lives back on track, and to give us peace.

The early Christians called this special action of God, this special gift condescension, or God’s bending down, taking on, the messiness of life. The church spoke of God’s condescending love. Later, the church would call it incarnation, or how God’s eternal Word became flesh in Jesus.

A friend of mine a few years ago talked about it this way, when he attended a dinner party at Christmas. The house was properly decorated, including an electric train around the base of the tree. One of the children
was running the train so fast that it derailed. She tried to put it back on the track but couldn’t. The host noticed what she was doing and went over to help. And he said to her, “You can’t put the train on the track from above; you have to get down beside it.” And then he bent down, got on the floor beside the train to see, and placed the train back on the track.

What a wonderful way to think about God’s great gift of grace, of God’s incarnate love: the human race has derailed, gotten off track, and needed Someone to come and put it back on track again! It couldn’t be done from above, but from below, with God coming down beside us in order to show us the Way.

And that’s what God has done! God has come to live among us, taking up residence in person, sharing our lot, and revealing to us what life is truly all about: to get us back on track! (Thanks to Michael Hendrix for this story.)

In a nutshell, that’s the Christmas message: God’s visitation to earth is done so quietly, so gently, so unassumingly, so without pomp and circumstance that, if we are not awake, if we are not careful, we will miss it. We miss the signs of how God is trying to get us back on track – the manger, stable, shepherds, sheep, cattle, the peasant girl, the carpenter! Not exactly royalty, but God doesn’t need royalty to accomplish his purposes!

Or, as the popular author Philip Yancey has written, Jesus’ birth takes place in an animal shelter. Indeed, the event that changes the course of history, that divides history into before and after, had more animals present than people. “A mule,” says Yancey, “could have stepped on him” [Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995), pp. 36-37].

“How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.”

There it is! Wondrous gift, given not in a show of power, or wealth, or dominance, or control, but given out of love!

And what Christmas is really all about is God giving to us this gift, his Son, inviting us into a Way of life, inviting us not only receive him but also to adore him, to worship him, to follow after him, to learn from him.

That’s the gift God gives us - a gift that waits our response – RSVP – that waits for us to open it!

But here’s the thing: to actually receive this gift, to open it, it is best to kneel. It is best to open it in humility.

In fact, if you have ever been to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, you know what I mean – that behind the main altar of the church is a cave, a little cavern lit by silver lamps. As you enter the main edifice of the church, you can stand there and admire its beauty, but as you enter the cave where the star is embedded in the floor, you have to stoop down, you have to kneel to see where Christ was born. That’s the stipulation for entering!

The same is true for Christ. To receive Christ, you need to kneel; indeed, you need to fall on your knees, in the spirit of humility, in the spirit of expectancy, and believe that what God has done is to offer to you the best gift of all: life eternal, life with purpose and hope.

I can think of no better gift this Christmas, can you? For as I look over the congregation this evening, as I look out upon your faces, I can see that with the absence of a loved-one, with the shakiness of our world throwing us off track, with the ups and downs of the economy, with the struggles of family – there is room for another gift: there is room for Christ to come and take up residence in your life! There is room for the light to shine, and to change that ache, that holy desire, into a gift, to take the scattered pieces and bring them together into a whole.

It’s really what Christmas is all about. It’s what Christmas is about because it’s what God can do! And it’s about what God can do it because God has already done it in giving to us his only Son, the Word, the Savior, the Lord, the Gift!

Amen!