Gifts
Peter Stuart - 2 Jan 2011
A couple of Sundays ago I preached for nearly half an hour in another parish where they’re used to having proper length sermons. It was of course a very careful, reasoned exploration of a very important subject, and duly edified its hearers. I’m tempted to repeat it here today. But I’m not at all sure that that would be appropriate, after all the stresses and strains of the Christmas season and New Year revels – which I can see etched on your faces. So I won’t. Instead, I’m going to start off with a simple question and tell two or three stories and read a poem and the words of a song and make one or more comments and ask a couple of other questions, and leave it at that.
The first question: what’s common to 6 December and 25 December and 6 January? (Or in this case 2 January, because Damon has Sunday-ised the feast of the Epiphany this year.) Gifts. 6 December is St Nicholas’s day – Santa Claus who gave gifts to children and then morphed into Father Christmas. 25 December is Christmas Day which some of us still celebrate as God’s gift to the world of Christ the Saviour, but which has got smothered with a profitable orgy of gift-giving. 6 January is the feast of the Epiphany when the Wise Men came to Bethlehem bearing gifts – and to give homage.
The gift-giving on each of these three days is different in meaning, and our gift-giving on Christmas Day can itself have very various meanings. Gift-giving is in fact quite complicated and I could easily preach for half an hour about this. I may yet do.
Here's some doggerel from an Australian radical Catholic cassette tape of song and verse. The poem, by Dermot Dorgan, is called "The Fourth Wise Man". (Some of you have heard this before.)
"Three Wise Men came to Bethlehem following a star,
Their names we're told were Melchior, Caspar and Balthasar.
One brought a gift of frankincense, the others myrrh and gold,
They came to greet the newborn king, the Gospel story told.
They gave their gifts to Jesus in the manger where he lay
His mother offered coffee, but they said they couldn't stay.
They got back on their camels, near the stable they'd been tied,
And as they headed off back east, Mary softly sighed:
"I really don't need perfume - though myrrh of course is tops,
And gold is always useful, but we're nowhere near the shops,
And frankincense is lovely - but a stable's not the place.
I hope they're not the wisest men in all the human race!
"It was very good of them to come from such a far-off land,
After all that time on camels, it's a wonder they could stand,
But bringing Jesus gifts of myrrh and frankincense and gold -
It's just not very practical - he's only ten days old!"
Next afternoon a man appeared outside the stable gate,
He said he was the Fourth Wise Man, and sorry he was late.
"I've brought some things I thought you'd need - it's just a little gift".
A quick inspection of his bag gave Mary's heart a lift.
A frozen casserole was there, and a stuffed and fluffy toy.
Some baby clothes in pastel blue - he'd guessed it was a boy!
"The thought of washing nappies", Mary cried "need not unnerve us,
For here's a six-month voucher for a nappy washing service!"
She turned to thank the stranger, but the stranger wasn't there;
He'd slipped away and vanished in the chilly winter air.
But on the gate he'd left a note, quite simple, but profound -
"Don't write this in the Gospel, please - I'd never live it down!"
So don't forget the Fourth Wise Man - the wisest of the lot.
He brought the really useful gifts the other three forgot.
If thoughts of gold and frankincense and myrrh don't leave you glum
It's because you're prob'ly not a young and new (and first time) Mum".
I think that’s a bit rough on the Three Wise Men and misses the point of their gifts – but it makes its own useful point. By the way, how many of you would like to dispose of some of the presents you received this Christmas?
In Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, he tells the story of an old peasant woman who died without leaving a single good deed behind. All she did, she did for herself alone. She gave nothing. After she died, the devil plunged her into the lake of fire. The novelist continues:
‘So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; “She once pulled up an onion in her garden”, said he, “and gave it to a beggar woman”. And God answered: “You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is”. The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. “Come,” said he, “catch hold and I’ll pull you out.” He began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. “I’m to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours”. As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away.’
Question: do we really give, at all? Gift-giving is quite complicated.
To continue: the giving of alms to those in need is a duty in many religions, not only in Christianity. And it’s a virtue in many cultures. There’s a story from Kashmir which tells of two Brahmin women who tried to fulfil their obligations for alms-giving simply by giving alms back and forth to one another. On their deaths they were transformed into two poisoned wells from which no one could drink, reflecting the barrenness of this pseudo-giving. And it’s been said that in folk tales the person who tries to hold on to a gift usually dies. The gift must always move on.
This principle was wonderfully illustrated in a heart-warming story in yesterday’s newspaper about the passing on of a gift. An unknown donor took out a Lotto ticket on a behalf of a cancer patient in Wellington who appeared to need money to get treatment privately here or in Australia – she was well down the public waiting list. The ticket won, the prize was forwarded anonymously to the patient, who in the meantime had moved up the public waiting list and now had no need of the money. So she in turn passed the money on to the Cancer Society. That was a welcome, genuine good news story.
I hope that in the last few weeks we’ve all given beyond our own circle of family and friends: that circle where there is almost always reciprocal giving. There’s a healthy growing pattern amongst some people of giving to a loved one not a conventional Christmas present but a card recording a gift, in that person’s name, to human need somewhere else in the world. Personally, I would like to see this become the pattern for all Christmas giving amongst adults. Let’s reserve Christmas presents for children – so back to the original Saint Nicholas! (I’m not saying adults should stop giving presents to adults on other occasions, like birthdays, for example.)
So another question: to whom do we give, and why?
A side excursion, to feasting (which is another thing we associate with Christmas):
Feasting is endorsed by the Bible. Essentially it’s a celebration and a thankful sharing of the goodness of life, on a particular occasion which itself is a cause for thanksgiving. And it’s an opportunity for giving. So here’s part of another story:
‘Then he said to his host, “When you are having guests to lunch or supper, do not invite your friends, your brothers or your relations or your rich neighbours; they will only ask you back again and so you will be repaid. But when you give a party, ask the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. That is the way to find happiness, because they have no means of repaying you. You will be repaid on the day when the righteous rise from the dead.”’ (Luke 14:12-14)
You may recognise the words (I hope you do), and the Person who speaks them. Jesus. Feasting together at Christmas is a perfectly valid way of celebrating the precious God-given gift of family at the season when we celebrate the Holy Family of Jesus. But Christian families can only do it with integrity if we have first shared with others the means of life at some time in the Advent/Christmas season.
There’s a paradox at the heart of the way we celebrate Christmas. And it’s this: God empties Himself in becoming human, and we – feast, we fill ourselves. God identifies Himself with our poverty and sinfulness and suffering, and we - feast. Rightly. Yet that feasting can itself be twisted by our sinfulness, and increase human distress on one level or another. And the more we drift from the simplicity of God’s self-giving in Jesus, and are manipulated by a greed-driven economy and our own mixed motivations, the more twisted our Christmases become.
So another question: What sort of Christmas did we all have?
I’m tempted to go on to explore the difference between a ‘gift-economy’ on the one hand and a ‘barter-economy’ or ‘market-economy’ on the other. But that could take another twenty minutes or so. So I will leave you with the words of the classic Shaker hymn:
‘Tis the gift to be simple,
‘tis the gift to be free,
‘tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be,
and when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
To turn, turn, will be our delight
Till by turning, turning we come round right.’
And a final question for us, a question which assumes we all know Dr Seuss’s story about the Grinch who stole Christmas:
Who was the particular Grinch who wanted to steal our own particular Christmas this year? And did we let him?
A sermon preached in St Alban’s Anglican Church, Eastbourne, on 2 January 2011, by the Revd Canon Peter Stuart.