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Many families have traditions of some sort when it comes to the celebration of Christmas. For one family, a tradition was that, on Christmas Eve, the parents would be called by their four young children to come and be the audience for their living room rendition of what they called "the Christmas play." Typically, the parents entered the "set" to find the baby Jesus being played by a flashlight wrapped in a blanket...Joseph defined by his bathrobe and mop-handle staff...Mary looking solemn with a sheet-draped head...the angel of the Lord with pillowcase wings...and one wise king with another pillowcase full of gifts. This particular year, the king was being played by the youngest child, who felt duty bound to explain herself and her mission. She said, "I am all three wise men...and I bring precious gifts of gold, circumstance and mud!" Now everyone in the original "Christmas play" had something to give to the Christ child. Mary gave her obedience to God's will. Joseph gave his willingness to trust God when things didn't make sense. The angels gave their songs of praise, and the shepherds gave their openness to hear the Good News and respond to it. On this particular Christmas Eve, when the economy is down and the tensions of the world are up, what gifts do WE have to give to the Christ child tonight? I think we would do well to come bringing what that little lone "king" in the living room play brought: our gold, our circumstance and our mud! Our gold: the most common item of our own enslavement. We spend so much of our time and energy trying to save money, make money, and manage money that it easily can become the focus of our lives. Handing over our gold to God can become a symbol of our commitment to a different set of values. And, actually, our "gold" may not be just money. In the Gospel of Matthew we read that "...where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." What are the things we "treasure" most? IS it money? Or is it something else? Whether it's money...or a job...or a relationship...or a hobby...or some material possession, whatever lures and captures the most and best of our time , attention and energy, that is what we treasure most. Whatever it is that we "treasure," that is what we should bring to the Christ child. We should give it and use it and value it only in terms of how it can be used to serve God and to make this world a better place. We can certainly do that with our money. We can find ways to see our jobs are opportunities to be the hands or feet or mouth or heart of Christ for the world. In our relationships with others, from a lover to a stranger on the street, we can choose to be a representative of Jesus through our grace and acceptance and compassion. Even the material things we enjoy can serve to be tools for peace and joy -- for ourselves and others -- rather than the central preoccupation of our lives. We can give our "gold" to the Christ child. And, along with it, we can give over our "circumstance" as well. We all exist among a host of particular circumstances – sometimes freeing, sometimes limiting, sometimes depressing, sometimes challenging. But it's a safe bet that none of us considers our particular set of circumstances to be ideal or the exact embodiment of all our hopes and dreams. Instead of constantly wishing that our lives had taken different turns along different paths, we might consider giving ourselves to God this Christmas, regardless of the circumstances that surround our lives. Too many times, we are like the young man who went to see a fortune-teller. She studied his hand carefully and then said, "You will be poor and very unhappy until you are thirty-seven years old." The young man responded, "Well, after that, what will happen? Will I be rich and happy?" The fortune-teller said, "No, you'll still be poor, but by then you'll be used to it." The difficult and challenging circumstances of our lives are not just something we have to learn to live with. If we will give them over to God, God can use them...use them, perhaps, for our greater good or growth – and perhaps use them to bring something wonderful to the world. This whole celebration tonight is a celebration of God's ability to take people in difficult circumstances and use them to do miraculous things. A pregnant teenager and a young, confused bridegroom...dirty, smelly, uneducated shepherds...and a tiny, shivering baby. Not exactly the stuff miracles are made of and yet.... God doesn't create all circumstances...but God can bring good from all circumstances – using human beings and the abilities God has given them. There is a woman in our congregation named Debra Busch. Along with being diabetic, Debra also has a degenerative eye disease that is going to render her completely blind; already her eyesight worsens with each passing day. But rather than allow that terrifying circumstance to paralyze her life, Debra is proactively working to make her life the best it can be. She is currently enrolled in a long-term residential training program at the Colorado Center for the Blind. There she is being taught all the methods and ways of thinking required to live productively with blindness. One of the ways Debra is keeping in touch with this church while she's gone is by recording short daily messages on a cassette recorder – then she sends me a tape about one a month. As I listened to last month's tape, I heard Debra talk about learning to cook, read braille, take the bus and travel to new places...all while wearing sleep shades in order to simulate the total blindness she will eventually experience. I hear her describe doing these things, and – probably like most of you -- I think, "I couldn't do it!" But she is doing it. Her confidence and abilities grow every day. And...on every single day she records a message, she never fails to talk about how blessed she is by the Lord Jesus Christ! Her own determination and faith are enabling Debra to experience a miraculous transformation that I fully believe is going to lead her to ways of serving God in the world that she would never have imagined! And she is grateful...not for blindness, of course...but for the ways God is using that circumstance in her life to accomplish wonderful things! God can help us to use our circumstances for good. We should give, this Christmas, our most difficult circumstance as a gift to the Christ child to be used for something better...even if it seems that all we have to give is mud. The truth is that our "mud" is what we most need to give over to God tonight. A 6-year-old boy was overheard reciting the Lord's Prayer at a church service: "And forgive us our trash passes, as we forgive those who passed trash against us." The truth is...we have all done our share of "passing trash" along the way. There is no one here this evening who doesn't have some "mud" to give. Through time and various actions on our parts, we have all managed to add enough dirt and grit to the clear waters of our lives that they may now seem muddied up into a silty, slimy, solidifying mess. We may think that not even God can do anything to clear things up again for us. But if we believe that, we'd be wrong! Jesus said, "Whoever believes in me [will have] streams of living water flowing from within." When we give the mud we may have created in our lives to God, a flow of pure, clear water can begin running through our souls again. It's the water of forgiveness...it's the fountain of grace...it's the stream of renewal...it's the river of life that only God can provide...and which cannot be polluted by any human force or wrong doing. God is not offended if we slink up to the manger tonight in muddied shoes. That's the way the shepherds came; that's the way we all come. But, in the presence of the Christ child, all things can be made new again. The important thing is that we come to the manger...bringing everything we have to give. The Reverend Clarke Kimberly Oler was the pastor of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in New York City, and he once told the story of how a little homeless boy, barely 6 years old, showed up at the Nativity scene on Christmas Eve. It was late at night and no one else was around. The little boy peered up at the life-sized figures and stared at the manger. Then, suddenly, he climbed inside the trough and curled up in the straw. Oler knew he had seen, for a moment, into a lonely child's heart. The truth is that, tonight, every one of us is – in some way – like that lonely, homeless child...searching for a safe, warm place to curl up and rest. Well, I want to say to you that there is no better place for that than at the manger of the newborn Christ! Here is where we can – and should – bring our gold, our circumstance and our mud. In fact, the wisest gift we can give to the Lord is our whole selves: our lives and all that they hold -- trusting that God can use them and transform them and make of them something new and fresh and wonderful. Each one of us is truly something precious in God's sight. Bring your precious life to the Christ child...and you will have given the wisest gift you can give! Amen.
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