Gifts

  Let us join together in prayer:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight O God, and may we receive this year, the gifts you would have us experience, as we come to know the one who has called us closer to you, through his birth and epiphany among us.  Amen

On Christmas Eve, Pastor David spoke with us about the meaning of the crèche or manger scene, which many of us put up in our homes to replicate the nativity of Christ.  He reminded us that the first crèche was developed by Francis of Assisi, who was always looking for ways to make the gospel come alive in his day.  One Christmas, Francis decided to create a live nativity scene, and persuaded a local farmer to donate his barns and animals.  Francis called together the villagers and had them re-enact Christ’s birth, right in the farmer’s barn.  And so the tradition of recreating that holy night was born on that Christmas day, 1223.

Over the centuries, different European countries developed their individual styles of crèches.  And now the custom is spread into all Christian communities so that we find it in Latin America with its particular colorful flair and in Asia with its special accents.  And in even in plastic versions at the local toy mega store.  The crèche is enduring.

Following Francis’ lead, in Germany, the figures are carved of wood, and they are placed in a small house with the tree of life growing through the roof.  In Italy, figures of the crèche are more likely to be of clay,  Neopolitan style crèche at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, or closer to home at the Abbey of Regina Laudis, in Bethlehem, Connecticut.  Those crèches are large, fully developed works of art, measured in feet not inches, and filled with characters from daily life.  In the same way, the French have interpreted the crèche by making clay or figures of people from traditional villages of the 18^th or 19^th century, dressed in the garb of those days.  The people depicted, from the fish monger to the farmer, are normal people going about their daily tasks.  It seems that the message of the manger is that that Christ is born among us now - today - and not only in that ancient stable in Bethlehem.

If we close our eyes and imagine the scene, we will always find Mary, Joseph, the baby, a few animals.  Without them, no crèche.  But think a bit more.  Who else is there ?  Yes, a few shepherds and the angels, the heavenly hosts.  And also, perhaps far off in a corner the three kings, making their way, day by day in these days following Christmas , to the child.

The scene is not complete without them.  We need these three men, to flesh out the tableau.  Although they seem a bit out of place, coming from outside the frame of 1^st century peasant life in Palestine, they are central to the Christian message.  We might put it this way:  Christmas needs only the few characters of that nativity night, but Christian faith needs these three kings of Orient to take the message beyond the crèche and out into the world

Yet, we do not know much about these men who are central to our faith.  Were they wise ones, seers, astrologers?  Were they as exotic as we think of them, dressed in royal robes and turbans on their heads?  We cannot say, we cannot know.  But for Matthew, the only evangelist who wrote of them, they were very important to the story, representing the moment, this very first moment when the birth of the messiah is known beyond the little circle of the Jewish people who had attended to it that first night.  This is epiphany, when what was only hidden, is now made manifest.  A theme which will be visited over and over again in our gospels as the story of Jesus continues and the purpose of his life is revealed to his followers, then, and us, his followers, today.

One aspect of the story which captures our theological imagination are the gifts the three bring to the Christ child: 

gold, frankincense and myrrh, each of these carrying a certain symbolic importance, although there is some debate about their specific meaning.  Most interpreters say that they are considered to be foretastes of events in the life of Christ.  Gold for kingship, frankincense for worship, myrrh as the small telling sign that this tiny baby is destined for an unquiet future and an important death.

The gift of gold still makes sense to us today, as gold is still a precious metal, and basic to our economic life. Christ will be a king, Christ will reign, Christ will be as pure and as solid and valuable. 

Frankincense was used in religious ceremonies, and the smoke and smell evoke the worship of the divine in the ancient world.  And myrrh was used in embalming, so that the gift of myrrh would evoke the truth of death. Remembering of course, that Matthew wrote his gospel after the Resurrection and so would have known the end of the story that he places at the beginning.

These were the gifts to the Christ child, for the Christ child.  But what if we looked at them from a slightly different angle, and consider them not only gifts given to Jesus, but to us as well.   I wonder if these gifts would have resonance for us if we could place ourselves back in the crèche, just as St. Francis would have us do.  Just as the Latin American and Asian and Italian and French artisans would have us do.

What if we were there, and if those gifts to the Christ were handed back to us?

Would we know what to do with them or would we try to re-gift them quickly, believing that they were not meant for us at all?  But think on it :  Our faith teaches us that the spirit of Christ lives in each one of us.  Perhaps these gifts carry symbolic meaning for us as well, especially as we begin the new year.  Can we, will we, accept them and take them in?

