Features: January 2007

Stated Clerk Response to President Bush on Iraq Military Strategies by Clifton Kirkpatrick

Presbyterians and Separatist Evangelicals: A Continuing Dilemma by R. Milton Winter

Stories from Our Past by Fred Heuser

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence by Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Christmas Gift by Dee H. Wade

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The Christmas Gift

by Dee H. Wade

A sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas, preached at Anchorage Presbyterian Church, Anchorage, Kentucky

Psalm 148; Isaiah 61:10-62:3; and Luke 2:22-40

The two twelve-year-old boys were walking along the L&N railroad tracks that cut through farmland and wooded land before it reached the river. It was familiar territory to them, and they enjoyed these hikes. Especially on this day, for it was Christmas afternoon—cool, brisk, with overcast skies hinting of snow—but not too cold for an outing.

One of the boys had just received a brand new .410-gauge shotgun that morning, and they were eager to “play” with it. Thus their trip. As soon as they passed the city limits, they began to take turns shooting at pop bottles and tin cans and fence posts along the way. An hour or so later, they came to thickly wooded ground. Ancient trees stood like canyon walls at the edges of the railroad right-of-way.

High in the near distance, a pair of birds flew along the opening in the sky, as if down a tunnel. Straight over the heads of the boys they were flying, side-by-side, wing-to-wing. Without a word, the gun’s owner raised the .410’s new, blue barrel, sighted, tracked, and fired. From the air dropped an American kestrel—also known as a sparrow hawk.

It was a clean kill. The bird was dead before it hit the ground. Its mate landed in the top of a nearby tree, screaming, perhaps calling for the other to rejoin their Christmas day flight. Meanwhile, the boys examined their quarry. It was beautiful, delicately colored with shades of brown, red, gray, white, and touches of blue. Even in death, the small bird possessed the raptor’s fierce dignity.

The two boys stood frozen over the bird. They were shocked at how quickly their play had turned deadly. The gun had lost its luster. The air seemed to turn suddenly colder, the afternoon more gray and dismal. They pitched the bird’s body into the woods. Overhead, the mate kept up its questioning screams.

The boys turned around to walk back home, hardly speaking. Finally they could hear the widowed kestrel no longer.

Now there are worse stories about the misuse of firearms. Far worse. But this one symbolizes them all. But more deeply, it symbolizes a sad, universal, human truth: how gifts can so easily become wasted, misused, abused. It is much like our reception of the story of Christmas: The spiritual gift of Christ, born into our world and into our hearts, is so freely and wonderfully given. Yet it is a gift also freely—but not so wonderfully—ignored, taken for granted, turned into something it is not meant to be, used for selfish and therefore destructive purposes, or taken back to be exchanged for something else—another Messiah, a better Lord, an improved Savior.

Each Christmas celebration we are offered the chance to receive the gift of Christ anew, to receive him properly, with the right spirit. Such a chance is taken when we are changed somehow, the spark of faith grows into a full fire, and we are made better, or wiser, or less self-centered and more openly loving. Such a chance is missed when the celebration comes and goes, and too quickly, too often, we are living exactly the same lives, doing what we have always done.

Except this time, this Christmas time, the story may be different.

In the aftermath of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, two wrinkled old people arrive on the scene, according to Luke. They are Simeon and Anna. As we try to imagine them, we might see Simeon as all but blind, except at close distances. His arthritic hands are huge knobs of inflamed joints. The arthritis is bad in his hips, too, yet somehow he manages an erect, dignified bearing.

We might see Anna as without a tooth in her head, her mouth tucked back within an excess of loosely hanging, leathery skin. She is stooped with age and scoliosis, can hardly straighten herself. Yet if you bother to look, there is a bright twinkle to her active eyes.

Old Simeon, we are told, was inspired by the Holy Spirit to see in Jesus the realization of all his lifelong hopes, as well as those of his people, for he calls the child “the consolation of Israel.” Thus he could die in peace. Yet the consolation Simeon feels is of a most curious sort. Jesus will be a controversial figure. He will call for much change within and around people’s lives. Because of him some will fall, others will rise. Lines will be drawn. People will have to make painful choices, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, who, Simeon says, will feel a piercing grief rip through her heart.

Simeon’s words, of course, would prove prophetic. But it is old Anna whom Luke calls a “prophetess.” She is a widow, which put her into a difficult situation. Widows of her day were either ignored or worshipped as living saints. Those are hard roles to fill, from either side of the equation. After witnessing Simeon’s embrace of the infant Jesus, Anna slips from the prophetic mold into being the first New Testament evangelist. She speaks of Jesus “to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” That’s a big crowd.

