"Receive" The Nativity of Our Lord Christmas Eve December 24, 2010 1John 4:7-16
This evening or tomorrow morning families will gather around the Christmas tree in their homes and open up presents. There’s a saying that “It is better to give than to receive,” but I will admit that I really like the receiving part. Most people do. But many people also like giving gifts. We enjoy seeing the joy on someone’s face when they receive a gift. We receive joy in knowing that the gift will bring them joy. But we definitely like to receive, don’t we? I think we may need to re-think the saying “It is better to give than to receive.” The notion is good, because we who are naturally selfish need to be reminded that giving is important and that we shouldn’t look to just get. But if we understand giving and receiving properly we won’t really need to think in terms of giving being better than receiving. It’s good to give and good to receive. While we probably shouldn’t go the opposite way and say that it’s better to receive than to give, we learn from God that you can’t truly give until you receive. Our Scripture readings for Christmas Eve show us God’s take on this whole giving and receiving thing. It seems that to God it truly is better to give than to receive. God loves to give. The obvious evidence of this is in our Gospel reading, God giving His Son to be born, to be “Immanuel,” “God with us.” Jesus is the gift God gives us. In the Epistle for this evening John says that “in this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” We did not do anything to garner God’s love. It was all gift. God sent His only Son into the world freely. God does not love us because we love Him or have given Him anything. He gives purely because He loves to love us and give to us. What comes out of that is loving Him in return. The Epistle reading goes on to say: “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” We turn everything around. We think it’s as if we love God and do things for Him and He responds with His love. But it’s that He loves us, and that’s how we are able to love Him in return and serve Him by loving others. We love to receive gifts, but we so often downplay the gifts God loves to give us. When we come here to God’s House we should think of it as if we are sitting around the Christmas tree and someone hands us a gift and we open it. It is all receiving. We are not doing something for the person in order to gain that present. It is a gift. It is something someone else is doing for us out of love. It is only natural to say thank you and to respond in love. That’s the way it is with God toward us. He loves us. He gives gifts to us and we in turn thank Him and love Him in return. We can’t fully know what receiving a gift is apart from God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. His love for us is in giving us His Son as a gift. Jesus being born is the gift of God Himself being the propitiation for our sins, as John says in the Epistle reading. How can we truly love and give and serve apart from this greatest of all gifts? Jesus is the propitiation for our sins, an amazing gift that was all in view at the first Christmas. The propitiation isn’t something we’d normally think of when we think of Christmas. We think of cute little baby Jesus in the manger, but we don’t think of Him as the sacrifice offered at Calvary which turns the wrath of God away from us. But that is the gift. It is the greatest of all gifts. It is the gift that makes it possible for us to truly love others and give to them and serve them. You’re here this evening in God’s House and the most important thing you’re doing is receiving. Are you giving? Yeah, we always do that in worship. We sing, we praise, we give thanks—we can’t help but give to God. But it is all in response. It is in response to His giving to us. His loving us in His Son who was born of Mary. His loving us in offering His Son on the cross for our sins and the sins of the world. When you open your presents you’ll enjoy it because you love getting gifts, you love to receive. It will also be a little glimpse into how wonderful it is to receive the gifts God loves to give you in His Son. He forgives you, He Baptizes you, He gives you His Son— Jesus’ very Body and Blood—in the bread and wine of His Son’s Holy Supper. He gives, you receive. There are many many opportunities throughout each week to love and to serve and to help and to give. Here in God’s House is the place where God does the giving and the loving and the serving. When we gather here every week it’s like being around the Christmas tree. God says to us, I have gifts for you. He blesses us, loves us, and gives us what we need. That’s maybe the most important thing about Christmas. When you think about God coming as a baby you see that God loves to give gifts. In giving His most wonderful gift, His Son, we receive all the many other gifts we need in Him. When we see that our Lord gave us Himself fully and freely in the humility of being born as a baby, we see that His greatest gift of all is giving Himself fully and freely in the humility of suffering and dying on the cross for all of our sins and for our salvation. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] ___________________________________________________________________ 'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless otherwise noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors; posting of such gives members of this list implied consent for redistribution _with_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by the author (as long as no charge is made for the work and it is not made part of a compilation), as well as for quoting or use in a congregational setting _with_or_without_attribution_. Note: This list's default reply is to the *poster*, NOT the list. Do *not* reply to the list with your comments, but to the poster. Subscribe? Send ANY note to: [email protected] Unsubscribe? Send ANY note to: [email protected] Archive? <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/> For more information on this or other lists offered by Confess And Teach For Unity, you can contact the CAT 41 list administrator at: Rev. Fr. Eric J. Stefanski <MoM [at] lists (dot) cat41 <dot> org>
