by Rev. Thomas Disrud

A sermon given December 22, 2002

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

Gift giving is a pretty serious business this time of year. To appreciate this, all we have to do is look at the business page. Seems like every few days we get updates on how holiday sales are looking relative to last year. From what I have read this year, merchants got a good start after Thanksgiving but since then, things have leveled off. The pressure is on this last weekend for shopping before Christmas to see if the numbers will come in above last year.

I had an appointment in Northwest Portland on Friday afternoon and I decided I would walk around on Northwest 23^rd. I didn’t really think much about the fact that it was just five days before Christmas. I had one thing to get, and then I mainly wanted to walk around and browse.

Well, I got there only to find myself stuck in backed up traffic. I’m not sure when the last time was that I have seen so many SUVs crowding what seemed to be a very narrow street. Pedestrians were darting in and out of cars. And within a short time, I noticed how my mood went from being generally good, to being a little snarly. I think I was picking up on a degree of tension from the pressure that can come in this time. Before too long, I mainly wanted to get out of there.

The stress and frenzy that seem almost inevitable this time of year are not among the features that I particularly enjoy. But I have also come to learn that there are all kinds of factors that come into play that can bring on stress this time of year. We want the time we have together with family to be good. We want it all. But the holidays don’t always have that. It can be wonderful to have guests around, but we can find those old patterns of being together don’t work any better than they did a few years ago. And it may be that we want to be around loved ones, but they are not with us. No matter what the reason for that, it can make the season very hard. Maybe it is at this time of year more than any other when we feel alone. That makes for anything but a festive time.

It is no surprise that in our culture, which is so permeated with consumerism, that we get focused on what and how much we are giving. If there is a void somewhere for us this time of year, maybe we call fill that void by shopping. And of course, we want the gifts we give to be good gifts. We want people to like what we give them. While we want to give something they will like, what we especially don’t want is to give something that they will particularly dislike. We’re always wondering what the look on their face will be. We want the response to be "Oh, wow!" and not "Oh, how interesting."

Of course we can’t predict what the response to any given gift will be. As receivers we bring our own set of likes and expectations to any gift we open. And depending on the expectation, no matter what the gift, we may not be satisfied. I once worked with a person who delightfully told a story of her four-year-old daughter on Christmas morning. It seems the daughter had been given a TV for Christmas. She opened the large box to discover this and the only response was to ask, "Where’s the VCR?"

I have to say that I was a little mortified by that story. The girl’s mother thought it was cute. And yet the child seemed to be saying volumes about our expectations this season. But in our society, where more is better, and no matter what we have maybe isn’t good enough, it is no surprise that this is what happens this time of year. It is easy to get caught up in the frenzy, and when we do, we’re destined to be disappointed.

That story came to mind a few days ago when I was having coffee with a dentist who just returned from two weeks in Cambodia, where he gave free dental care to orphans. As he was preparing to go, someone asked him how they could support his trip and he decided he would take 1,000 balloons with him to give to the children after they had been treated. And he described how excited they were when they got the balloons. He said it was as if he had given them the most precious thing in the world.

Since hearing that story I have had an image of those children in my head. And I look at my own life and I know that I would like to be open to life in such a way that so much would seem so miraculous. I think that can happen with little children, and perhaps that is why Christmas can be so delightful when we are around them. Living in a culture with such tremendous abundance, it seems like we should be brimming with wonder this time of year, and yet I wonder how often we are really able to find that. How are we able to see what is precious in the midst of all the stuff we have?

This season is a time for us to be reminded of the wonder of life. It is a time to be reminded of how precious each person is and how each person is born with potential. In the old story, in the midst of winter, in the cold and in the dark, in the midst of great pain and at a time when there was no room at the inn, a baby was born who would change the world. That the family hardly has anything, but they have enough, and they will bring this being of light into the world. The story is not what you might expect, but that is so often the way things happen.

Writer Kass Dotterweich tells the story of her son, Joseph, and the gift he brought to his family when he was 7 years old.

She begins the story by describing Joseph as the one of her six children who most clearly marched to a different drummer. Well, it was a few weeks before Christmas and she noticed that her son was doing some strange things. Joseph was walking around the house with an inquisitive look on his face. He would walk around, get down on his knees and look under the China cabinet or he would rummage around the clutter on the dining room table. He was clearly looking for something, but after a time he would walk out of the room with a look of mild frustration on his face. His mother was a little concerned about this, but she decided to follow her own rule that as long as her children were not hurting anything, she wasn’t going to say anything.

