Merry Christmas! I hope that it has been a merry Christmas for you, and that it continues for the rest of Christmastide—another nine days! Did anyone get their three French hens this morning? Christmas is, as we all know, a season of gift-giving, although few of us can afford to be as extravagant as the true love sung about in the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” The gifts in the song are impractical—what in the world are you supposed to do with ten lords a-leaping?—but they reflect the kind of enthusiasm and sustained devotion we all hope to find in our own true loves, which is why I think the song remains a favorite at Christmastime, apart from the fact that it’s a lot of fun to sing in large groups! Who wouldn’t want their true love to shower them with gifts for twelve straight days, with each day showing more and more how much affection and love is there. The gifts themselves aren’t nearly as important as the love they show—although, maybe we could do without quite so many birds—and what really counts is that the lovers get to share the giving and the receiving of gifts together.
We gather together here as a church during Christmastime to remind each other that our true “true love” is always reaching out to us with gifts that show us His love, not just for twelve days at Christmastime, but every day. God is the first and greatest giver of gifts—God has given us everything: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being;” this world we live in, the people around us, everything that is good and beautiful in the world comes to us as a gift from the Creator. And God is not satisfied with these great gifts; God wants to give us more, to draw us closer to Him in love so that we can be together, so that, as Isaiah says, “our whole being shall exult in our God.” God wants to clothe us with the garments of salvation, God wants to cover us with the robes of righteousness, like a wedding garment—each of us dressed as a bridegroom or bride for a heavenly wedding. God is wooing us, not for a marriage as we know it, but for a different kind of union—eternal life with our true “true love,” the God of heaven and earth.
The desire to gather us together and prepare us for eternal life together with God in heaven is the reason why God gave us His greatest gift, the real gift of Christmas: Jesus Christ. On the first day of Christmas, our true love gave to us a child, lying in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes. This child is the Word of God, who was in the beginning with God, and who was God—this child is the Creator himself, the only Son of God, the perfect image of God the Father, the Christ child who shows us God. No one has ever seen God, but in Jesus, the invisible God is made known, made visible in human likeness, so that we can see and know the fullness of God’s love for us. Through his human life, Jesus shows us what it is to be a true child of God. By dedicating ourselves to Christ, by receiving the Christmas gift from our true “true Love,” we too, can become children of God, can enter into the family of God so that we can be together with Him and with all the children of God for all eternity. Today, we remember Jesus as a baby, but it won’t be long before we remember him as a man—his life embraces the fullness of human life, and from his fullness we have received grace upon grace, gift upon gift. The life of Christ is the crossroads, the place where God and humanity intersect and meet: in Jesus, God comes to us and we go to God.
We are here today to remember these truths, but not just to remember them. Today, we are going to put them into action, because we are here today for another reason, and he is sitting right there in that front pew. We are here today asking God to give a Christmas gift to Connor James Murray, the gift of baptism. Today, we are introducing one little boy to another: in that baptismal font, Connor will meet the infant Jesus. I hope that they will grow together to be life-long friends. I hope that Jesus will tell Connor everything about his parents: his mother, Mary, and especially God his Father; and I hope that Connor will talk to Jesus about his mother and father: Stacie & Ryan. I hope that Connor will trust his new friend Jesus with his joys and his hardships, his fears and his triumphs. I hope that they will share a long life together, and I hope that Jesus will present Connor to God the Father as a true child of God, who also calls God Father by the power of the Spirit.
In a few minutes, Connor will receive that Holy Spirit from the hands of God. As I pour the water over his brow, God will pour the light of Christ into his heart, the light that banishes the powers of darkness and despair. He will be clothed in Christ, who is the garment of salvation and the robe of righteousness. This baptism is a beginning for Connor, a gift that will continue to give for his whole life: a gift that is received by faith. And that’s where we come in, we the church, the people of faith. The light of Christ burns by faith, and we keep the fire kindled in each other, supporting one another’s faith through our common life together of prayer and service. The gift of baptism, as wonderful as it is, profits no one without faith in the God who gives it to us. God is the giver of extravagant gifts: they surround us all the time, but we must have the eyes and ears of faith to see them, to hear them, to receive them. In this baptismal rite, we will rededicate ourselves to God the Father, God the Son Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit, that we may always walk by faith in the one true God, the giver of all good gifts, so that at the last day, we may share eternal life with our true “true Love”, the Lord of life. So let us now welcome Connor into the life of faith, and set our own feet on the way again.
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