Sermon Text: Matt. 2.1-11 Title: "The Gifting"

Preached: January 3, 1999

The Ikoso kit did not appear this Christmas. As usual, when it does not appear, some discussion arose as to its location. Who has it? When was it last seen? There were denials and explanations. We still are not sure, and there's no consensus. I think it's somewhere in a box in an attic in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

I guess I should at least tell you what the Ikoso kit is. It's a tube, about this big, [half the size of a "Pringles" can] filled with small, clear rubber hoops and round, blue toothpicks. Ostensibly, the purpose is to stick the toothpicks through the plastic tubes and assemble artful shapes -- geodesic domes and such. As far as anyone in my family knows, it has never been used in that way. Instead, it has been passed, gift-wrapped in many interesting ways, from family member to family member, usually at Christmas, but also at birthdays and other assorted gift-giving occasions since 1985. It has travelled to California and to North Carolina at least twice, and made its way, I believe, to the Bronx, once.

The Ikoso kit has always been meant as a kind joke. Among the assorted gifts, you receive you may receive it. And everyone laughs a bit, and you begin plotting how you will redistribute it the next year. But it really is a gift without meaning. It does not express any great emotional attachment between giver and receiver; it does not illustrate a knowledge by one of the other; it does not fill a need or desire that the receiver may have. It is, simply, a small joke, a gentle poke in the ribs, a tug on the hamstrings.

Two years ago at Christmas a different kind of gift was passed. Lynnette's sister Catherine, who is widely acknowledged as the best gift-giver we know, gave Lynnette a scarf. It was, mostly, white wool, long and rough looking. It had coarse strands of an unusual looking hair woven through it, like mohair, only black and gray and roughly thick. There was a tag attached: knitted with yarn from lamb's wool and pony mane. As the note was read, everyone had tears in their eyes. Late that past fall, the family's pony Butternut, after more than thirty years, had died. The scarf was a reminiscence, a memorial of Butternut's place in the family -- of good times shared, of growing up together, of love and togetherness, and of loss. There was deep, deep meaning in that simple gift -- it became treasure, more precious than any store-bought cashmere, worth much more than its weight in gold, frankincense or myrrh.

We know the story of the three "kings" -- we hear it at Christmas and sing it in carols and see it on tv. Yet, I'm not sure we read it enough. For instance, if we read it, we note that the text reads wise men, not kings; and if we have a good reference bible it might have a note which says, "or astrologers" or maybe "magicians," instead of "wise men." There is, as well, no number given. We know from the text that there is more than one, but Matthew might have imagined four, or twelve or thirty astrologers. From the story, we also know that the seven, fifteen, or two wise ones find a house, and not a stable in Bethlehem. And from Herod's reaction, we have to presume that the baby Jesus might be as much as two years old.

Yet, as much or as little as we know from our popular cultural versions of the story, we know at least the three gifts that the five, eight or twenty sages brought with them. They brought gold, and frankincense and myrrh. We note, of course, that the gifts were all very valuable. Gold, of course, still is used as a standard of wealth across the globe. Frankincense, however, was worth more, by weight. Its natural crystals were prized for the aromatic smoke they produced when melted and burned upon glowing charcoal. Most valuable, however, was myrrh, that fragrant spice which was the key ingredient in the most expensive salves and ointments in ancient antiquity. The gifts were very valuable.

Yet, Matthew includes the gifts not for their value, but for their meaning. For the symbolic meaning of the gifts shouts to the world of the toddler Jesus' place and future. For gold is the province of royalty -- it is the sign of monarchy, it is the medium of empire. Crowns are made of gold. Wars are waged for it and with it. Kingdoms are built and lost over it. Jesus, the two year-old is destined, somehow, to be a king. And frankincense, mostly, was used in the temple. It is burned as a fragrant sacrifice, expensive and edifying. It is still swung with pomp and smoke in the thurifers of high-liturgy churches. Jesus is destined, even as a baby, somehow, to be the high priest. And myrrh, the precious ointment, at the time of Matthew, has its most common use in the spiced annointing, the tender preparation of a body for burial. Jesus, destined to be king and priest, is also, importantly, destined to die.

Today, I wish to focus on just one facet of this story as it applies to us, seekers of Christ two thousand years later. I wish to focus on who gives the gift and who receives. For the giving of Christmas gifts has evolved into a really big deal in our society; it has become part of the economy, part of the culture. And it has been divorced, I believe, from its original source -- this story from Matthew. For here is the origin of Christmas gift giving: when thirteen, or six, or three wise men, give these deeply meaningful, valuable, symbolic, precious gifts, to a baby boy in a poor family's house in dusty, small town Bethlehem.

As much as I like the current rhetoric that gift giving originates with God giving the original gift to us -- an idea which might be even defensible as biblical using some texts from John's gospel -- the idea of Christmas gifts really proceeds from Matthew; and it grows from the idea that Christmas is a time for us to be giving to God, in deeply meaningful ways. God did give us a gift by giving us Jesus, but at Christmas, if we follow the model of Matthew, we ought to be giving to God in a way which expresses our relationship with God.

Is Jesus our Ruler, due our fealty and gold? Is Christ our High Priest, due our sacrificial offerings? Did Jesus die for us, and are we grateful sinners, to annoint him for burial? Or are there other gifts which might even express, more deeply, more meaningfully our relationship with our Lord, our Savior, our Creator, our Shepherd, our Light and our Salvation, our Hope and Joy.