CHRISTMAS-A, December 24, 2007
For the past several weeks I have spent quite a bit of time sitting in my easy chair at home with my computer in my lap. My wife, The Nurse, made sure my hip had the opportunity to heal. She didn’t trust me to behave myself. And to be honest, I was sorely tempted to do more than I did. Your prayers worked wonders. I was never in any real pain and my recovery was rather rapid, which is what it was supposed to be.
Dr. Nassif, my surgeon, had me on his Rapid Recovery program. That meant I arrived at Mercy at 6:30 Monday morning, had surgery at 8:30 and was back home the next day by 3:00. I see him on Thursday and expect to be allowed to go back to fulltime work, if what I do anyone, including me, can call it “work”.
As I said, I had plenty of time at home. I have to confess that I committed a grave sin during that time. I listened to lots of Christmas music on the cable station that was playing the songs of the seasons. I know it was still Advent and I should have been thinking Advent thoughts instead of allowing my mind and heart and soul be immersed in thoughts of Christmas. Forgive me.
Of course all this listening of Christmas songs did allow me to realize just how many different Christmas songs there are. There are some really good ones. There are also some very awful ones as well. Yet, like music of all kinds and sorts, my favorites may be on someone else’s list of “worst ever” songs. To each his own.
While I was sitting and thinking and computing and listening, I was also doing some reading. One of the articles I read mentioned a recent survey that noted that three Christmas songs I like happen to be on the list of someone’s “most irritating” Christmas songs. They are “Do You Hear What I Hear?”, “Little Drummer Boy” and “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”
Some would say that they are also some of the silliest, especially “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” When I thought about that, I had to agree. I mean, who would give someone he or she loved a partridge in a pear tree or French hens or lords a leaping? The only gift that might make any sense would be the five gold rings. Even then, after twelve days of gift giving, one has to wonder what one would do with forty gold rings.
And yet, and yet, even if the song is silly, even if no one in his right mind would give such foolish gifts even if one could afford to do so, the song does strike a chord. It really fits in with the whole point of what Christmas is all about, does it not? An article I was reading while listening to this song noted that the song contains the “high wisdom of completely inappropriate and useless gifts.” High wisdom, not simply wisdom but high wisdom of completely inappropriate gifts.
It is unwise, for instance, to give my wife a new iron for Christmas just because she may need a new iron. In fact I would probably be clobbered over the head with it if I did. Instead, I give her a set or earrings to go with the twenty or thirty other sets she has.
The best gifts are those that surprise us, gifts we do not need but will enjoy. I can buy my wife a new iron any time and I buy it because she needs it. A gift is not a gift if it is a necessity. A gift is a surprise, like a partridge in a pear tree, or like a baby in a manger when what the people needed or certainly wanted at that time was a powerful king like David who would overthrow the Romans. In many ways we want the same today. We want someone who will not only save the world but save us from ourselves.
But, you see, that is what we got. That is what we get. That is what we celebrate. That is why we gather to give thanks. Jesus was God’s gift to us, totally unexpected, even totally undeserved, at least on our part, but it was and is the wisest gift God could have given. John Buchanan, the writer of the article I was reading, says this: “The uniquely Christian idea is that there is absolute truth in the newborn lying in the manger – truth about God, truth about the nature of power, truth about you and me, truth that could transform the world.” (Christian Century, 11/11/07)
Or as Garrison Keillor put it in a recent column– I told you I had a lot of time for reading – “This magical story is a cornerstone of the Christian faith…. It is to the church what his Kryptonian heritage was to Clark Kent – it enables us to stop speeding locomotives and leap tall buildings in a single bound, and also to love our neighbors as ourselves. Without the Nativity, we become sort of a lecture series and coffee club, with not very good coffee and sort of aimless lectures.” (The Gazette, 12/07/07)
Sometimes I think that’s exactly what we’ve become. We spend lots and lots of time debating and discussing, deciding who’s in and who’s out, who’s a heretic and who is like us – orthodox, of course. The conversation gets us nowhere and the coffee is not good enough to keep us at it. Why do we do that? Because it is easier than doing what the Christmas story is all about: namely, loving our neighbor. It is much easier to debate who our neighbor is and who is our enemy, who to keep in and who to keep out. Loving takes work. It takes sacrifice. That was Jesus’ example.
God so loved us that God gave us Jesus. God so loves us that God gives us Jesus over and over and over again. And Jesus’ message, Jesus’ example, is always the same: Love one another just as I have loved you. It is a simple message. As Keillor says, it is our Kryptonite. It enables us to stop evil in its tracks. Love conquers all. Lectures, litigation, wars, fences, isolation only make matters worse. Or, again, as Buchanan says: “The uniquely Christian idea is that there is absolute truth in the newborn lying in the manger – truth about God, truth about the nature of power, truth about you and me, truth that could transform the world.”
The silly gifts we give transform us, if only for the moment. They bring joy, happiness, love to our lives. They bring us closer to one another. Why? Because we give them because of our love for the other. We do not need to give the gift. We want to. God did not need to give us Jesus, but God did because of God’s unconditional love of us. In the process we have been transformed. When we love another, that person is transformed.
As we sing our Christmas songs during this Christmas season, may we become more and more aware of what this day and this season, our life and our faith are all about. They are not about trying to make sense of God’s gift to us but rather to help us sense the need for us to love as Jesus loved. If we so love, when we so love, we will help change the world, one person at a time.
The truth is that Jesus was born among us to show us how to change lives – our life and the life of others. That change takes place through the only power that has ever worked: the power of love. That, too, is the truth. To the world that may be as silly as giving someone a partridge in a pear tree or worshiping a baby born in a barn. But for you and me, in this world today, this is truly “high wisdom”. It may be the only truth that makes sense. In fact, it is.
Merry Christmas.
