Christmas Presents or Presence?

What is becoming of God these days? One might well wonder. When asked in a recent Advent children’s sermon I heard what Christmas was all about, one bright-eyed little boy sounded forth immediately: “Presents!” Or so we adults all thought, and laughed as we are often wont to do in such moments – because of the candor, the simplicity, and the innocent joy with which children express themselves. As the name of an Art Linkletter television show from ancient times put it, “Kids Say the Darnedest Things.” Of course they do, and just as surely this is the heart of wisdom, one of the “darnedest” things we ever encounter.

Now, it could be that the eager child that Sunday morning knew more than our adult minds allowed. Maybe what he was really saying, without knowing anything about homonyms, was: “Presence!” which, in a certain sense, comes to the same thing. After all, we give gifts – at Christmas, and otherwise – to offer some sense to others that we are there with them, not only in the act of giving but in all that precedes it: in the deliberation over the gift and in the care of choosing, in the sacrifice involved in the purchase, in the patience of seeking and finding; and, yes, in the hope of giving delight and happiness. All of these are marks of the presents we give. But they are also vestiges of presence, which is what every gift finally strives to offer for those we love.

And so, what is becoming of God? The little guy that Sunday morning got it exactly right: presents, which we celebrate in simple and familiar stories: about an unexpected and untimely pregnancy; about a father’s generosity in seeking to shelter his beloved from shame; about dreams that offer generous solutions to such human quandaries; about shepherds at their posts being summoned by angels as witnesses to wonder, and magi guided by a star to the cradle of a “king.” Herod of course, an unreconstructed literalist, will get it all wrong, as we also will if we forget that the greatest gifts are often what we least expect, and that generosity is the most powerful force for the good.

At the heart of the tales we are about to hear in the days ahead lies the simple announcement Joseph receives in a dream: “Don’t be afraid!” and, when it’s time to say what it all means, to name it quite simply: “God-is-with-us.”

Presents, or presence: does it really matter after all? Aren’t these finally one and the same, if we have a poet’s eyes to see and a lover’s ears to hear? This Christmas, in our giving and in our receiving, that little boy’s outburst of unintended wisdom might guide us, as will the ancient stories we’ll soon read and hear again. As with the gesture of a child’s birth, which ministers from pulpits all around the world will again proclaim as the most unexpected and desired of God’s presents (presence), we too might be offering “Jesus” in our giving. You know, the one whose name is the best of gifts, the presence that means: “I’m with you.” “Don’t be afraid!” “I’m sorry!” “I love you!” Incarnation: God be-coming among us, again and again.

Mark S. Burrows
Theologian-in-Residence at Old South Church (Boston) and
Professor of the History of Christianity at Andover Newton Theological School

Advent vigil

Advent is a season when we pray for God’s coming among us, with an audacity that borders on the absurd. God, coming here and now? It all seems a most unlikely expectation, now as "then" in a forlorn corner of the Roman Empire, Bethlehem. What is it that this season re-minds us of, in its call to watch and wait, to keep vigil? What does it mean, in Advent, that we find ourselves as a people shaped by the hope of this may-be-coming? It means at least this: that Advent invites us to discover once again that primal posture of receptivity, to open our hearts and minds to a coming we cannot know how to expect – and one that may interrupt us inconveniently, as happened to the simple shepherds in the ancient story we will hear once again this year. Keeping vigil? Waiting and listening for God’s be-coming among us? Could we find a posture of heart more out of keeping with the frenzy of this season, more counter-cultural than this?

But perhaps this is precisely the point.

T. S. Eliot once wrote that "time and the bell have buried the day." But the problem facing us is of a different magnitude, taking forms of busyness the poet could not have imagined. Most of us hardly hear the sound of bells anymore, though we are hurried (and the day buried) by other sounds: mostly the electronic music of cell phones, with their exotic and enticing rings sounding from our pockets and purses. The crowd of people pushing through the store aisles, vying for coveted parking spaces near the mall, haggard in their hurry, often with phones pressed to their ears or "Bluetooth" devices strapped to their ears; workers and tourists and shoppers crowding the busy sidewalks of Boston, as in every other city I suppose, their eyes glazed with purpose as they set themselves to the task of buying and preparing for the relentless coming of Christmas: is this an appropriate cradle for a season of waiting, of quiet expectation? Hardly imaginable, and usually far from our experience.

The carols of this season, perhaps more effectively than the fervent and sincere pulpit oratory of pastors and priests, interrupt the madness and call us toward a different vigil. One line of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" often sounds in my mind this season, re-minding me that whatever else incarnation means, it has to do with how "the hopes and fears of all the years/are met in Thee." With poetic license, we might learn to sing these lines another way: “The hurry and the worry of all the years” – including this one – “are met in Thee” O Christ! Such songs invite us to celebrate Advent as a time of vigil, re-mind-ing us of what it means to wait and to hope for God’s be-coming-among-us.

O holy child of Bethlehem, descend on us we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.

Be born in us. . .today: we await God’s be-coming-among-us as a “presence” we long to know in the hopes and fears, in the hurry and worry, in the waiting and in the wondering of our years, all of them and this one. And so we keep vigil in this season, praying that God’s advent might happen not only then and there, in some past or future scenario, but now and here in the ordinary texture of our living – in our hopes as in our fears. Which is to say, in the absences that call forth our desire, and invite us toward this may-be-coming-of-God again. Emmanuel: God’s goodness revealed in our ordinary flesh; God’s beauty veiled in our broken human love; God’s truth found in the hurried pressures of this season and in the interrupting joys of song and of silence. Advent vigil even here, even now. Audacious? Yes. Absurd. Surely so. And, too, as true as the deepest arc of our longing.

Mark S. Burrows
Professor of the History of Christianity and
Theologian-in-Residence at Old South Church, Boston

[A longer version of this Advent meditation can be found in a longer article of mine, published as "Vigils and the Rest" in the current issue of the journal Weavings (November/December, 2007); it can be ordered at: www.weavings.org, or found in the ANTS library.]