I once read a short story from about a hundred years ago about two brothers, rivals as brothers often are, whose mother’s birthday was coming up. They saved their money to buy her each a special present.
Their family was poor. Mom was a cleaning woman. Her sons saw her every day leave home carrying her broom, her mop and bucket and cleaning rags. They knew she worked very hard for them.
The older brother determined to save enough money to buy his mother a small hair comb with a sterling-silver handle – an astonishing luxury for a woman whose husband had not been able even to afford to buy her a diamond for her ring. The older brother hauled coal, swept stables and ran errands for people until he had enough to buy the comb. He bought it, hid it under his bed, and counted the days until his mother would receive it. He imagined the thrill he would get as he thought of how she would react to such a splendid present. He could hardly sleep at night.
Truth be told, though, one big reason he wanted to give her the silver comb was that he knew his younger brother could not possibly attain so grand a present. He relished a sense of superiority over little brother. (You know how big brothers can be.)
The big day finally came. After supper, their father, a stock clerk in a store, brought out a modest cake with a single candle. They sang, “Happy Birthday” and mom cut a piece for each of them, making the boys’ pieces the largest. Father left and returned with a small, wrapped package, presented it to his wife and wished her happy birthday. She unwrapped the package to reveal a lace shawl. She held it up in awe. She had never held anything like it before.
Big brother turned to little brother. ‘You go first,’ he said. Little brother disappeared out the back and returned carrying – a new mop and bucket. “Happy birthday, Mom!” he exclaimed happily.
And mom . . . mom just sat back, and her eyes filled with tears. But they were not tears of happiness, as the older brother quickly noticed. Mom was silent for a moment and then broke down. “A bucket! It’s my birthday. I scrub on my knees and wring out a mop all day long, and for my birthday I get a mop and bucket!”
Little brother began to cry, too, at the hurtful words, cut deeply by his mother’s reaction. Then dad said, “Dear, I know what you must be thinking. But please look at this bucket. It has wheels, so you won’t have to carry a heavy bucket full of water from one room to another anymore.”
Mother looked up, suddenly interested. “Oh, my,” she said, “that’s good!”
Dad continued, “It has a lever-driven mop squeezer. You won’t have to take the mop to a sink and wring it with your hands anymore. It will wring the mop for you when you press this lever. No more pain in your hands.”
Mom clapped her hands and laughed aloud. “This is so wonderful! I’m sorry I didn’t understand at first!” She took her younger son into her arms and hugged him. “Thank you!” she said. “It’s a wonderful present!”
Father affixed a certain gaze on the older brother. Dad knew about the silver comb. “Son,” said that father, “what is your present for your mother?”
The older brother felt the comb in his pocket. What a treasure it was, and yet something stayed his hand. It was a grand present and fine, but what now would Mother think of the bucket when she held the silver comb? Would she remember again how hard she worked for so little, and push her younger son and his bucket aside to embrace a gift to make her feel like a queen, if only a little? How diminished would his little brother feel, again?
“Well,” demanded his father, “What are you giving your mother?”
The older brother said softly, “Half the bucket.”
I would guess that the younger brother had a different relationship with his older brother from that day on. They were rivals no more, but companions and friends.
One of the most influential religious philosophers of the twentieth century, Alfred North Whitehead, wrote, “Religion is the transition from God the void to God the enemy, and from God the enemy to God the companion.” Some people don’t much think of God at all; to them God is a term without a real referent. God is a void. Others resist the work and will of God in their lives; they scoff at God, perhaps, and see God as someone opposing them.
But God is really our companion and companion. In fact, I think one of the chief things Jesus did was prove that God is not our enemy and certainly not a void. After all, the first gift of Christmas Day was not a thing. It was a person, the Christ child.
Do you remember the TV ad for Jared jewelry store in which a woman showed her friend the engagement ring her new fiancé gave her. “He got it a Jared,” she tells her proudly, the unspoken implication being that a ring from elsewhere is second class. So if any of you guys here bought your wives or girlfriends jewelry from some substandard place like, say, Tiffany’s, I am sorry to say that Jared is closed now.
Like much advertising, this ad is mostly nonsense. But reflect on how much Christmas advertising tries to convince us that only certain products are worthy and everything else is second best at best.
Then reflect whether in Bethlehem long ago God gave us the best that he could give us. “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son,” is the way Jesus explained it. God didn’t send a UPS package or a greeting card to let us know he was thinking of us, now and then, and hoped we would all get by okay. God had already sent his customized, holy Word in the inspiration of the Scriptures and the announcements of the prophets – advance notice, so to speak, that he was coming in person. Because, after all, when you really do care enough to send the very best, you go yourself.
The Word became flesh and lived among us. We have seen God’s glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son. God’s glory is the presence of God with us. We see God’s presence in Jesus of Nazareth. The incarnation of God as human being was the decisive event in human history because the incarnation changed God’s relationship to us and our relationship to God. The incarnation means that human beings can see, hear, and know God in ways never before possible. “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus told his disciple Philip.The Incarnation of God in Jesus means that in Christ, God placed himself at the mercy of all the things which we endure. Jesus became tired and hungry. He was dependent on the charity of others for food and shelter. He lost his patience with other people and became angry; the Gospels record both. There is nothing we experience that Jesus did not know. In every way that we are human beings, so was God in Christ. Jesus was Emmanuel, God with us.
By acknowledging this fact, we recognize the bond that God has established with us, and its revelation in Jesus. God did not stay distant from us, remote and isolated. In Jesus, God chose to live with humanity in the midst of human weakness, confusion, and pain. To become flesh is to know joy, pain, suffering, and loss. It is to love, to grieve, and someday to die. The incarnation binds Jesus to the “everydayness” of human experience.
When someone receives Christ as Christ was sent – the unique embodiment of the eternal God – and when someone believes in the name of Jesus, God makes him a son or her a daughter of God. It takes a second birth to be made a child of God, a birth of the spirit, not of flesh. We are reborn from above. Jesus said, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again’” (John 3:6 7).
This new identity God has given us matters in how we live our lives with one another. I have two brothers and three children, so I am under no illusions about the fights that brothers and sisters of the flesh have. That is the way of flesh. But I wonder sometimes whether we model our family of faith after our families of flesh. We should instead live as sons and daughters of God, born of the Spirit, living in love as ones Jesus calls his brothers and sisters.
“In the beginning,” says John, hearkening us to recall the creation stories. In Genesis, God was here on the surface of the earth. With his hands, God stooped on the ground to fashion humanity. He gave us life with his own breath. He walked with Adam and Eve in the garden, talked to them, guided them.
In the manger, God was here on the surface of the earth. In Christ, God stooped to the earth again. With his hands, Jesus healed the sick, brought sight to the blind and made the lame walk, right here in person, in the flesh. Jesus walked among the people, talking to them, guiding them. Jesus gave up the breath of his life on the cross to give to us eternal life.
“The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.” During Christmas, we see God’s glory as a newborn baby, some shepherds visited by angels, and wise men come from afar. God is here, and Christmas is a family reunion.
