The Invitation of Christmas

December 24, 1961
Rochester

Christmas is both substantial and elusive. Unabashed materialism and uninhibited merry making is mixed with a sensitive spirituality and a restrained surge of feeling. This Christmas blend does not easily conform to description or exposition for Christmas emotion is strange and wondrous.

Consider the legendary, probably unhistorical wise men who followed a star and brought gifts to the baby of Mary and Joseph. The adoration of the Magi has inspired some of the greatest artists – Botticelli, Veroni, Da Vinci, Rubens ..., to name but a few.

Starting with that story, the flights of symbolic fancy are without end. The creative art and literature inspired by the star-led pilgrimage will never be stifled. Similarly moved, I have pondered the invitation of Christmas in the light of the star they beheld. Their star is a grand alliance of the necessities of human survival and the ideals of human aspiration.

The old legends tell us that the wise men were kings, or Magi, from the ancient East. Ancient followers of astrology, they believed they had charted the nativity of a king in the starry heavens. The desert is wide, barren and dangerous. But they followed the star that beckoned to them. That magnificent vision didn’t promise them wealth or offer ease. Rather, they gave wealth and embraced hardships.

That’s one of the difficulties of following stars, isn’t it? You have to give more than you get. At journey’s end on the star track you do not find a pot of gold; you give a pot of gold. Perhaps that’s why these men were wise. Their expectations were realized because they cherished no daydreams that wealth or power would come to them as a result of traveling the hard road of high ideals. But one never-ending reality of the invitation of Christmas is that the journey which ends in giving brings the experience of the highest. “And lo, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came to rest over the place where the child was. ... and going into the house with Mary his mother ... they fell down and worshiped him.” Their reward at the end of the long road was not an acquisition, but an experience. It makes one think, does it not?

Caspar brought gold. Gold is solid, material and valuable. For millenia its enduring value has been a world-wide medium of exchange and a universal standard of wealth.

Gold is material, not spiritual. Why offer it to a spiritual leader? Another ancient legend of a powerful king tells us that hunger for gold so corrupted King Midas that he lusted that everything he touched he turned to gold. But the ecstasy turned to agony when the warm ... flesh of his beloved daughter had become hard, cold gold.

Midas’ desire had been to get, not give. Caspar gave gold. One of the winsome invitations of Christmas is to give our substance in the service of our ideals.

Frequently alleged “materialism” is painted as one of the great evils of our time. We are overly concerned with having things and getting more gadgets, from mink shoe brushes to swimming pools. One has but to tour anywhere in our country to know first-hand the mammoth production of things: grain, corn, pork, beef; office machines, camera, paper and parks; clothing, coffee and the kaleidoscope of things in our shopping plazas and innumerable shops; bell candle, crass and book manger, ... clothes and milk, these are things, material things. To say that materialism is evil is to say that life is evil, for life in our human experience depends on material!

We give material gifts that we should, according to our ability and taste. Everyone must live on the material things of the earth.

On the David Brinkley program the other night, the story of the Peruvian mountain village of Leticia provided a deeply moving instance. The opening scenes of this true story of 1961 show a little boy searching in vain for anything to eat in the rude shelter that was his .... But there is nothing. Neither he nor any other of the 300 children will have any breakfast. Listlessly they sat through school. But when the noon bell sounded, they moved eagerly. For at noon there is a meal provided by the Food for Peace program from the U.N.

Christmas proclaims that life in the world is divine. To ... that life to provide the conditions for growth, material goods must be available. Bread is material; milk is visible; clothing can be touched; shelter is substantial. Christmas invites us to ponder seriously how more steps can be taken in concert – as with the Food for Peace effort – to be quite materialistic in finding more ways to distribute the abundant goodness of earth’s production of food and fiber to the millions who are cold, hungry and sick.

Melchior, the second king, brought frankincense. This was an insubstantial gift – a fragrance permeating the air, a smoke that eludes the grasp, cannot be eaten nor worn as a coat.

The use of incense in worship has ancient roots. Long before Christmas, this was part of the Israelite ritual of sacrifice and the sacrificial ceremonies of many ancient cults as well.

As the cloud of incense swirled and lifted, the prayers of the faithful ascended to God. Another symbolic meaning was that the incense transferred to the divine sphere the most costly gifts that men could offer.

The use of incense did not come into general use in the Christian Church for several hundred years. From the 4th century on incense became part of the ritual of the mass. The mass is a sacrifice service. In the evolution of symbolism in the Roman Catholic Mass, incense has several symbolic meanings: (1) “the sweet savor of the knowledge of the Christ,” (2) “the prayers of the saints,” (3) “the majesty of God is veiled by clouds.”

Now, most of us would experience difficulty in accepting any of these meanings, literal or symbolic. But it may well be that for us, new meanings can permeate the fragrance of frankincense.

Not only must we put up our substance in the service of our ideals, but we must keep the ideals. By its mature an ideal is something one can’t touch. It is like vapor from frankincense, [it] slips from our grasp. But then as the Israelites followed a cloud of smoke by day , so the vision of great goals not yet won is the way men keep the sense of purpose.

Think again of those poor Peruvian mountain people who are being given grain for a noon meal for their hungry children. Far from corrupting them into parasitic dependence, the big gift from Food for Peace has given a new vigor to their ideals. The men of the village are constructing a community building to provide a kitchen and dining room for the children. So strong is their grateful motivation that they declined the offers of power equipment, and are building with their own tools and labor. This they can do for themselves and are proud to do it.

This is the basic interplay of substance and ideal. Each strengthens the other. We can understand both gifts – the gold of Caspar and the frankincense of Melchior.

Balthasar brought myrrh. Amid the prevailing joy of carol and hallelujah, the verse is sombre, ominous.

“Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb.”

Myrrh, a precious gum resin, ... used in ancient embalming processes, symbol of the inevitability of death. Does it strike a wrong note? Is this the Christmas theme? Christian theology would assert that is part of the great scheme of salvation. The incarnate God must suffer and die for the sins of men. But even for those of us who have gone forward from ancient theology, there is a distinctive invitation symbolically carried by the bitter perfume of myrrh.

Yes, death comes to us all. Even the ... babe who may live to the oldest age is no less exempt than any of the innumerable sages who have entered this life, rejoiced and mourned, labored and rested and then passed from the scene. But, why, you may ask, bring this into Christmas joy? Simply this, our human life here is limited by time. Some of us are given a more bountiful grant of years and health than others. ... Nevertheless we may rejoice and participate in the happy helpful ways of human living; sing the carols; share the warmth if Christmas joy, for life is worth the living and we believe that death is worth dying.

Sunlight and shadow, joy and grief, life and death .... This is the great antiphony of experience and our happiness is deepened by sensitive awareness to it.

The Christmas invitation is made up of many sounds, sights, smells and activities. Underneath it all is the great release of more light, the great joy that new human life ... and the strange and wonderful compulsion to blend service, song, sympathy, wonder, revelry, in a totality of experience which provokes the ancient prophecy and promise, “peace on earth, good will to men.”

Editor’s note: this sermon was handwritten and in several places (indicated by ellipsis) the handwriting is illegible.