Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.
I went to a Christmas Party the other night and heard a great story about a man with a new truck. This is supposed to be a true story—though it did happen back in the 1990’s.
Well, this man was really proud of his new truck. He pulled in to the parking lot at the Clemmons Mill and parked as close as he could to the ramp. He stepped out of the truck climbed the steps, walked across the loading dock, and then looked back at his truck, admiringly, as men are prone to do. For the first time he saw a little boy, perhaps five or six, standing there all alone.
The little boy looked up at him and said, “Say, minster, that sure is a pretty truck.”
The man was suddenly very self conscious. When we get caught looking into a mirror, or looking back at our vehicles we get self-conscious. And the man was very nervous, and he started talking, as nervous people do. He said, “Thank-you, son. I have had it about a week. It has less than 100 miles on the odometer.”
Having said that, he turned around, went into the mill, purchased 25 lbs. of grass seed, which was already bagged, carried it back out of the store, and placed it gingerly into the bed of his truck which was lined in a plastic so tuff it has been compared to the hide of a rhinoceros.
He then got into this truck, buckled his seat belt, placed the key in the switch and turned it. Nothing happened. He did not panic. He waited 5 seconds, and turned it again. Nothing happened. He did not panic. He waited another 5 seconds, and turned it again. Nothing happened, and he knew nothing was going to happen. About that time he looked up to see that the little boy had stooped down on the porch of the mill so that he was just at his eye level. He saw the boy wanted to say something, so he reached over and rolled down the passenger window of the truck. The little boy said, “Say, mister, that sure is a pretty truck. It is a shame they don’t last any longer than they do.”
The same can be said of many Christmas gifts. It is a shame they don’t last any longer than they do.
1. And that leads me to the first point in my sermon: The reason Christmas gifts do not last any longer than they do, is not because of bad parts and faulty manufacturing, it is because we invest them with an importance they do not have.
For a little while the latest gift—the one that we hoped for, or bought for ourselves, is the object of our affection. It draws us. It attracts us. Then, like my friend Larry Foster used to say, “the chocolate wears off.” After the chocolate wears off, the gift ages quickly. It is no longer new; it becomes old. It’s attraction is no longer powerful enough for us. We become interested in other things, and soon we long for and seek some new gift as devoutly as we once longed for and sought the old, investing it with an importance it does not have.
In this regard many of us are like the little boy who opened dozens of Christmas gifts, covering an entire room to the depth of six inches with wrapping paper and ribbons, and then stepped back, looked at his parents, and said, “Is this all?”
The good news is that it is not all. Beyond every gift is the giver. And if we have a relationship with the giver, any little gift will do. Children know this intuitively. They don’t care about the price of the gift, they just care about the gift because it was given to them by someone they love and trust. Beyond every gift is the giver, and the thing that we want most is a relationship with the giver.
Of course the giver of every good and perfect gift is God, and the relationship we want is a relationship with God.
In the movie “Love and Death,” a character who is about to die describes his despair. He says, “I have an empty void in side of me. At first I thought it was a full void, but now I know it is an empty void.”
The void is empty unless we fill it. St. Augustine said that there is a God shaped space in our souls, and our souls are restless until God fills it.
I said it is the very first sermon I preached on gifts, but I want to say it again with emphasis: In seeking gifts, we are seeking God, and nothing else will every really do.
2. There is a second point I wish to make this morning: in giving gifts, we who belong to the household of faith, are trying to give the people we love something of our faith in God. Gifts are like the sacraments. Something that we can see and touch, signifies something much bigger that we cannot.
For instance, when we give educational gifts to our grandchildren, they are wrapped in a spoken or unspoken prayer that God will bless them with the grace and wisdom to profit from them. We want them to grow in wisdom, and in stature, and in favor with God and man.
So, too, when we give lavish gifts to our children, or some other person, we are expressing our love for them the best we can, and at the same time, we are consciously or unconsciously asking God to watch over them and protect them in a way that we cannot. We want them to enjoy the gift for a long, long time. We don’t buy expensive gifts for people about to face a firing squad. We buy them a last meal. We reserve expensive gifts for those we hope to have a round for a long time.
