Which would you rank as the finest Christmas present you ever received? If you can go back in your memory and recall several Christmases, which was the gift that impressed you the most?
Fellows, was it that electric train? I can’t explain it, but there is a touch of little boy in every man, no matter how old. There is an itch in every man which can only be scratched by an electric train! So would you rate that first, if you found a train set one fine Christmas morning?
Ladies, I just suspect that for some of you your finest and most memorable Christmas gift came in a very small package; it was circular and golden and was given to you in some very special romantic way. Christmas is a favorite time for engagement rings to be presented ... and it was a wonderful surprise, wasn’t it, even though you had been hinting for months and you had hauled him in front of every jewelry store window in town? Still it ranks right up there as one of your finest Christmases ever, doesn’t it?
Let me tell you about one of the best Christmas gifts I ever received. If you were to put it on the auction block, no one would even bid on it. If I were to take it and give it to one of you, you wouldn’t know what to do with it and would probably throw it away. If we were to put it out with the junk for the Salvation Army, they would probably leave it behind on the front steps. But to me it was a gift of wonder, a gift of love.
This is it ... a Commission, signed by the then governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, making me a Kentucky Colonel. Now don’t go to sleep, Virginians, and don’t throw rotten tomatoes, Tarheels, because this is not another one of those rhapsodies about my home state. I do not plan tonight to remind you of its unsurpassed beauty, and I will say nothing, absolutely nothing about its special people and its unparalleled culture. Fear not, for behold, I bring you no tidings like that.
The point of this Commission is that it spoke to me on a Christmas morning years ago of a father’s love. The Commission is intrinsically worthless. A Kentucky Colonel commands no regiments, is useless in Saudi Arabia, and cannot even get a discount on fried chicken. But that year my father had been in a lawyer’s office, working on sane estate matter, and saw the lawyer’s commission hanging on the wall, and thought of me. He thought of me exiled up here in Washington, he thought of my love for my native place, and he went to work to arrange for a Kentucky Colonel’s commission, which only the governor can give.
Now again, I say this thing is intrinsically worthless. And I am sure my father spent practically no money on it ... not even the frame, really, because in his retirement years he had a part-time job in a frame shop and got the materials at cost. But the point is very simple: my father thought of me and went to work to do something that would please me.
That’s all. That’s it. That’s the story. Nothing to it. Except that if after a number of years this still has power for me, that tells us something of the wonder of a father’s love. The heart and core of it is that a father thought of his son and provided for him. The wonder of his love. The wonder of his love transformed something that has no value as money into a gift of joy and of value. Because he thought of his son’s need and moved to meet it.
By contrast, a friend of mine tells me that she has almost always dreaded Christmas time, because when she was young, her father and mother just started to give her money and tell her to spend it for whatever she needed. Each Christmas she would come down to the tree, and every other member of the family would have something to open, some brightly wrapped package, full of promise and of mystery. But my friend would just be given an envelope. Here, here’s some cash. You’re so hard to please. Just go out and get yourself whatever you want. And for her, that has meant that Christmas has a negative touch, a message that says, "We don’t want to take the time to think about you. We don’t want to put in the energy to examine your needs. Here, just take this money and do something, anything." The gift had value as the world counts value, but it lacked the wonder of her father’s love.
Consider on this Christmas Eve the wonders of the Father’s love, and how He has transformed things simple and ordinary into gifts of joy and value. Because He thinks of us, He considers our need, and He moves to meet it.
The government gave orders that all the world should be counted, enrolled, and taxed. An ordinary thing; governments do it all the time. Even when they promise "No new taxes,” still they do it all the time. But the Father of wonder, the Father of love, transformed a simple census operation into a fulfillment of prophecy. When Caesar ordered enrollment, the Father said, "This is the fullness of time." The wonder of His love is that He thinks of us and meets our needs in the midst of the most ordinary circumstances.
A band of shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night, just as they had done scores of times before, just as shepherds have done in places too many to count and too remote to name. Just ordinary folks doing their ordinary job in the usual, ordinary way. But the wonder of His love is that He thought of them, He noticed them, and He let them in on the good news. Out of ordinary tasks, an extraordinary moment. The wonder of His love is that He notices us and meets our needs in the midst of the most ordinary circumstances.
Another mother, another infant. From time immemorial young women have been bearing babies, and every parent thinks that theirs is special. Another mother, another infant. Why should an innkeeper get excited about this one? Why should he turn out a paying guest when it was obvious these poor people were a very poor risk and would not have left much money in the till? Just an ordinary couple, peasant stock, on the move; let them bed down among the animals and use the straw, ordinary hay, good enough. But the wonders of the Father’s love set the sky ablaze with glory and brought legions of angels to serenade this infant! The wonders of the Father’s love noticed a dull little village and transformed the humdrum world of business and innkeeping and stable managing into a riot of color and of music. For the wonder of His love is that He notices us, He cares for our needs, and transforms the simplest and most ordinary of circumstances into something memorable and beautiful.
Swaddling clothes; just a wrapping, a loose cloth to keep a baby warm. We would call it a receiving blanket. Nothing elaborate, nothing special -- just warmth and protection, something dry and serviceable. For centuries mothers have used these. But I tell you tonight, when you see this babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, you see more, much more. You see a Father’s love foreshadowing so
much more. For the day will come when after the swaddling clothes have long been discarded, that he will wear a teacher’ s tunic, and, wearing that tunic, will walk the streets of Galilee, uttering the most sublime teachings ever spoken. But that too will be discarded, rudely taken from his back and gambled for there at the place they called Calvary. Once again he will have swaddling cloths, this time wrapping not a lovely infant but a mature young man, a problem to Rome and an affront to Israel. And they thought it was just another ordinary death, just the execution of another inconvenient common criminal. .
But I tell you the wonders of a Father’ s love. The Father’s love heard Him, noticed Him, and responded to Him. The Father’s love heard us, noticed us, responded to our most profound need. And out of His death came life. Out of our sin came forgiveness. Out of our predicament came hope. Out of our misery came joy.
And out of our ordinariness, out of our simplicity, out of our shallowness, out of our insecurity -- out of all of this our God is making a people who can do all things through the Christ who strengthens them... just because of one thing - just because the Father has noticed us, has thought of us, just because of this one gift, through which the wonders of a Father’s love transforms everything into a miracle of grace.
The spirit of the Lord God is upon this Christ, because the Lord has anointed Him, sent Him to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners. And now, "He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness, and wonders of his love, and wonders of his love."
