Pr. Ben Stewart, Emmanuel Lutheran Church

What meaning do holiday gifts have for you? Within our beautifully diverse holiday practices and traditions related to gift-giving, some perspectives from scripture offer doorways into surprising joy and generosity.

Gift-giving at Christmas first emerged historically as a way to delight young children with small special gifts – a sweet orange from the far-away tropics, a hand-carved wooden top, a warm knit hat. Just as God’s holy presence appeared as a child in Bethlehem, so our ancestors-in-faith celebrated the holy wonder of all children at Christmas through these special gifts.

Today, for many of us, gift-giving includes more than the children. There are some wonderful ways to meditate theologically on our own spirituality of giving and receiving gifts.

The most familiar image of Christmas gift-giving may be the magi from the east carrying their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (Interesting side note: though traditional religious art usually portrays precisely three magi, scripture only says there were three types of gifts, without mentioning how many people brought them. Perhaps we could picture twenty or a hundred magi carrying these gifts!)

The three gifts of the magi have symbolic resonance and speak to Jesus’ identity. Gold suggests royalty; frankincense is an incense used by priests at the temple; and myrrh is used in ancient burial practices and is one of the spices brought to Jesus’ tomb by Nicodemus. These gifts all express appreciation for who Jesus is but they also aren’t “perfect” gifts: Jesus who receives royal gold is a strange kind of king who himself is poor and refuses to lord it over others. Jesus is a high priest who mediates between humanity and God but he welcomes the unclean, outcast, and “ungodly.” Jesus’s body will indeed by buried with myrrh but today we know the body of Christ as risen for the life of the world.

Perhaps we can take courage from the magi. Our gifts also may not be “perfect.” But the gifts we give can both celebrate who we understand the recipient to be… and invite us to celebrate how the recipient continues to surprise us with all of who they are. Relationships continue to unfold in surprising ways over the years – this too is a gift!

For many of us, the center of our images of Christmas gift-giving is the manger, holding the gift of the Christ child. For Christians, this image is one of the ways we understand everything everywhere to be a gift of grace. The manger is a food-trough (manger is French for “eat”) and symbolizes that Jesus will become our daily bread of mercy, manna from heaven as a gift, and nourishment for all creation. The swaddling clothes that Jesus is wrapped in symbolize how his life – eventually wrapped much the same way for burial – will be given for the life of the world.

The Gospel of John doesn’t tell the story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Instead, it tells the story of the birth of the universe, and how everything that has existed has been created in profound love – the love that became flesh in Christ. In many of our churches, the most prominent birth story we tell at Christmas is the first chapter of John: both the birth of the cosmos and the birth of Jesus as gifts of unfathomable love.

Many of us place our gifts around a tree that we have carried inside. Some Christians have imagined this tree as a prayer for a restored Garden of Eden flourishing again. Generosity, hope, grace, love – these are the gifts God gives us that renew our hearts and our homes. May God’s gifts bring you joy and hope this season, and bring us all to a renewed garden of gift-sharing on this good earth. A blessed and merry Christmas to you!