Can you remember your worst Christmas? Me too. I’ll never forget it. I had just turned sixteen and for the first time in my life, I was going to do my own Christmas shopping. I had earned my own money and I could drive to the shops and malls and buy the presents for my families and friends all by myself. This was a huge milestone for me.
Everything went perfectly. I get in and out of mall traffic without hitting anyone or anything. I bought all the right gifts. (My family made a list of what they wanted and you could choose what you gave from that list). So, I got my dad the sweater he wanted. I got my brother the album (a vinyl recording of music) he wanted and I got my mom the robe she wanted.
The robe I got for Mom was a full length house robe with red and blue stripes. She told me where it was in JC Penney’s and I went deep into the women’s section of the store (no small feat for a sixteen year old young man) and got her the robe. I took it home with the other gifts I had bought and wrapped them all and had them under the Christmas tree when Mom and Dad got home from their Sunday School Christmas party.
That’s when everything started going south. My mom taught the senior adult women’s Sunday School class and they all loved my mom. So, for this Christmas these women got my mother – you guessed it – a robe. Not just a robe, however, a deep crimson hand-sewn, embroidered soft velour with long sleeves all trimmed in lace.
It was the most beautiful robe I had ever seen in my life.
I was crushed. It was already too late on Christmas Eve to return the robe. Christmas Day would come the next morning and my family would open their gifts. Mom would open her gift in front of everyone and my life would be over.
I kept the receipt as Mom had taught me, but there wouldn’t be anywhere for me to go to hide my embarassment. I didn’t sleep much that night. I kept running the next morning’s scenario over and over in my mind, imagining how things would go. There was no scenario where things worked out.
Everyone would be excited and laughing, bows and ribbon flying in the air, wrapping paper piling up by the Christmas tree. Then, my mom would open her gift and everything would stop. My mom, dad and brother would look at the robe clumsily folded in the box and look at me with that “what were you thinking” look on their face.
My brother would call me a “loser.” He always called me a loser. That meant I would have to punch him and Christmas would disintegrate after that. All this would happen because I had brought a gift that wasn’t good enough.
When the dreaded moment came, my mom did her best to make me feel better. She said the robe was exactly what she needed. My robe, she said, would be useful.
Useful…what an awful thing to hear about the gift.
The marketers hawking their Christmas sales want us to believe there is no such thing as a bad gift. That’s not true and we all know it. How? We’ve all gotten bad gifts before. And despite some of our best efforts, we’ve given the wrong gifts. Sometimes, we misunderstood. Sometimes, what we thought was beautiful in the store didn’t turn out so beautiful under the tree.
And sometimes, what we gave didn’t match what was given to us. That’s awkward. This is what I think about when I read the story of the shepherds at Christmas. For years, we’ve portrayed them as the working poor of the world. Poor, dirty and outcasts – the last people you’d invite to the party, so God invited them first.
Now, there are scholars who think these shepherds may have been the shepherds that provided the unblemished lambs required for the Temple sacrifice. People traveling from far away places would arrive in Jerusalem and buy a lamb for their sacrifice. This certainly adds a new twist to the shepherd story. These were the shepherds who provided the best lambs money could buy. Lambs that would have met every requirement listed in the laws of the Old Testament.
Now, they get to see the “Lamb of God”, the “Perfect Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
Now, they know their gift will no longer be good enough. That’s the awful moment of Christmas, isn’t it? When you see this beautiful gift from God and you realize you’ll never be able to match this gift. Our gift to God, whatever we bring, will never be good enough.
A friend of mine once asked me if I had ever been broke. Do you know what “broke” means, he asked. Being broke, he said, means you don’t have any money and no way to get any money. You’re broke.
Christmas is the moment we realize we’re broke. God has given us His best and sent His So to Bethlehem and we show up with… nothing. We can never do anything to earn the gift of Jesus. We can never deserve His birth. There’s nothing we can bring in return for God’s gift of unspeakable worth. We’ll never be able to make things even. We can only kneel before the manger with our empty hands and confess the truth.
Lord Jesus, we’re broke.
Lord Jesus, we’re broken. We can never repay You.
We can only receive You – joyfully, fully and eagerly.
They say Christmas is the season for giving. They’re wrong. Christmas is the season for receiving. In truth, we can’t do anything else.