She noticed this behavior with Joseph for a number of days. He would look under beds, he would dig around on closet floors, he would stir up dust that had been long settled. Finally his mother’s curiosity got the best of her and she asked him what was going on. "Oh, um, nothing," he said.

Well, finally it was Christmas Eve day, and there were many presents under the tree, including gifts that had come in the mail from family that lived far away. At one point she noticed Joseph brought out his presents for the whole family. She found herself worrying about what he was putting under the tree. She knew that he did not have money of his own to spend. She also knew that in the past he had engaged in small acts of shoplifting. He had some motley looking presents, all wrapped in newspaper and masking tape, and they definitely stood out under the tree.

Christmas morning dawned and the family settled around the tree to open their gifts. They opened them, one by one, and eventually there weren’t many packages left. Still, nobody had dared to open one of the presents from Joseph. Joseph was getting frustrated and finally he bursts out, "Can I give everybody my presents now?"

Everybody took a deep breath not knowing what they would find. First Joseph gave his sister her present. "Here, Christine, this is for you." He handed her a small, bulky package and moved close in to see her reaction. From the look on his face, he knew she was going to be delighted.

She opened the gift, and her eyes lit up. She held a hairbrush—her hairbrush—the one that had been missing for weeks, the one she had grieved losing because she had missed it so much. She asked Joseph where he had found it, but he had no time to answer. He was on to the next gift, which was for his brother. He too was delighted to get his Little League cleats, missing since right before the playoff games the previous August.

And so it was. Each family member got presents that brought both surprise and wonder. Each family member rediscovered a treasured object that had somehow been lost, misplaced, or forgotten in their chaotic lives. It was a reminder that the greatest gifts are remembering the things that we already have.

We all know we don’t necessarily have to pay a lot of money for a fine gift, and yet isn’t it so easy to forget that? I know for myself, some of the most fun is actually in the process of figuring out what to give. I imagine what the gift will mean for another person. The gifts we give are expressions of who we are and what we want for the people we care about. They are expressions of what is most important in our lives and how we honor that importance. Increasing people in the congregation are giving alternative gifts—gifts that are made in someone’s honor to a cause. This is a season when we are reminded of what is most precious in our lives. We are reminded that we have things that are so easy to take for granted, and that replacing those things would be difficult. We are reminded how easily it is to take other people for granted. Gifts are funny things, we can’t always know how they will be received.

Every year, pretty much the same gift arrives in the mail from my aunt Helen back in Wisconsin. There is usually a good supply of cheese—this year I received Muenster, Swiss and sharp cheddar—and then an assortment of other things. This year’s package included fruitcake made from the Lutheran Ladies Auxiliary and lefse, a Norwegian delicacy made with potatoes and flour and rolled flat like a tortilla and of course made better with butter and sugar. For the last couple of years, she has also sent one of my cousin Jeanne’s latest creations. My cousin has taken to making Christmas ornaments from small, dried out gourds. Last year I got one that had a bird in a nest sitting in a hole that had been carved out of the gourd. This year, the gourd was made into a small penguin. They may not be what I would necessarily make for myself, but coming from my aunt, I enjoy them a great deal.

Last week I was listening to the radio and I heard someone ask the question, what is the best gift that you have ever received in your life? I thought about that question and I was a little surprised at some of the images that popped up for me. I thought of the time when I was a senior in college when a surprise party was thrown for me. It was a time that I was truly surprised. I thought of the time I pulled up to a toll plaza before entering a bridge and being told that I did not have to pay a toll because the person in front of me had paid for me. I had no idea that was going to happen and it was a delight.

The other times that I remembered were not so much the gifts that I received as the context for the receiving of the gift. I remembered being with people I cared about. I remember the gifts being the right gifts at the right time in my life. I remembered how the gifts seemed to embody the relationship I had with the person who gave me the gift.

Perhaps what we give is not as important as how we give. Do we give of ourselves in such a way that we are able to see what is precious in another? And do we also accept that we are precious in receiving a gift? Do we give with an openness to how the gift will be received? Are we able to let go of the outcome? Are we able to give in such a way that is not necessarily well-considered, but maybe just what seems like the thing we are supposed to do in that moment? In our giving, hopefully we are giving out of a place of abundance and gratitude. We give out of the fullness of our being.

