The Presents:  The Presence

            Presents.  It’s that time of year… the time when everyone thinks about presents.  I still remember our house on the day after Christmas when I was young.  It always looked like a tornado had just hit.  The beautifully wrapped presents that had been under the tree the day before… bows and tags intact… were now gone.  Nothing was left under the tree except a lonely piece of tinsel… or a Christmas ornament that had fallen off the tree in the excitement of the “Great Unwrapping.”  And there were balls of gift wrap everywhere … scattered to the winds.  Just walking around the house meant tripping over balls of crumpled-up paper and ribbon. There were bows all over the house… on people’s heads… on the coffee table… on the doors… on the refrigerator… even in the bathroom.

And there were toys… and pieces of toys… everywhere.  Any toy that could be taken apart… or broken into smaller pieces… had parts scattered all over the floor in all four corners of the house.  Toys that had to be put together sat… half-assembled… leaning against a wall.  Toys that needed batteries to run lay forgotten on the floor… waiting for batteries.  The toys with batteries were the ones that were played with first… because children always seem to be enticed by flashing lights or moving parts.  But even they were forgotten if someone else walked in with a newer toy… a different toy… fancier toy… a better toy…someone else’s toy.  Funny how a present always looks more interesting when someone else is holding it.

Did you get what you wanted this Christmas?  Did someone remember that chance comment that you made about what you really wanted?  Did they find that unique gift that only you would like… that gift that tells you that they really listened… that they really care?  It is always amazing to me the amount of time and money that we spend on gifts for other people when we often don’t really know what they want.  It doesn’t stop us from buying something.  And, if we really get stuck, a gift card or gift certificate to a store with lots of different items in stock usually saves us from total embarrassment.

I like presents.  I like to give them… and I like to receive them.  I especially like to receive presents that are given to me by those who really know me… who know my quirky tastes in music… in books… in art… in entertainment… in jewelry.  When I get a gift from someone who knows me well… I can see two things:  I can see how well they know me in what they select… and I can see the unique stamp of their own personality in their choice of gift… gift wrap… or card.  No two gifts are ever alike… just as no two people are alike.  Sometimes, a present is treasured because it is exactly the right present… something that we desperately needed… or something that we longed for… and sometimes, a present is treasured for the person who gave it… and the special relationship that exists between the giver and the one who receives the gift.  And those presents we treasure the most are usually those where both the present… and the one who gave it… are special.  Think about the gifts that you have received… not only this Christmas, but all through your life.  Which gifts have you treasured… do you treasure… the most?  Is it the gift… or the giver… that is special to you?

God has given us a gift… an incredibly precious gift… the gift of God’s presence with us.   Of all the gifts that I have ever received, this is the gift that never grows old for me.   Of all the presents, this is the present I treasure the most:  God’s presence in my life.  What an unbelievably overwhelming thought… God is with us!  God with me!  Let me try to trace for you the series of thoughts that come to me each time that I think of this gift… this present from God.

Listen again to the words that John writes to us… “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”  These brief sentences tell us succinctly that God does not need us… never needed us… existed without us… and that our whole existence came from… and through… God.  We are merely creatures… things created by this awesome, almighty Being of limitless power and freedom.  Your life… this world… our entire universe… came into existence through the creative will of this God… this Supreme Power that could create anything… and did create everything.  This God created us… you… and me…and everything that we need to sustain our existence.

But, there is more:  John goes on to say, “He was in the world and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.”  Can you hear the longing in those words? … the longing of a creature to know its Creator… and the longing of the Creator to be recognized and acknowledged by that which was created?  We were created for God’s pleasure… and without God, we would not exist.  The power differential is huge… a chasm that cannot be bridged… and yet … the desire to be in relationship has always existed.  From the dawn of time, our Creator has longed to be in relationship with us… not only long before we were aware of God’s existence… but also long before we were even created.  And we have only to read the creation story in Genesis to hear that longing for relationship.  Why else would God create a creature in God’s own image?  Why else would God walk in the Garden in the cool of the afternoon, looking for his creatures… for Adam… and for Eve… unless God desired to be with them?  At the same time, the creature that was created has always longed for more… for greater knowledge of… and greater intimacy with… this elusive… majestic… unknowable… and magnificent Creator of the universe.

