God's Gift Of Love

Rev. Keith Morgan

Advent and Christmas is such a special time for everyone, but extra special when there are children involved. The younger the participant, the more exciting and unpredictable this season stands to be.

Does this scene sound familiar? The three-year-old pre-school class is having a Christmas party and your child or grandchild happens to be in that class. This is the first year in the last three that Santa Claus has been a recognizable yuletide personality around your home, and all the way to the party you rehearse with your child what needed to be done in order to inform the jolly old man about the airplane which is being requested from the North Pole. How excited Billy got thinking about sitting in Santa’s lap and telling him about the airplane that is desired on December 25^th.

After arriving at the home where the party is being held, Billy sat in the bay window of the house watching for that special guest in a red suit, and was ecstatic when Santa drove up in his brown Toyota. However, by the time the dramatic entrance had taken place, most of the three-year-olds became bashful and withdrawn. They liked Santa more philosophically than they did in the flesh. After the little fat man with a white beard sat down at one end of the den, Billy ran to the other end of the room to hide behind Daddy’s legs. But then he realized what was at stake, and in the hushed atmosphere of that gathering of small-fry’s, he looked around from his hiding place and yelled at the top of his voice: “AIRPLANE! AIRPLANE!”

As the morning passed, the children began to warm up to Santa especially when he started handing out gifts! By noon the visitor from the North Pole was their very good friend, and through him they seemed to experience the joy and love of Christmas. They even made the adults feel something special deep inside as well.

Many people think that youngsters have taken over Christmas precisely because they are so preoccupied with Santa Claus. I believe something different. Christmas often has been assigned to children because adults do not know what to do with Jesus. In our sophistication we tend to devalue the events surrounding His birth, and read the account as hardly more than a religious nursery rhyme.

Advent and Christmas is not only for children, but through children we are able to encounter the real truth of this holy season. If we will let them, children can teach us a wonderful lesson. They can show us the love that can be found and shared.

Why is it that all the best stories at Christmas are for children? Have you noticed that? Maybe I like them best because when we adults read them to our children we discover a message and truth for us as well. Have you read the book, Polar Express? Or maybe you have seen the movie?

Although this movie does not focus on Christ or the church it does offer some great moral lessons that are compatible with Christian teaching. The main theme of the book and the movie is about “believing.” But there is a strong underlying theme in the movie that has to do with caring, sharing, and love. Late on Christmas Eve night, a young boy lies in bed hoping to hear the sound of reindeer bells from Santa’s sleigh. When to his surprise, a steam engine’s roar and whistle can be heard outside his window. The conductor invites him on board to take an extraordinary journey to the North Pole with many other pajama-clad children. Through their adventures together the boy makes friends with several other children, one who is especially lonely and appears to come from a poor family. They help each other out and comfort each other in some rather scary situations. One of the lessons they learn is that it is the love of family and friends that is most important in life.

It’s a good movie and I can recommend it for your holiday viewing. It is a movie for children, but also for adults. It reminds us that Christmas is a Spirit, not just a place or a day. It promises us that when such a Spirit permeates every minute of our days, Christmas will be present every day of our lives. It is the Spirit of love.

Studies show that the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day is the most depressing time of the year. Will it be the same this year? Perhaps this is because so many persons spend so much effort to get to Christmas only to realize afterward that they missed out on their goal completely. But it does not have to be that way.

J. Edgar Park wrote a story called The Man Who Missed Christmas. It is a story about George Mason, a banker, who accidently locked himself in the bank vault on Christmas Eve. While doing some end of the day work in the vault the door silently swung shut. He hurled himself at the unyielding door, but it would not budge. He was the last one in the office; the safe would remain locked until it was opened from the outside. Since the next day was Christmas, it would be 36 hours before anyone would come to unlock the safe. Would the oxygen last? Perspiring and breathing heavily, he felt his way around the floor. Then, in the far right-hand corner, just above the floor, he found a small, circular opening. Quickly he thrust his finger into it and felt, faint but unmistakable, a cool current of air. The tension release was so sudden that he burst into tears. But at last he sat up. Surely he would not have to stay trapped for the full 36 hours. Somebody would miss him.

But who? He was unmarried and lived alone. The maid who cleaned his apartment was just a servant; he had always treated her as such. He had been invited to spend Christmas Eve with his brother’s family, but children got on his nerves and expected presents. So he declined.

