Christmas Eve: Stamps

My father lost his job when I was in second grade. For my next birthday—I guess I was turning eight—I received a small, rectangular box from my mother. I unwrapped and opened it. It was full of stamps. Stamps!

I rustled through the stamps thinking that it was a part of the packaging. I kept looking for the gift. “Where is it?” I asked.

My mother said, “Well…you are a stamp collector now.”

My mother had gone back to work in an office. She had removed every stamp that came in the incoming mail and placed it in this box. I hated it at the time; it was the worst gift ever. Boy, I was peeved.  

 Now, years later, looking back, it brings a tear to my eye. I did not receive stamps that day, rather I received my mother’s kindness, determination, and love. That’s what was really in the box all along. It just took me years to receive it.

* * *

 “We're not what we do, but what we receive,” Anne Lamott once wrote.

Disproportionate to other forms of life, humans seem to toil endlessly about who we are. We WORRY that we ARE the SUM of that we have DONE, and it never feels like we’ve done enough. Or we worry that we are DEFINED most by what we HAVE done LEAST or by what have done WRONG—by what we LACK—or by our experience of SHAME.  We FEAR that we have not ACQUIRED what we NEED to be who we want to be. We insatiably strive and seek to acquire more.

But tonight, we stop.

Seriously, stop.

That’s why we are here. God declares an intervention! Not to do more. Not to fret about who we could have been.

We are here to receive. And there is nothing harder than learning how to receive.

Maybe we should hear the words of fourth and fifth century theologian Augustine with fresh ears: Behold what you are. Become what you receive.

* * *

God’s Christmas gift doesn’t make a lot of sense. God gives us God’s self. God becomes human and dwells among us. God is born. The creator becomes the created. The infinite joins the finite. The ground of all being becomes flesh.

When Mary births that gift, she wraps the child “in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger; there was no room for him in the inn.”

And what are we supposed to do with it? How are we to receive this child?

* * *

Preacher Tom Long shares his trepidation about receiving gifts: What’s more embarrassing than opening a gift and not having the foggiest idea of what you have been given? 

“You're at the company Christmas party, or at a wedding shower, or at your birthday party, and someone hands you a gaily wrapped package. As you pull off the ribbon and the wrapping paper, all the eyes in the circle are on you. You open the box and there it is....But is it a pencil sharpener or a coffee grinder?...a scarf or a bread napkin?... earrings or fishing lures? Of course, the person who gave you the gift is looking at you with eager anticipation, as if to say, Well, do you like it? And finally, out of courtesy, you have to say something, so you say, Oh, how could you have known? Thank you so much. I can really use a tire pressure gauge. Only to have a wounded voice say, Tire gauge?! That's a meat thermometer!”

* * *

The gift of God doesn’t look like anything  we have ever received before. What are we being asked to receiver. God is the giver and the gift. There is a whole world of possibility that comes with the gift.  And every time we unwrap a layer from the bands of cloth, we go deeper and deeper into the mystery of faith.

The stamps were a gift from my mother; but what I received was something far greater.

Likewise, the Christ child is not a novelty; we receive something greater than we could have imagined.

In being given Christ, we receive God’s own determination, grit, and love.

* * *

More precisely, what is it? Where’s the gift? It’s not all packaging.

In being given Christ, are we given HOPE?  The child fulfills our ancient longing for a world made new. We regain the hope of restoration. Sages from the east drop what they are doing, and come to be filled with hope. The glory of the Lord shines on the shepherds. The presence of Christ restores something in creation for which we long, and gives us confidence of a future with God.

Hope is the presence of Christ.

Or, perhaps, the gift is PEACE.

 With peace, we face a contradiction. How can we receive peace when conflict is all around us? Perhaps, peace is not the absence of something, rather it is a gift we receive. Peace is the presence of Christ.

 Or, maybe, the gift is JOY.  Please tell me the gift is joy. Joy is not the dissolution of our grievances. Joy is recognizing the presence of Christ in the midst of loose ends, doubt, and uncertainty.

Joy is the presence of Christ.

Or could it be LOVE? What if the gift is that we receive tonight is love? Unfettered love. Pure love. God’s love. Love is born tonight. I know that the word love has reached its semantic limits. But that’s why I like to think of it as grit, determination, and persistence. We could call it God’s faithfulness. Nothing separates us “from the love of God in Jesus Christ.” Relentless love. Gritty love. Persistent love.

Love is the presence of Christ.

* * *

Peace—hope—joy–love—these are not things we can do. There is no doing—just receiving. These gifts belong to God, and we see them more clearly in Jesus than we ever have seen before.

 The GIFT we are asked to receive is ALL of these things. and the GIFT is NONE of these things. The gift of Christ is difficult to comprehend because: We are not receiving a something. We are not receiving a what. We receive a who.

We are not given a product that we consume or discard. We are given a person—an identity. We are given a person from whom we must learn to walk in his ways. We receive a person who guides us, and who frustrate us from time to time. And with whom we will fall maddeningly in love. We receive a God who lives among us.     

But here is what I think is the deepest mystery of Christmas. Who do we receive? Not only are we to receive God, we are receiving ourselves. We are receiving our very selves.

“Behold what you are! Become what you receive!”

* * *

A six-year old boy approached me this week and asked, “Is Christmas about giving or getting?”

I demurred a little and turned the question around. He said, “I think it is about both.”

Instead of listening intently, I felt the sudden urge to say something like, “Christmas is about giving.” But I think should have listened a little longer. He may have been on to something. I might have been wrong.

So, if you are out there tonight, I am going to change my answer: Christmas is about receiving.

But there is only one thing worth receiving, and you can give everything else away.

We become what we receive…

            We…

                        Receive graciousness.

                        Receive generosity.

                        Receive abundance.

                        Receive peace, hope, joy, and love.

                        Receive faithfulness.

                        Receive grit and determination.

                        Receive resilience.

We receive all of this in Christ Jesus.

God holds nothing back at Christmas.           

Become what you receive!

* * *

No, I did not become a stamp collector in second grade. (I tried for about a month to make my mom happy.)

But I’d like to say that I received some of her determination, grit, and love.

On Christmas, we do become what we receive. When we receive Christ, we are welcomed into Christ’s body. We become a part of another.

And in the presence of Christ,

            we receive:

God’s hope

God’s peace

God’s joy

and  God’s love.

Behold what you are! Become what you receive!