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The Gifts We Bear
A Sermon by Jim Ketcham
Based on Matthew 2:1-12
Pity the poor Wisemen. Not only did they have to travel abroad
during the holidays, they also had to do that most unmanly of tasks: to stop and ask for directions! Of course, asking Herod for directions caused
more trouble than it was worth.
To top it all off, they had
to shop for someone they didn’t know.
Shopping for a baby is pretty easy since most new parents need about
anything, but this baby was royalty and of a different race and religion from
the Magi. So the Magi didn’t bother with
disposable swaddling clothes printed in the latest cartoon characters and they
didn’t even think about cuddly blankets with a Star of David pattern. That one might have been appropriate,
actually, since it was a star that brought the Wisemen and they knew the
birthday boy was Jewish.
The Wisemen chose to focus
on the other fact they had: this baby
was to be king. You all know the gifts
Matthew says they chose: gold,
frankincense and myrrh. Gold was good;
it’s what you always gave rulers, whether as a gift from a peer or as taxes
from a subject.
Frankincense was
appropriate, too. It was very expensive
and widely used, at least by rich and important people, in religious rituals of
all kinds throughout the
Myrrh was also
expensive. It was used as an embalming
tool and for various medicinal purposes.
This gift might seem the strangest of all to give to a baby, but any
Christian who knows the end of the story of Jesus knows just how appropriate a
symbol it turned out to be.
I imagine the Magi spent
some time considering these gifts, taking into account such factors as the
different culture and country they were traveling to, and perhaps the relative ease
of packing and hauling the gifts themselves.
A few years ago, I had
reason to reconsider this story of the first Christmas gifts up close and
personal. That November, I was to spend
nearly three weeks in
That year, I had someplace
much more interesting to shop than Har Mar Mall. But I also had a bigger challenge: anything I brought home had to be
lightweight, small and nearly unbreakable.
It had to fit into the two carryon bags I had, my only luggage. This may not have been as daunting as
carrying something across 1000 miles of desert to give to a baby from a family
you didn’t know, but it was a challenge.
I bought lots of hand
painted silk, embroidery, and bamboo items.
In
Even without that last item,
I can tell you I haven’t had so much fun getting presents since I was a kid and
did finger paintings for all my relatives.
I think it was because no one else could give them the same items, at
least not that year. It was because I
had personally selected them and bargained for them. It was because many of them had been brought
from small family businesses or workshops for land mine victims. And it was because I had personally escorted
those two bulging bags through six airports and 28 hours of travel to get them
home.
I may not have brought gold,
frankincense and myrrh, but I think I had some idea of how the Wisemen must
have felt at the end of their journey when they turned home with lighter
loads. It’s more than just having less
stuff to carry around, like solving two problems at once by sending last year’s
fruitcake from Aunt Helga to Uncle Charlie this
year. It’s more than just avoiding
disastrous choices. A bearer of true
gifts walks lighter and feels better for having given.
Those of you who helped
collect or carry gifts to
I learned a similar lesson
from the things I carried over to
Part of this was because we
were American and to the rest of the world we seem very, very rich. We have so much stuff in our daily lives that
we take for granted things that are too expensive or simply not available in
two-thirds of the world. Even pencils
and paper can be hard to come by in more remote areas. I visited one Vietnamese boarding school
where sheets of notebook paper were torn off and handed to us for use as a
napkin at lunch. Those not too stained
or crumpled were carefully recycled for penmanship practice -- or toilet
paper.
Is it any wonder I’ve become
a real stickler for reusing paper printed only on one side?
The other factor involved is
that for all the wars and conflicts
No event is too small or
trivial to exchange gifts. Much time and
energy is spent in selecting the right gift to show respect for the recipient
and awareness of any differences in class or status. We would be considered ungrateful if we
didn’t have something to bring for the people who guided us and drove us and generally
took time out from their busy schedules to answer our questions and put our
needs before their own.
Now it was my turn to come
from afar, bearing gifts for people I didn’t know. Of course, I had similar guidelines:
everything had to fit in my carryon bags, be lightweight and unbreakable. I tried to choose carefully and wisely, but
things didn’t turn out quite like I planned.
Someone told me balloons
were a big hit when they went overseas, so I packed several hundred CROPWALK
balloons. I gave them out to four
different groups of ethnic minority school children and waited to see the fun
erupt. None of the children had ever
seen a balloon before. I showed them how
to blow them up and tie them off.
Then they accidentally
discovered the neat sound a balloon makes when you let the air out; you know -
the one that sounds a lot like a certain bodily function. The rest of these visits were punctuated with
more laughter and smiles than I could have anticipated, and probably more than
the teachers would have liked!
Jan had provided me with a
selection of children’s stickers from the company store at 3M that also
provoked more laughter than I had anticipated.
At one Cambodian school for orphans, I listened as an old Buddhist monk
solemnly recited the statistics about the children in his care, their grades,
ages, talents and liabilities.
When my turn to talk came, I
presented him with a set of stickers of a rabbit family in their burrow,
complete with furniture to rearrange, a table to set, pots and pans for the
stove, toys, etc. I was suddenly a
little ashamed of the over-consumption of this cute little rabbit family,
compared to the orphans who listened quietly from the other side of the
room.