A friend had asked him to go to a home for elderly people on Christmas Day and play the piano - George Mason was a good musician. But he had made some excuse or other; he had intended to sit at home listening to some new CD’s he was giving himself.

George Mason dug his nails into the palms of his hands until the pain balanced the misery in his mind. Nobody would come and let him out. Nobody.

Miserably the whole of Christmas Day went by, and the succeeding night.

On the morning after Christmas the head clerk came into the office at the usual time, opened the safe, then went on into his private office.

No one saw George Mason stagger out into the corridor, run to the water cooler, and drink great gulps of water. No one paid attention to him as he left and took a taxi home.

That day he met several acquaintances and talked to his own brother. Grimly, inescapably the truth closed in on George Mason. He had vanished from human society during the great festival of Christmas, a day meant for sharing and loving. No one missed him at all. Reluctantly, George Mason began to think about the true meaning of Christmas. Was it possible that he had been blind all these years with selfishness, indifference, pride? Had he missed out on the essence of Christmas?

All through the year that followed, with a little hesitant deeds of kindness, with small, unnoticed acts of unselfishness, George Mason tried to prepare himself...

Now, once more, it was Christmas Eve.

Slowly he backed out of the safe, closed it. He touched its grim steel face lightly, almost affectionately, and left the office.

There he goes now in his black overcoat and hat, the same George Mason as a year ago, or is it? He walks a few blocks, then flags a taxi, anxious not to be late. His nephews are expecting him to help them trim the tree. Afterwards, he is taking his brother and his sister-in-law to a Christmas play. Why is he so happy? Why does the jostling against others, laden as he is with bundles, exhilarate and delight him? Perhaps the card has something to do with it, the card he taped inside the safe last New Year’s Day. On the card is written, in George Mason’s own hand:

To love people, to be indispensable somewhere, that is the purpose of life. That is the secret of Christmas.

Christmas is a Spirit, not a place. Christmas is not a matter of where we go, what we buy or even with whom we share. Christmas is the Spirit in which we do all three: Christmas is a way of giving, it is a way of sharing, a way of loving.

Christmas Day is almost here. Just over a week away. During these weeks of Advent we have been waiting in the dark, and some of us for longer than that, waiting for the light of a savior to come into the world. Our eyes have grown accustomed to the dark; we are good at waiting. We have had a lot of practice. But here it is, almost time. Nine short days and Jesus will once again be born into the world. It is reliable, this reminder of new birth - year after year our Christmas celebration reminds us that God does not stand at a distance, waiting for us to come to him. God has instead come all the way to us, and what the waiting is about is for us to comprehend and choose the light not only in word but also in deed and truth.

Today we are given a good companion in the last days of our wait - we read about Mary the mother of Jesus, for whom Christmas was not a reliable reminder of anything, but for whom it was a radical, never before and never to be repeated experience of the power of the living God. Today’s reading from Luke contains the longest speech she ever makes. It is a song, actually, known through the centuries as the Magnificat, which is the first word of the song in Latin. It is one of the church’s oldest hymns, and it is about Mary’s dawning understanding of what her baby will mean to the world. That her baby was to be God’s gift of love to the world.

Listen to Barbara Brown Taylor’s description of Mary at the time she sang the Magnificat:

On the one hand she was just a girl, an immature and frightened girl who had the good sense to believe what an angel told her in what seemed like a dream. On the other hand she was the mother of the son of God, with faith enough to move mountains, to sing about the victories of her son as if he were already at the right hand of the father instead of a dollop of cells in her womb. She was not like us. She was like us. She just wanted to thank God for visiting her, but she ended up bearing his son. She just wanted to be blessed in a small way, but she ended up changing the future of the world. She just wanted to sing a happy song, but she ended up singing revolution, singing the Lord’s own upheaval and tumult. She was not like us. She was like us. When we allow God to be born in us there is no telling, no telling at all, what will come out.

When Holy Love saturates ordinary people, something extraordinary takes place. Mary became more fully alive because she was open to being part of God’s great goal of saving the world. When your goal in life is to become an agent of God’s redemption in life, suddenly there is more to life than you ever realized was there. There is something about Advent and Christmas that makes God’s love so real and so close that it can make a difference in the way we live our lives. God’s love became flesh in Jesus and still becomes flesh now through the way we care for and love one another. When Holy Love saturates ordinary people, something extraordinary takes place. That is the Gift of Love!