Practical Gifts
RSV Matthew 2:1-11
Several weeks ago I passed on the suggestion that if wise women had visited the Holy Family they would have stopped, asked directions, arrived on time, changed the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole and brought practical gifts.
That was said tongue in cheek. Tradition has always maintained that the Holy Family used the gifts brought by the wise men to finance their flight into Egypt. Their gifts were practical gifts!
On this first Sunday of the New Year, I wanted to bring practical gifts to you. I do not bring gold, frankincense and myrrh. I do bring words that I hope will inspire in each of us a little comfort, hope, and tenacity.
1. I would bring by offering comfort, consolation, healing. Many start this New Year feeling like damaged goods. The brightness has gone out of life. Some fear they have seen the last cloudy day after which the sun will not return. Some grieve deeply. The loss of self, the loss of labor, the loss of prospects, the onset of age, the loss of someone they love.
Over the years I have given out hundreds of copies of a little book entitled, Good Grief, by Granger E. Westberg. (Amazon has it in stock). Many people think we only grieve people we loose to death. That is not so. We grieve many things—anything we can loose, we can grieve, even good ideas, hopes, and dreams. Westberg says that there are ten stages in grief: 1 Shock, 2 Emotion, 3 Depression, 4 Physical Distress, 5 Panic, 6 Guilt, 7 Anger and Resentment (It is o.k. to be angry at God, God can take it!), 8 We Resist Returning (By pretending that no one else has ever experienced a grief like ours! Again, not so. In Christ, God even took our grief into himself.), 9 Hope Comes Through (Gradually), 10 We Struggle to Affirm Reality “Life will never be the same, but life can still be good.” Some people think Christians don’t grieve. Again, that is not so. As Paul says in 1st Thessalonians, “We grieve, but not like those who have no hope.”
2. I would bring you hope. In his “Essay on Man,” Alexander Pope wrote, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast, man never is, but always is to be blest.” In Jesus Christ the to be has become the “is.” His resurrection means that there is hope even for the dead and dying. Just as important, there is hope for the living, too. The late James S. Stewart, a great Scottish Presbyterian, once wrote to preachers saying, “The central business of preaching today is telling men and women (and boys and girls) that the same power that took Jesus Christ out of the grave is available to people right now, not just in the moment of death, but in the midst of life.” As Israel faced the dark time of the deportation and exile God spoke through his prophet Jeremiah saying, “I know what plans I have for you, plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” I believe that in Jesus Christ that promise has been extended to all humankind. No one lies outside its height, and depth, and length, and width.
3. I would bring you stamina, and stick-to-it-ive-ness. I had a friend who managed the Service Department in a large automobile dealership. Over the years he dealt with thousands of complaints. He had the ability to pour oil on troubled waters, and to offer encouragement. As he lay dying he gave me a gift. He called me to himself and said, ” -Never give up, never give up, never give up! Robert Schuller said, “When faced with a mountain of a problem, I will find away around, or climb over, or tunnel underneath, or stay right where I am and turn that mountain of a problem into a gold mine!” Remember necessity, sometimes in extremis, is the mother of invention!
I don’t naturally have that kind of gumption, do you? We may not, but God does, and God offers it to us.
The story is told of a hot July day in 1862. A number of officers dressed in dusty gray stopped at a house in Richmond, Virginia and asked for a drink. The woman of the house brought out a crystal pitcher filled with water and offered it to the first of the officers. He drank deeply. As he did, the woman noted how the other officers had deferred to him. “Who is he?” she asked. Another officer replied, “He is Thomas Jackson.” Upon learning that the man who drank from her pitcher was Stonewall Jackson, the woman received it back, and carried it into her house. She returned with another pitcher. One of the officers asked, “What did you do with the crystal pitcher.” She replied, “Well, I put it away. It will be a family heirloom. The last lips to touch it were those of General Jackson.”
We admire heroes like General Jackson, but how different it is with the cup of Christ. We do not possess the Holy Grail, but the cup we share is still “the cup of the New Covenant.” We bring it eagerly to our lips, and as we do, we ask that the living water that was in him might be in us. Jesus spoke to the woman at the well saying, “He who believes in me, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.” and the final chapter of the Revelation of St. John the Divine we read, “And the spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come,’ and let all who hears say, ‘Come,’ and let him who is thirsty come, and let him who desires come, and take of the water of life without price.”
Lord, give us this living water.
Finis