“HAVE YOU OPENED ALL YOUR GIFTS?”
JOHN 1:1-18
John 1:1 In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God.
3 All things came into being through
him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being
4 in him was life, and the life was
the light of all people.
5 The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose
name was John.
7 He came as a witness to testify
to the light, so that all might believe through him.
8 He himself was not the light, but
he came to testify to the light.
9 The true light, which enlightens
everyone, was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world
came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.
11 He came to what was his own, and
his own people did not accept him.
12 But to all who received him, who
believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,
13 who were born, not of blood or
of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and lived
among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.
15 (John testified to him and cried
out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'")
16 From his fullness we have all received,
grace upon grace.
17 The law indeed was given through
Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has ever seen God. It is
God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.
By now
I imagine most of the gifts under your tree have been gathered up and stored in their appropriate places. The clothes have gone to the bureau draws, the toys have gone to the playroom, the dicers, slicers and
other culinary gadgets have gone to the kitchen and the power tools have all gone to the garage. Some of those gifts were probably on your wish list and some of them probably caught you completely off
guard. In fact, I bet a few of you had a gift that you had to pretend was something
you always wanted.
A couple of years ago Ellen Goodman wrote a very funny
column for the Boston Globe. It ran the day after Christmas and this is what
she had to say. “Once upon a time, when I was in another marriage with another mother-in-law, I got a Christmas gift
of china. I was not – am not – a china kind of gal. It was what my mother-in-law
wanted me to want. So I oohed and aahed and thanked her and began a tradition. Every Christmas, every birthday, I got another plate.
It became harder and harder, and finally impossible to tell her the truth. Today,
long after her death, decades after the marriage ended, I still have a dozen china plates in a zipped satin bag sitting in
the basement.” Goodman goes on to suggest that her experience holds true
for a lot of people. Every Christmas shortly after all the gifts have been opened
and “thanks have been offered… the small, awkward calculations begin. Which
“misses” can be returned without hurt feelings? Which will be brought
out for visitation rights? Which will do time in the bottom drawer or back of the linen closet? Which will be sentenced to the garage, the graveyard of presents past and yard sales future?” Or, she says, you end up with face saving excuses like “I love it but it’s
the wrong size – and the little white lies- why, yes we make ice cream all the time.”
Interestingly enough, John says the same thing happened
with the gift that God gave to all of us in that Bethlehem stable. Tucked away in
the powerful and poetic prologue to John’s Gospel is a verse that’s a little unsettling. John makes it very clear
that not everyone was thrilled with the gift of God’s only begotten Son. John wrote that years after the Word became
flesh and came to dwell among us Jesus went “to his own home, and his own people received him not.”
The Jews didn’t accept the gift of God’s only
begotten Son. Even though they had been praying for centuries for the messiah to come, they decided that Jesus really wasn’t
for them. He was too controversial, too confrontational and too unconventional. No Jesus wasn’t for them.
Now all of this brings up a fundamental rule when it comes
to giving and receiving gifts. The rule is simply this: A gift isn’t really
a gift if you don’t accept it and use it. For example, what would you think if you gave someone a sweater and the person
never wore it? What would you think if you gave someone a pasta maker and you found it in the cupboard with an inch of dust
on it? You’d think that the person really didn’t want the gift right?
A gift really isn’t a gift until you accept it and
use it. That simple rule is also true when it comes to the gift of God’s only begotten Son. The gift isn’t a gift
until you accept it and use it.. Unfortunately, that seems to be happening less and less these days. All you had to do was
turn your television on this past Christmas Eve to see the truth in that. Did you notice that the NFL actually scheduled a
football game on Christmas Eve? Now I like football as much as anyone, but there’s no way I’m going to go to a
football game on Christmas Eve or watch a football game on Christmas Eve even and that’s true even if it’s the
Patriots who are playing.
Of course the 65,000 people who went to that game didn’t
think that way. The millions of people who watched the game on television didn’t
think that way either. I guess a lot of people are like the little boy who wasn’t sure he wanted Jesus to always be
with him. It all started when the little boy went to church with his mother one evening.
On their way to the church they stopped to get something to eat. Because they were running late though, the little
boy didn’t have time to finish his sandwich. So, when his mother wasn’t looking he stuck the sandwich in his pocket
so he could finish it later. Then while sitting in church, the little boy heard the minister talk about the risen Christ’s
ability to be everywhere at any given moment. Upon hearing that the little boy bowed his head and started to pray. “Hey Jesus,” he whispered, “if you’re in my pocket, please don’t eat my sandwich.”
Some people don’t want the gift to be a part of
their every day life. How about you? Do you use the gift at work and let it help you in the way you do things? Do you use the gift at home and let it help you in the way you relate to your neighbors and strangers?
Do you pray to him in good times as well as bad times? Do you forgive even as he forgave those who crucified him? Do
you use the gift by taking time out of your busy schedule to do what you can for those who need a helping hand?
Some people do that.
Others are like the little like the boy who surprised his Sunday school teacher when she asked him a question. “Tommy,” the teacher said, “if you had a big pie of pie and a little
piece of pie, which one would you give to your brother?” The little boy
thought about it for a moment and then asked, “Do you mean my big brother or my little brother?”
A gift isn’t a gift unless you accept it and use
it and that includes the most important part of the gift of all. Do you use the gift by allowing yourself to be loved? Believe it or not, that’s some people have a hard time doing that. You won’t
hear them admit it, but I’m convinced that a good number of people today feel the same way a woman felt after she was
stricken with polio when she was a little girl. Because of the polio life was
very hard for her. She couldn’t run and play with the other children. It also meant that she needed extra help when
it came to getting dressed in the morning and getting from one place to another. Because of all of that the little girl had
a very unusual ritual that she went through every Sunday morning. When her mother brought her to Sunday School the little
girl always insisted that her mother let her wear her locket. That surprised the mother, but as time went by the mother learned
that the little girl wouldn’t let her leave until she let her wear the locket. Looking back on that as an adult, the
woman said, “She always thought I liked the locket,” but that “wasn’t it at all.” The real reason was that “I knew I wasn’t worth coming back for, but I knew she would come
back for her locket.”
Isn’t that sad?
It’s even sadder when you think that some people really haven’t accepted and really don’t use the
gift that God gave to us in that manger.
When I was a little boy I remember a Christmas that had
a gift that almost didn’t get opened. Even now when you look at the pictures
from that Christmas morning long ago you see my sister and me surrounded by piles of shredded wrapping paper and all kinds
of toys. If you look closely at the pictures though, you also see the gift under
the tree that didn’t get opened until later in the day. It was a gift for
my sister. My parents tried to get her to open it, but she was so enthralled
with all the other gifts that had already been opened that she really wasn’t interested in it. The gift did eventually
get opened, and unfortunately for my sister it turned out to be a jack-in-the-box that scared her and made her cry when it
popped out of the box. Looking back on that memory though makes me realize that
a gift isn’t a gift until you accept it and use it.
God gave us a gift that the shepherds found lying in the
manger. The amazing thing about that gift is the more you use it, the more you realize that it’s exactly what you need.
Amen.
Rev. Dr. Richard A. Hughes
January 2, 2005