But too often, as the country western song tells us, we end up looking for love in all the wrong places.  We spend our lives chasing after things… money… entertainment… thrills… and even people… that we think will satisfy us.  And too often, at the end of the day, we sit in solitude… wondering why we feel empty… dissatisfied… and unfulfilled… even the day after Christmas… when we are surrounded by presents.  But, even then… as fickle and overindulged as we are… God comes.  You see, God knows us… knows us better that we know ourselves… for it was God who created us.  And our Creator knows what it is that we long for… that we strive for… that we crave.  Our Creator knows that deep sense of emptiness that fills our lives… that dark abyss that still exists despite all our efforts to fill it.

God knows.  And God hears.  God hears us when our hearts cry out from the empty excess of life.  And, in glorious, boundless love, God comes.  Our Creator comes to us… to be with us… to be for us… filling the emptiness of our lives with the glory of his presence.  John writes,  “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”  The Word became flesh… God became human.  Why?  Why would this great and glorious God… the Creator of the universe… this Being of unlimited power and freedom… give up that power and freedom… to become one of us… and choose to exist in the violence… the poverty… muck… and the mire… of our lives… of human existence?  Why?

There is only one possible answer:  love.  This incredible Creator of life… this Being of majestic power and might… this One who has existed from the beginning… and will exist long after time has ended… this eternal God… loves us.  And this was the part of the story that blew me away.

Many of you know that, while I grew up in a Christian home… surrounded by love… I went my own way for many, many years.  Oh, I knew that there was a God… but I had no use for that God… and I assumed that the feeling was mutual.  After all, I was created in God’s own image… or so I had been taught… and I had no use for anyone other than myself.  As I figured it out, there was no reason for a God who had everything… and could create whatever he didn’t have… to pay any attention to me… a nobody… a nothing… a finite creature of limited power… a blip on the radar screen of life… one of the who’s in Whoville.  After all, if I had unlimited sovereignty… and boundless creative power… I wouldn’t pay any attention to anyone… or anything.  So, why would God?  It seemed most logical just to let God do his God thing… wherever and whenever God wanted to do it… and for me to just go my own way.

But don’t you see?  That is just it!  God’s thing is love!  Love is what… and who… God really is.  God cannot not do the love thing… because God is love. It is God’s nature to seek us out… and to love us… wherever we are.  For God is love.  Love is what God is all about.  God is love.  So this gift that God gives to us at Christmas… this present of God’s presence… is natural for God… an extension of God’s personality, if you will… part of who God is.

There is one final thought that I want to leave with you… and that is this:  God is with us.  Not just today… not just at Christmas… but always.  Friday night, as everyone was leaving the church, Lauren Darby gave me a gift.  It was a little tiny angel… an angel made of a Hershey chocolate kiss… pieces of macaroni… and a marshmallow.  It sits on my desk here at the church.  Last night, as I was thinking about that angel, I thought, “How appropriate!  How appropriate it is that that angel is made of ordinary, everyday things that we always have in our homes!  I can find that angel on the shelf in my pantry every day.  So it is with God’s presence… and God’s love.  God is always with us.  As I shared with the children this morning, God’s love is eternal… never-ending.  It existed before time began… and will exist long after time, as we know it, ends.  And, as long as God exists… God’s love will also exist.  Eternal… everlasting… and always with us.

There is a old Simon and Garfunkel song that goes, “Round, like  a circle in a spiral… like a wheel within a wheel… never ending or beginning… on an ever-spinning wheel… like a snowball down a mountain… or a carnival balloon… like a carousel that’s turning… running rings around the moon… like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes on its face…” Images… images of eternity.  There is a sense of timeless wonder that comes with the gift of God’s presence… the knowledge that God’s love pre-existed anything we have ever known… and will still be long after we are dust.  It is eternal.  So, in the stillness of that first Christmas, God came to us… and God still comes to us… Our Lord, Emmanuel.  Amen.

John 1:1-14