An Unexpected Gift

It was a few days before Christmas, and a woman suddenly realized that she hadn’t sent out any Christmas cards. Frantic, she sent her 10-year-old son to the drugstore for a box of cards. “Hurry,” she said. “I’ll barely have time to get these in the mail before the day’s final pickup.” The boy ran all the way to the store and soon returned with a box of 25 cards, all alike.

Quickly, without even looking at them, she signed them, addressed and stamped the envelopes, and handed them to her son, who promptly deposited them in the corner mailbox. Later, the mother noticed that there was one card left in the box. She picked it up and looked at the verse. It read: “This little card is just to say, a gift you’ll love is on the way.”

Oops. Well, speaking of gifts people will love, for next Christmas you might want to consider some possibilities listed in Fast Company magazine (February 2019).

First, a pair of air-conditioned shoes. Made by a Japanese company called Hydro-Tech, these $78 shoes have filters and micro fans built right into them. Give them to a person who wants to be cool. Literally.

For $35, you can buy your loved one an OstrichPillow. This napping pillow goes completely around a person’s head, and can help them get some sleep on a couch or even at a desk. The company’s motto: “Dreams Happen Anywhere.” Even at work, I suppose.

Or maybe there’s a guy in your life who would be interested in a clip-on man bun. Available for only $9.99, this hair accessory enables a businessman to be conservative by day and a hipster at night!

And for a cat-loving friend or family member, $25 will buy a cat brush shaped like a tongue. Yes, that’s right: This brush is held in your mouth, and you use it to bond with your kitty by pretending to lick it like a mother cat. By doing so, you are “communicating in their love language.” Using the Licki Brush is said to be an “oddly meditative practice,” soothing for both owner and cat.

For most people, a Licki Brush would be a truly unexpected gift.

So what were the people of Israel expecting during the rule of Emperor Augustus of Rome? They had no Christmas to celebrate, so they weren’t looking for anyone to surprise them with a Licki Brush or an Ostrich Pillow. But the people had hopes and dreams, and some of those expectations were based on the Hebrew Scriptures.

God had promised Israel a Messiah and God was faithful to His promise. Unfortunately when God’s gift, this Messiah, came to God’s people, they rejected him. Rejection is a common experience in human life. It happens to all of us. There’s that guy or gal who refused to go out with you back in college, even though you knew that the two of you would make a fantastic couple.  There’s the firm that rejected your job application, even though you knew that you would have been a great addition to the company.

I read that Sylvester Stallone was rejected more than 1,000 times as he tried to peddle his script for a movie called Rocky. Imagine that you were a movie producer and someone handed you a script that would become a series of films that would earn hundreds of millions of dollars . . . and you rejected it.

But we can understand. Any new project with the chance of a huge return requires risk. It requires a substantial investment before it shows a profit. It’s the same with an act of faith. Not very many people were willing to take a chance on a humble Galilean two thousand years ago. Why should they? After all, how could he be the Messiah?

He certainly wasn’t born like a Messiah. Whoever heard such nonsense as a stable and a manger and shepherds and a star that moved through the sky? Sure, you and I are thrilled to hear the story told each year, but to the people of Jesus’ time it was not the kind of advent they were expecting for their Messiah.

But I suppose that’s part of the magic of it all. God could have had his son be born in Caesar’s palace surrounded by pomp and splendor. But what a boring story it would have been. Yet after 2,000 years of telling the story, we never tire of hearing about the shepherds, and the wise men and the star that shone over the stable.

And Jesus did not act like a Messiah. The people were looking for a messiah who would overthrow the hated Romans and restore the kingdom of Israel to its former greatness. They wanted a strong, tough guy who could stand up to Caesar. But we all know that “power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Isn’t it interesting that the only king who has ever lived who did have absolute power humbled himself and became a servant instead?

Jesus was not born like a Messiah. He did not act like a Messiah.

And he certainly did not die like a Messiah. It was an enormous obstacle to first century Jews to believe that the Messiah who was to deliver Israel from her enemies could die like a common criminal on a cross. In 1 Corinthians 1, St. Paul calls it part of the foolishness of God. God has confounded human wisdom so that no one can boast at having either the intelligence or the virtue to merit salvation. Only one thing saves us, the Scriptures remind us, and that is faith in the crucified Christ.

He was not born like a Messiah. He did not act like a Messiah. He did not die like a Messiah. No wonder his own people had difficulty accepting him.

In a Charlie Brown Christmas, Charlie Brown just couldn’t get into the Christmas spirit. His friend, Linus, remarked: “Charlie Brown, you’re the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem.”

For Jesus’ contemporaries, Christmas was a problem. The babe in the manger wasn’t what they had expected. But for us, what a gift the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes has turned out to be! What a gift God has given us at Christmas!

Jesus did not look as expected, or act as expected, or even die as expected, but in the wisdom and providence of God he did far more for us than we ever could have imagined.

The Daily Telegraph in London once reported a story about the Neiman-Marcus department store.  Neiman-Marcus is famous, of course, for the lavish gifts it makes available in the Christmas season. However, one year during the Christmas rush a hard-pressed employee accidentally gift-wrapped her lunch instead of a customer’s gift. By the time she discovered her mistake the parcel had been shipped and could not be retrieved.

Here’s the interesting part: No one ever came forward to complain that he, or she, had received a stale ham sandwich and a moldy orange for Christmas from Neiman-Marcus, rather than some luxury item. Store officials are convinced that the recipient of the extraordinary gift decided that, coming from Neiman-Marcus, it had to be something wonderfully special.

If you looked inside the stable of Bethlehem 2000 years ago, you would see nothing that looked to the unbelieving eye to be anything special. Some cattle, a donkey, some smelly shepherds and a young peasant couple with their newborn child. You might think, this is a quaint scene, but nothing of great significance. But you’d be wrong. Because there was a label on the outside cover, visible only to eyes of faith that read, “Sent by God, with love.”