Both of these grizzled, crippled ones are pious, righteous, faith-filled folk whose lives have been devoted to the glory of God. Both represent the people of Israel at their best, true to the solid traditions of Torah and Temple. When they encounter Jesus in the temple, carried by his mother, they recognize him for who he is. They receive the gift that is Jesus, gladly and warmly. They are able to discern the Lord’s appointed, anointed one—even when he is wrapped in such an unusual package.

What’s interesting here is that these two old, tradition-faithful individuals, with their lives behind them and nothing much at all ahead of them, are given insight into Israel’s and the world’s radically new beginning. They thus bridge the gap between yesterday and tomorrow. They honor the past, yet they yield to the changes that God has in mind for the future.

This time of year between Christmas and New Year’s is classic “down time” for many of us. We are worn out, possibly depressed, by the overload of busyness and visiting and entertaining and spending and cooking so recently experienced. By placing so much emphasis upon one day of the year, and then getting it all “over with” by four o’clock in the afternoon, perhaps we don’t give ourselves the time necessary for real, soul-deep reflection about the meaning of the birth of Christ. It’s a gift far too often ignored and misused.

New life calls for change. It calls for growth. It calls for being something different, and doing something different from what you were and did yesterday. And when it’s a change as consequential as the new life Christ brings, it is a painful choice we must make. Lines are drawn. Some rise with it; others fall because of it. It will not be easy; there is grief to bear. It requires commitment and energy. But the energy necessary to gear ourselves up for the changes ahead can be dissipated or diverted by the season’s cultural excesses. And that’s too bad.

It’s wonderful, though, how Christmas brings families together. Isn’t it? I mean, don’t you just love watching children this time of the year? So wonderful is that sight that we are tempted to say, “Christmas is for children.” But it’s not, really. Christmas—as the incarnation of God—is as much, if not more, for wrinkled old souls who have lived a lifetime, but are not quite through living yet. Still not done with learning and growing.

If Christmas doesn’t change us in some deep and profound way, then we’ve wasted, or perhaps misused, its gift. My twelve-year-old companion and I weren’t changed by that particular Christmas. We did then what boys have always done: see something alive and moving and shoot it dead as a hammer simply because we can. The game warden wasn’t looking. We kept up humanity’s senseless and age-old war with creation on the very day set aside to honor the birth of him through whom all things were made, including that kestrel.

We were too young, too spiritually immature, to understand what Christmas means. Yet the emptiness we felt, looking down at that dead bird, revealed that we knew that something was wrong. At least we understood that much.

You and I may understand more today. Unless our hearts have been hardened by life into stone, we may use this “down time” after Christmas day as our time of spiritual opportunity. Now that the rush is over, perhaps we might get a better view on the season. We just might be able to see in Jesus the incarnation of our best hopes and the best hopes of the world. We have that ability, that possibility, by grace through faith, to receive the gift of Christ and minimize its misuse.

How so? Let Luke guide us. He has gone to a great deal of trouble to set this scene. He is emphasizing the Jewishness of Jesus. His family does all the right, orthodox, Jewish things. They attend to the teachings of Moses, the prophets, the priests, and the rabbis. They bring Jesus to the temple at the appropriate time for his dedication to the Lord.

And then, two quintessential Jews help Luke make his point. When Israel is at her best, through the Spirit, through the righteousness and justice demanded by the Torah, through prayer and fasting, then Israel is able to discern the gift of divinity and receive it aright. Maybe we should stand with old Simeon and Anna, bridging the gap between yesterday and tomorrow. For in being faithful to the stream of life flowing out of the past, there is connection to the lifestream flowing into the future. Just as the face of a baby contains the face of the adult to be, in Jesus Christ, there is a clear hint about the future of God.

Once we have beheld the Child, we know what that future looks like:

It looks like a glorious kingdom, heaven come to earth, wherein all people who live there value creation, value other human creatures, and live not for themselves alone, but for others’ and for God’s exquisite joy.

It looks like forgiveness given to those who don’t deserve it, even those who murder innocent sparrow hawks.

It looks like resurrection from sure and certain death.

It looks like a bride and bridegroom all decked out for a lifelong celebration of love.

It looks like an old man squinting at the baby he holds skyward with knobby, arthritic hands.

It looks like an old woman beside him, with a toothless grin, and a twinkle in her eyes, making her bent body dance a jig, barely able to contain herself with a happiness she can only share with all who seek salvation.

Be that old man. Be that old woman, dearly beloved. Move from the good of the past into the best of the future. Make the perhaps painful, but surely necessary choice of redemption into new life. Receive the consolation of Israel, the consolation of God, and you will depart in peace.

Amen.

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