Let’s look at these in turn, and see what importance they might hold for us, Christ bearers.

Gold.  At first, we might protest that we are not worthy of the gift of gold. If the symbolic meaning of gold is that it represents Christ’s kingship, we would not relate to that.  We are to be servants of God, not the king.  This is true as far as it goes.  We should not try to take the place of God.  That is what gets us into trouble in the first place, trying to run the world our way, or act as if we were God. Or in a milder form, thinking we are more important than we are.

But we are also told in the first letter of Peter, that we are a royal priesthood, a holy race.  And certainly the weight of the New Testament revelation is that we are God’s beloved children.  We are given this royal heritage through our relationship with God, not in spite of it.  The gold of grace, the gold of God’s love speaks to that which does not change and which raises us to embrace our full human dignity and God given.

This is not a gold of greedy displays.  It is the gift of the permanence of God’s love for us, for gold is one of the few earthly substances which does not tarnish or change, which endures, which is true.  A metal which can be heated and molten and reformed into a new shape.  A beautiful element which can create new formats.  The gold standard—that to which all others refer.  This is the gold of God’s love.

Frankincense.  The symbolic meaning to the Christ child was to evoke Christ as a high priest, one who was in direct relationship with God through his work on earth and his death on the cross.  But if we were there, in that crèche, to receive it, we moderns might not know what to do with this resin-like substance, a bit crumbly, sticky.

Frankincense smells good, but what is it for?  We could learn, about its function, that it is used in worship, evoking the prayers that rise to the heights, and the mystical meaning of smoke, making the air and the spirit a bit more visible for the moments it burns.  But we are good Protestants.  We have given up the smells and the bells of high church liturgies, so we have less need of frankincense, don’t we?

Perhaps not, if we think of this gift beyond the form as it appears, and link it to worship, and of relationship. 

Perhaps then, this gift would remind us of acts of faith which we make every time we come here to church and every time we pray.  We are able to worship our God, directly.  We receive communion at the table of the Lord.  We are able to be in relationship with the divine.  We are - again this phrase “a royal priesthood” - people who do not need any human intercessor to stand between ourselves and God.  And God wants to be in relationship with us.

This is a powerful gift, stunning in its implications.  The spirit is not reserved for a few or the elite, but moves among us all.  This gift reminds us that God is not far, but as near as the air we breathe as the smoke of its burning rises around us.

Finally, myrrh.  The gift which reminds of the hard fate which is to come.  In his long poem, For the Time Being, W.H. has these lines which tell us:

“The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,

And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware


Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought


Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now


Be very far off.

When we hear this poetry, we want to turn away.  We prefer not to acknowledge what is coming.  Myrrh makes us shudder.  Why did these wise men bring it?  Why did they have to ruin the party with this symbol?  Do we have to accept it?

It's the most complex, for sure.  But I think it is an interesting one because it speaks to reality in a way that we would rather avoid.  But which goes to the heart of human existence.

Just this week, we celebrated the new year.  A poignant night, a happy night, a hopeful night, perhaps touched by fears and regret as well.  We don’t know what the new year will bring and yet we commit ourselves in faith to living through it, nevertheless, knowing that all time is God’s time.  We do not possess time, nor know how long will be the time we will spend on this planet.

When we more fully accept this impermanence of all life, we actually experience a certain peace.  We begin to appreciate the time that we do have to live, knowing that it will not last forever.  The limits we have, the boundaries we experience are what structures human existence and without them we would drift into an eternal, open -ended fog.  Myrrh reminds us, in the words of the psalmist, to count our days and to appreciate our precious lives.  As great and as poignant a gift as we might ever receive.  Coming from these three kings to the child, and now back to us.

These gifts are meant to be received as a group.  Myrrh alone, without love, without relationship, is harsh.  Love is not just an abstract concept; it needs relationship to become real.  And relationship with God in Christ is rooted in resurrection hope, which takes the sting from death, as the apostle Paul tells us.

Knowing the interplay among these gifts, may we open them carefully this new year, and think on them and live into them.  Gold of love, frankincense of relationship, myrrh of the preciousness of our limited lives.  We hold them dear as we are held, in the embrace of Emmanuel, God with us this epiphany Sunday, and always.  Thanks be to God.  Amen