I remember a time when my children were small. I had just finished the Lovefeast at Fries Memorial. I was tired. I went to bed, but I could not sleep. I was thinking about my children. I got up from my bed and went downstairs in my living-room. I cut on the Christmas tree lights. I stared at the tree and mentally unwrapped, and rewrapped all the presents we had put under it for the children. Then I sat for the longest time listening to an occasional car pass on Hawthorne Road. After an hour, or perhaps a little more, I knelt down with my face in the little padded chapel of my hands and pleaded with God for the life of my children, asking him to watch over them, and to protect them, and to guide them, so that they truly could be “as beautiful as they were in the mind of God when God first thought of them.”
Mostly I prayed that I would not get in the way.
In praying a long and good life for my children, I was like God himself. God gave the promised land to the Children of Israel, and told them to honor the fathers and the mothers he had entrusted them to, in order that “their days would be long in the land that he had given them.”
3. There is a third truth I would communicate to you this morning: There are some gifts that we can give, and there are gifts that we cannot give, and there are some people to whom we cam give gifts and others to whom we cannot give gifts.
We can give the people who are near and dear to us love. We can give them patience, and kindness. And if they depart from us, and go into what the New Testament calls, “the far country,” and waste their lives in riotous living, doing foolish self-destructive things, we can continue to love them, and to wait for them, hoping and praying that the best that is in them will rear its head, and they will “come to themselves,” and come back to us. (SEE THE PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL SON IN LUKE 15:3-32)
We can give people love, but we cannot always give them the wisdom we want them to have when when we want them to have it. Nor can we give always give the people we love the guidance we wish to give them, unless, of course, they ask for it. We may give it, but they may not take it. In the final analysis, we cannot protect them from the tragedies of life, or insure their happiness, nor add to the span of their lives.
There are gifts we cannot give, and there are people to whom we cannot give them.
In saying this I am thinking about those whom we love who populated our Christmases past. Yet, now, they no longer put their feet under our tables, or call us to wish us a Merry Christmas, instead they crowd into our minds, and fill up our hearts.
What are we to do about them? A wise person whom I respect a great deal once said to me, “We can name them. We can speak of them.“ I agree, we must name them, we must speak of them, for when we do, our sorrow becomes less bitter and more, dare I say it, sweet.
There is a scene in the movie, “Shadowlands” that describes what I am getting at. The movie is about C.S. Lewis, who was not only the author of the Narnia books for children, but also one of the truly great Christian theologians in the 20th Century; and a much younger woman he fell in love with and married, late in life. In the scene that I am thinking of, Lewis, played by Sir Anthony Hopkins, is talking with Joy Davidson, played by Debra Winger. They have traveled to a place in England called “The Golden Valley.” Lewis has had a picture of the Golden Valley hanging in his house since he was boy, but it was Joy who encouraged him to actually seek it out and visit it. It is a Golden Valley, and it is a Golden Moment, one that Lewis knows he will hold ever so briefly. Both Lewis and Joy know that she is dying of cancer. They have studiously avoided the subject, but they can avoid it no longer. He sobs, and breaks into tears, and says to her, “What will I do when you are gone?” And she wisely replies, “Why, the sorrow you feel for me then, will be but an extension of the love you feel for me now.”
I like that: The sorrow we feel for those who have gone on before us is an extension of the love that we once shared with them. When we think of them it is not bitter, but bitter sweet.
Let me explain in the words of the New Testament. The apostle writes, “We do not grieve as those who have no hope.” What does that mean? It means that we do not grieve like those who have said “good-bye” for the last time to the people they love, knowing full-well they will never meet again. Rather, we grieve as those who love someone who is separated from us by time and distance. We know that, eventually, the time will pass, and the distance will be covered, and someday, on that day on which there is no sunset and no dawning, we will stand with them once more in the very presence of God.
We have not left them behind; they have gone on before us.
We have trusted them to the one who once trusted his only begotten Son to us. God sent Christ helpless into the world, totally dependent upon human beings, so that, he could one day return the favor. Now we who are comfortless and helpless to rescue ourselves go to him, knowing that he understands, and that he has a place in his heart for us, and that his strong hands protect us and those whom we love, whether in this world or in the next.
Finis