When I tried to explain that
the stickers could be placed anywhere, the translator got a little flustered,
so I showed the monk how they could be repositioned on the sheet they came on,
or on a notebook page as an award for a job well done and then, in a fit of
genius or madness, I placed the sticker on my forehead.
The monk burst out laughing,
which made the kids laugh although they couldn’t see my forehead. The monk removed another sticker and placed
it on his forehead for all to see, and I’m not sure if the little scholars at
that tiny school have recovered yet.
That set of stickers cost
about a dollar. The laughter we shared
was worth all the gold, frankincense and myrrh I could have carried. I had tried to bring practical gifts. Imagine my surprise when I opened my bags and
found uncontrollable joy.
We like to say that
Christmas is about giving and Christians can point to the action of the Wisemen
as the root of their Christmas giving, but I learned in my third world travels,
as many of you have, that who we give to is at least as important as what we
give. The Wisemen gave to a stranger, a
baby whose parents spoke another language, lived far away, and believed in a different
religion that was often antagonistic with their own beliefs and practices.
We usually settle for giving
to those who look and talk like us and are related to us by blood or
marriage. But Christmas is not just
about our immediate families.
The first Christmas card, as
we know it, was designed in 1843 by the artist J. C. Horsley. It measures about the size of a
postcard. In the center is a drawing of
a Victorian family celebrating the gentle spirit of the season around a full
table. They are making a toast to the
health and happiness of their family, friends and nation.
Flanking this scene of
domestic Christmas cheer are to smaller drawings, one showing the family
carrying out the biblical concern for clothing the naked and the other showing
them feeding the hungry.
It sounds like the sort of
Christmas card someone from UBC might send, right? But the first Christmas card did not set well
with most church folk. For one thing, the
central picture contained too much revelry for mid-19th century
Christians. And the graphic reminders of
the real need for benevolence were thought to be equally distasteful. It was, well, excessive.
Who were those dirty, hungry
people? Why did they have to spoil the
quiet self-satisfaction of a well-fed family gathered in all safe and
warm?
I was so glad that this year
UBC’s holiday giving included personal hygiene kits
for Iraqis, scholarships for kids in Nicaragua and Provadenic’s
health care missions there, as well as fundraising for Families Moving
Forward. These are much more in the
spirit of the Wisemen than our usual temptations to overspend and over consume
among our own families.
I’d like to make a modest
proposal, an Epiphany resolution, if you like.
Next year, let’s commit to spending at least 10 percent of our family’s
Christmas budget to feed hungry, and clothe the naked, like the family on that
first postcard.
And, since this is UBC,
let’s throw in liberating the oppressed.
We could even give gifts in the name of friends or relatives we’d like
to honor or memorialize.
To feed the hungry, there’s
Loaves and Fishes, the Indian Food Shelf, GMCC’s
Minnesota Foodshare, your local food shelf, Bread for the World, or Church
World Service, to name just a few reputable organizations.
There are not too many naked
people running around in
To liberate the oppressed,
let’s consider gifts to AWAB and Soulforce, Human Rights Watch, Center for
Victims of Torture, and Amnesty International.
Let’s expand our focus by giving
to strangers, even our own enemies, whoever they turn out to be next year. Showing hospitality to one’s enemies,
especially during the holidays, would truly be giving of Biblical proportions.
The greatest gifts of all,
of course, won’t fit into a box or even a camel saddlebag. Those would be the gifts of forgiveness for
someone who has wronged us; the gift of our time for someone who is lonely; the
gift of inclusion for someone who’s been left out.
I’ve shared with the Peace
and Pizza group the story of Larry Trapp, Grand Dragon of the White Knights of
the Ku Klux Klan of
Finally, one night Trapp
picked up the phone in the middle of Weissner’s
message and demanded “What do you want?
Are you harassing me? I can have
you arrested for that!” Weissner replied
“I just wanted to know if I could help you with something. I know you’re in a wheelchair because of your
diabetes and I thought maybe I could help you go to the grocery store or
something like that.” Trapp was
stunned. He managed to say “Thanks but
I’ve got that covered,” and he hung up.
In the next few days though,
he cancelled his racist rants on public access television. He later apologized when confronted about another
hate-filled diatribe he had delivered before his sentencing in another
harassment case. Weissner kept calling
and Trapp began answering as soon as he recognized Weissner’s
voice. Eventually, Trapp told Weissner
he wanted to get out of the White Power movement, but he didn’t know how.
Weissner not only helped
Trapp get out of the movement, he took Trapp into his home to nurse him through
his final illness. Trapp converted to
Judaism a few weeks before he died. He
had been given a gift by a true Wiseman.
Weissner had wanted to fight
Trapp. Trapp frightened him and
threatened Weissner’s family. But Weissner guessed correctly that he and
Trapp shared very rough childhoods.
Weissner knew it was kindness, not anger or fear that got him over being
abandoned by his parents at an early age.
And so he offered kindness when confronted by Trapp’s own live voice on
the telephone.
That simple, but
transformative gift is still changing lives, in ever broadening circles, from
the entire Weissner family, to their synagogue, to the other minority
communities in
It’s a long, long way from
AMEN.