I've been thinking . . . about the season of giving

At the last Administrative Council meeting we were discussing everyone's favorite subject—the Budget. That topic that causes long silences, and nervous paper shuffling, anxiety and worry and ultimately, the grim determination to carry on, go forward and trust to God and the process. And again, as seems to have become a tradition, our congregational meeting to vote on the budget falls smack in the middle of Advent. I remember when I had been here at Vallejo First Christian Church one year, this situation arose and I remember Glenda saying "we've always tried to keep the budget from interfering with the celebration of Advent." Boy, I know what she meant. Sort of like my feelings as Christmas approaches, and I look at my list of dear ones whom I would like to give wondrous and sparkling gifts, and the bank balance that tells me just exactly what is really going to be possible. If only the budget didn't get in the way of our earnest desire to give, and give with joy, radically generous, overflowing openhandedness, sharing with abandon all good things with others. If only we didn't have to worry about balance sheets, and budgetary considerations and, most depressing of all, the bottom line—wherever that is. If only we could just concentrate on mystery and magic and Magi, speaking in a soft, sibilant foreign tongue, coming through the starlit night bearing exotic gifts of gold, and frankincense, and myrrh in search of a king born in a stable and promising peace and hope for the world. If only.

Yet it is not to be. The budget must be undertaken, and we, the people of God in this place must put our festivities, our proud and privileged celebrations on hold long enough to look to the future of the church. Early Christian artists figure the Magi as kings, and that image too has taken hold of our religious imaginations. And those artists, painting with the colors of devotion and faith and a keen theological insight, painted those great kingly figures, arrayed in royal purple and red and blue, humbly kneeling in the aromatic hay of a stable, cheek by jowl, as it were, with donkeys and sheep and their equally aromatic keepers. Humbly kneeling before a woman of no wealth or position save the one God gave here. Humbly kneeling before a woman and here illegitimate child born in the rudest of all habitations, born in a stable, a place fit only for animals, born the king of the Jews, but something so much more, so much more important. Born the king of all time, all people everywhere, born Emmanuel, God with us. Only by pictorially showing these earthly rulers could the artists of those wonderfully jeweled canvases depict earthly power and might humbled by the sight of the child who would bring the promise of riches no ruler, not even all rulers of all time could give—the promise of the peace of the soul, the presence of God alive and active in each and every human heart, the promise of the ultimate triumph of life over death. Only by drawing the mother and child, high and lifted up, with these three kings and all their panoply of wealth and power lowly, bowed, humble, could they testify to the true source of power on earth, and the transitory and illusory nature of earthly might.


We come each year, looking for the star, waiting, waiting. We gather, each year at the manger bed, hoping, hoping. And we need those shepherds who remind us that it was to the humble of the earth that the angels first announced the fierce glad carol. We need them to remind us that the humble of the earth have first place, perhaps, at that manger bed. First promise of peace and healing and hope. But we also need those wise ones, those Magi. Because we are not the shepherds, we in our advanced culture with all the trappings of wealth and the power to determine so much about our own lives. We are the best educated and most far-seeing people on earth, don't you think? We have a direct pipeline to the information highway, we have access to all the world's greatest art and scientific discovery, the literature of the ages and the music of the spheres—we are all, each and every one here, Renaissance people in the old sense, masters and mistresses of a thousand skills and abilities which we don't even notice as we go about our daily lives, but for which the vast majority of people alive on the earth can only dimly, if at all imagine. We, my dears, are not the shepherds, we are the Magi. We are the wise ones, wealthy and well-informed who travel guided by prophecies we only dimly understand, looking, looking for the star to shine at the end of our path, to light our way to the peace that passes all understanding. We are the Magi people who say we want only to find that child, that Emmanuel, that God-with-us miracle in the manger. If so, if we really mean that, then we must take our utmost special treasures with us, and willingly lay them in the straw at the baby's feet. We must set out into the unknown country lighted only dimly by that far off, silent star. We must set our feet into the road of faith to discover the true birth of God on earth and in our hearts. We, this small number, like those original Magi, must be willing to set out in darkness and uncertainty, refusing all setbacks and all obstacles, following our star of belief toward that new kingdom of glory and majesty. We must sacrifice security and comfort and the unchallenged life of the privileged, and must be willing to lay our utmost treasures at the feet of some nearby, shivering infant. Into the midst of life, God comes. Magi people, halleluiah!

Shalom,
Judith