The Best Christmas Present Ever
Luke 1: 26-38 (NIV)
In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.” “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
What's the best Christmas present you ever got?
How I personally might answer a question like that has changed throughout my life. When I was a kid I might have said the best Christmas present I ever got was a doll I really wanted, or the newest video game. And as I got older and my tastes changed, I might have told you the best gift I ever got was a book that was topping the best seller list, or the newest CD from my favorite band.
But I suspect if we sat here and had a grown up conversation about this, some of you might tell me a story about a material object that you were gifted, but a lot of us might say the best Christmas gift we ever got was something that wasn't a thing--something you can't buy in a store. Like a family member flying in from out of town so you could be together for the holidays. Or quality time with your friends. Or the look on your child's face when they opened a gift you spent hours working on for them.
You might even go bigger than that and say the best Christmas present you ever got was family. Love in your life. A roof over your head. Your health. Your faith.
Being that we're having this conversation at church, some of you might be tempted to assume that my ultimate point in all of this is that the best Christmas present any of us ever got, or ever will get, is Jesus. There, that was an efficient sermon!
But not so fast. Of course our greatest gift is God's love that he delivered through Mary in the form of his Son. But there's more to it than that.
Because gifting is a reciprocal thing. We don't just get gifts for Christmas, we exchange gifts. And once you age out of your Santa beliefs, you don't just receive Christmas presents, you give them, too.
So as mature grown ups, when we make our plans and our budgets for the holiday season, we don't just consider what our loved ones might be giving us this year. We make a plan to give presents to our family and friends that will be thoughtful, and useful, and appreciated. Gifts that will tell them how much we love them.
And then the tricky part of gift-giving sets in. Because then you need to start working out how many presents you're going to get for each person on your list, and whether a bunch a little gifts weighs the same as a big gift, and what your spending limit is going to be, and how your gift to them will look compared to what they're getting you, and whether maybe you should just get your Dad another tie this year. There's a lot of thought that goes into buying and giving Christmas presents.
But a lot of times the best gifting is the kind that doesn't require that much thought at all. I'm struck by the very classic Christmas story called "The Gift of the Magi". We all know this one. It's about two young newlyweds, Jim and Della, who each want to get a great gift for the other for Christmas, but don't know how to make that happen because they're broke. Each of them has only one prized possession--Della has beautiful, long, flowing hair, and Jim has a gold pocket watch that has been passed down through his family for three generations.
Della decides she wants to buy a platinum chain for Jim's watch, so she gives up the only thing she has--her hair--and sells it for just enough money to be able to afford a watch chain for Jim.
The ironic twist in this story, of course, happens when Jim comes home on Christmas Eve, and sees his short haired wife sitting there with a chain for his watch--because he sold his watch to buy combs for Della's hair.
But even though the gifts they've bought each other are now useless, they're both so touched by how much they were both willing to sacrifice for each other.
And that is where the best gift giving lies, when we're willing to give up so much because we put someone else ahead of ourselves.
And no one in the whole history of our faith has understood this better than Mary. Gabriel visited Mary and told her she was going to get the best Christmas present ever--a son who would change the world. And last week we talked about how that precious gift of Jesus would come at a cost to Mary. But on behalf of God, on behalf of his only Son, and on behalf of every generation of humanity that has followed, and benefitted from a world that knows and is saved by Jesus--in short, so she could give the best Christmas present ever to each one of us, Mary sacrificed her body, her time, her reputation, her security, and her comfort, and said to Gabriel, I am the Lord's servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.
We have all received the best Christmas present ever: a Savior. But that's just where the story starts. What we should be asking ourselves is, what gift can we give to Him?
And really, we should be asking ourselves, what can we give up for he who gave up his life for us?
The best gifts aren't stuff. They aren't material possessions, or things you could find in a store. They aren't something you could measure, or put a price tag on.
The best gifts happen when you give all of yourself, without asking for anything back. If God's greatest gift to us is Jesus, God's own self incarnate, then our greatest gift to God is our own selves: our hearts, our minds, our time, our treasure, and our talent.
Amen.
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