What do You Give to Someone Who Has Everything? by The Rev. Bennett A. Brockman
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Homily for the first Sunday of Christmas, Dec. 28, 2014
Trinity Church, Hartford, CT
The Rev. Bennett A. Brockman
What do you give to someone who has everything?
I have always admired people who could give the perfect gift--watching the face of the recipient light up with real delight. It is a talent I envy, not possess.
This was less of a challenge when I was growing up, when every kid I knew had a very long list of things we wanted. Same when we were young and newly married and raising children. We always needed, or certainly wanted, all sorts of stuff, and we knew our friends did too. Older now, the challenge has returned. Our peers have about everything they really need, so we make contributions in each other’s names to various charities, including the church, which of course is more than a charity. There are plenty of people locally and around the world who need the basics of everyday life, so we now help in a way we couldn’t when younger.
But what if there is a special person on your list who would like to receive some gift as a sign of your appreciation of your relationship, and that person really does have everything?
What if that person told you something like this when you got ready to go shopping:
I will take no bull-calf from your stalls, *
nor he-goats out of your pens;
For all the beasts of the forest are mine, *
the herds in their thousands upon the hills.
I know every bird in the sky, *
and the creatures of the fields are in my sight.
If I were hungry, I would not tell you, *
for the whole world is mine and all that is in it.
[Psalm 50, Book of Common Prayer]
That really limits the possibilities, doesn’t it? God really does have everything already.
There is in fact only one gift you can give God that God doesn’t already have. And that is your choice to be God’s person. The God-given reality is that always and everywhere 2 + 2 = 4. Likewise, the God-given reality is that human beings have the freedom to choose to follow God, to follow the Way of the Cross—or not. It’s your choice. That’s the way human beings are made, always and everywhere.
When I was a boy I grew up in a religious tradition that insisted that once you made the decision to be Christ’s own, that decision was good forever more. I’m sure that in a way that’s true, just as in our Episcopal tradition, in the words the priest pronounces in anointing a person being baptized with holy oil, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”
Nevertheless, in my own life, I have discovered that over and over again, even many times a day, I need to make anew the decision to follow Christ’s Way and to reject the reactive choices that the culture we inhabit make almost automatic. For example, making the choice to answer an angry person with gentleness and understanding rather than responding in kind, or in choosing to forgive someone for a slight rather than look for pay-back of some kind. To consume less rather than more. To appreciate beauty rather than take it for granted. To express gratitude for someone’s effort. It’s always a choice.
And I’ve found that whenever I do make the choice to be God’s person, to follow the Way of the Cross, to choose to try to live the Beatitudes, the spiritual reward for doing so is, usually, instantaneous. The choice becomes blessed, as Jesus promised in those beautiful words of Matthew 5.
In the words of the amazing Prologue to John’s Gospel that we just heard read, every time we make those blessed choices we become, in our limited human ways, the light of Christ in our time and place. And I am persuaded that every time we make that choice God is delighted with the gift. Because it is, every time, over and over, the one gift that God cannot otherwise obtain and doesn’t have already: the gift of yourself, freely given to the Way of the Cross.
In the beautiful words of Isaiah heard a moment ago, by choosing to give ourselves we become a crown of beauty, a royal diadem for God [Isaiah 62:3].
It is one gift that for sure keeps on giving, and that gift, offered by Christians countless times every day, is the best hope for the world this Christmas morning, and every moment yet to come, just as it always has been.
For that light and that hope, thanks be to God.
Amen.