"Impractical Gifts" 

First Presbyterian Church
Peter S. Buehler
December24, 2007
Luke 2:1-7

And she gave birth to her firstborn son…

One of the great joys of Christmas is music -- especially the hymns, carols, and songs we have heard and sung since childhood. We cannot imagine Christmas without them, the familiar melodies and verses -- they help us remember what the season is about, they help us to feel, to see, to grasp these truths that are so deep in us: the holiness of Jesus' birth, the peacefulness of that first Christmas night.

There is one Christmas song, however, that I always have trouble with. We tend not to sing it in church -- more often it's when we go caroling, or at Christmas parties; we hear it quite a bit on the radio. I can never remember all the words.
And because the song goes fast and you have to repeat the verses backwards, which is confusing, I find I'm doing my best just to keep up. I'm talking, of course, about "The Twelve Days of Christmas." The first verse is never a problem, On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree.
After that it's birds and more birds -- turtle doves, French hens, calling birds -- until you get to five golden rings! After that, I get lost. I've never really thought about what I was singing; just remembering the words is hard enough.

So I'm grateful to John Buchanan, editor of The Christian Century magazine, who wrote in a recent issue that what is significant about the gifts "my true love gave to me" is how totally impractical they are. I had never thought of that. After all, who would actually give someone, especially one's true love, a partridge in a pear tree? What would you do with that gift, really? Even if you planted the pear tree in your yard, where would you keep the partridge? Let alone everything that came with it, the twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, and ten lords a-leaping?

Yet the impracticality of the gifts, the over-the-top extravagant uselessness of them -- that is the point. Somehow it's these impractical gifts that show best the deep and complex and wonderful things we feel. As someone has said, "Give grandma perfume, or dancing slippers, not woolen mittens."

How do we express love? Is there a gift we can give that shows how we feel?

Granted gift-giving can be a risky business. We want to please, we don't want to disappoint.

The first year of our marriage, my wife put on her Christmas list what seemed to me a practical item: a watering can -- the indoor type. We lived in a small student apartment in New York and had a few plants which we wanted to keep from dying. I'm sure Kati had in mind one of those graceful little watering cans with the pretty design on the side, something she wouldn't mind leaving out on the window sill. But the only one I could find that made any sense to me was one that held a gallon of water and not just a silly pint of water like the pretty ones held.
What good was that, I thought -- you'd have to keep going back and forth to the kitchen to fill it up. So I gave her a this big, gray, utilitarian corrugated metal thing that was totally practical. She was totally disappointed. She smiled, but I could tell what she was thinking, "Why on earth would you ever give me something like this at Christmas?" (We still have the watering can, by the way; we keep it in the closet.)

When Jesus was born, the world had practical items on its wish list. Israel had a certain kind of messiah in mind: a military leader, a king who could rally the nation against the forces of the Roman Empire, restoring it to the glory and might of old. Indeed, the savior of the world would be obvious to the world -- he would be powerful, he would be invulnerable.

In two thousand years very little has changed. Today we seek the same kind of messiah, one who can restore things to the way they once were in the golden age, the way things ought to be. Our world, we believe, is way too complex and threatening; our messiah will make it simpler and safer and easier. Secretly we wonder why God has allowed things to get so out of control, why God permits violence, war, and suffering to take place on our planet; why God allows us to pollute, to heat up our environment, to focus so relentlessly on ourselves while ignoring the needs of our neighbors. We assume that God lives in heaven and doesn't dirty his hands with earth and our earthly problems, so we search for practical solutions to the seemingly intractable issues we face. There must be answers out there somewhere.

How startling to hear the Christmas story! Into the midst of all the world's chaos and doubt comes not a strongman but a child, small and vulnerable. Absolutely the most impractical savior.

The world hollers and God whispers.

We put practical things on our lists, but here comes God giving us pipers piping and drummers drumming! We give sensible gifts, but God gives as if there's no tomorrow; God gives extravagantly, even his own self, his own Son.

We know what we want, then God comes and gives us what we need -- a Savior, one in whom we find the hope, peace, joy, and love we have been searching for all along. We expect God to be big, instead God comes to us in a size Small.
Yet as a baby changes the lives of her parents, so this child changes us -- and not just once, or once a year, but every day of every year. The Child does not make us invulnerable, he makes us human.

What does he ask of us? What does he want? What gift can we give to him?
Practical things? Changes we can make? New Year's resolutions we can adopt? Perhaps. But it's not really what he wants, and it's not what he needs, and it's not what we need. If what a child wants most is her parents' love, what the Christ desires most from us is us. He wants our love. He doesn't ask for a lot of other things; his list is short.

He does not ask that we qualify for his love. The Savior does not require that we belong to a certain group, or class, or category; the Child does not seek people who are rich, or strong, or successful, or resourceful, or influential. He does not ask us to be sin-free, only ready to give of ourselves, to give of our best, to give him our most impractical and extravagant gift: our love.

A Christmas song by Christina Rossetti, the last verse, brings to mind two very different groups of visitors who journeyed to Bethlehem, both following a star, both wanting to worship the newborn king. They represented something far greater than themselves: the whole world, really, for they lived worlds apart.
Yet there in the stable behind the inn the visitors had everything in common, especially they had a question and an answer. It is tonight's question and answer.

What can I give Him, Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: Give my heart.