I once read a story about Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker movement, which helped the poor in all kinds of ways. Her life was committed to helping people in need, but she was also very mindful also, that the world would be "saved by beauty." She saw the church as a place where everybody could experience beauty, as a place where everyone could come for quiet and peace and rest. She devoted her life to giving such beauty to others.

So one day, a woman comes in and donates a diamond ring to the Worker, and everyone wondered what Dorothy would do with the ring. She could have taken it down to the diamond exchange and sold it. It would probably have been enough to pay for a month’s worth of beans. But when she saw the ring, she decided to give it to an old woman who lived alone and who often came to them for meals. Someone protested that the ring could have paid for her rent for the better part of a year. But Dorothy Day said that was up to the woman, that she had to have her dignity. She could sell it if she liked, and use the money for rent or for a trip to the Bahamas. She could keep the ring just to admire it. Dorothy Day said, "Do you suppose God only created diamonds for those who can afford them?"

Our giving, hopefully, most of all is a giving of ourselves. We give in recognition of the fact that we are alive. It is a giving with the awareness that the person we are giving to is precious and good and whole. And it is a giving with the awareness that we give all that we can, and offer all that we bring from our own wholeness: our stories, our pains, our fears, our hopes. And in that giving we connect with something larger than ourselves. We give not knowing what will come back to us, but having the faith that what we put out there will come back our way. That is all part of something greater.

Writer Anne Lamott tells the story of her friend Rick, who was living with advanced cancer and was more than willing to drop everything to give Lamott’s son, Sam, a ride to school when she had a headache. She writes:

"I hate being the kind of person who tries to get someone with stage-four metastatic lung cancer to feel sorry for her just because she has a headache. (Though it was an ice-pick headache.) But the way I see things, God loves you the same whether you’re being elegant or not. It feels much better when you are, but even when you can’t fake it, God still listens to your prayers.

"Again and again, I tell God I need help and God says, ‘Well, isn’t that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do about your stuff.’ Maybe Rick had told God (as he understands God) that he needed some energy that morning, and God had said, ‘Well, great, because Sam Lamott needs a ride to school. Could you do that for me? And I’ll be getting you some strength.’"

In our giving, in whatever way we are able to give, we are taken outside of ourselves. In our giving and in our receiving, in our being just who we are, we give a tremendous gift to others. If we can live with openness for what will be, we bring that openness to others. It means having faith in what will be. We put ourselves out there, and trust that whatever comes will be okay. Things are not in our control, but we go on faith that they will somehow work out.

If someone hands us a gift-wrapped package and we say thank you before opening it, that may seem a little premature. We should, after all, wait to see what is inside. But in saying thank you before we open it, we express a trust in the giver, that whatever is inside will be a gift we can use. What is in the box isn’t as important as how we approach it. It takes courage to be open to what might be inside.

And what about our own lives this season? What gifts are we prepared to give? What are we prepared to receive? What might be born in us this season? Is it hope? Is it courage? Is it faith? Is it taking all we have learned from this past year and bringing that knowing into the new year?

As I have prepared to leave on my sabbatical these past few weeks, I have been aware of what a gift it is to be able to go away and to study and to be in different cultures, to have an opportunity to get out of the pace of everyday things and to see things from a new perspective. What has been a great gift already is to receive all of the good wishes that you have given me for my journey. I have felt loved and cared for and that has been a wonderful surprise. Ministers and congregations grow and change together, and call forth what is hopefully the best in each other.

I will carry all of you with me when I am away. I hope you will carry me in your prayers as well. I’ll return in September, somehow different, I expect, but also recharged and renewed. Your allowing me the time to go away and be renewed is a great gift, and one that I thank you for very much.

This season, I wish you a time filled with love and joy. I wish you a time of surprise. In your giving and in your receiving, know that you are precious. Know that you, yourself, are a great gift. Amen.

PRAYER

Great spirit, we give thanks for this day. We give thanks for the many blessings of our lives. Help us to open to all that might be born in us this season. In a world full of fear and despair, help us to bring hope. Help us to put forward our gifts and to have the faith that what we need will come to us. Open us to love. Amen.

BENEDICTION

Let your lights shine, good people. Grow in love this season. Until we meet again, go in hope and in joy. Amen.

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Copyright 2002, Rev. Thomas Disrud.  All rights reserved.