‘What can I give him, poor as I am?’

Preacher: Trudy Payne

What do you give the person who has everything?  Or, as the carol puts it: ‘What can I give him, poor as I am?’  We’re going to consider that question shortly, and note that the readings from Isaiah and the Psalm are about bringing gifts to a king, mostly of gold. 

But first, a cartoon.  You’ve probably seen it already…three kings bearing the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh towards the stable and the one in front turns round and says: ‘Remember, if anyone there asks…we’re all from one household.’

Time for a reality check, I think.  Almost every detail of that cartoon, of almost every Christmas crib, card or painting, is wrong if you look at what the gospel actually says.  They were wise men, not kings, and there is nothing to say that there were three of them.  Jesus was a small child, not a baby and the family lived in a house.  One other standard feature of most Christmas scenes is that the shepherds and the wise men appear together at the stable.  That’s wrong too; the shepherds went to the stable, the wise men didn’t.  Some crib scenes, though, are more true to the gospel.  Like this one

which is olive wood from Bethlehem, and which shows just the Holy Family, a shepherd, three sheep and what I think is a donkey! The only thing on which everyone is agreed is that the purpose of all this activity was to bring gifts fit for a king.  So what do you give the person who has everything?  I’ve a feeling that the answer for us might not be gold, frankincense and myrrh.  It might be something else…

So how, indeed why, did the gospel story change so radically and, as far as we know, so early in the life of the church.  The wise men were from Persia; they were learned and wise, and they sought truth in the stars. They may have been priests of the Zoroastrian religion and they were known to have used star charts: astrologers or astronomers – there was no difference in those days, they just studied the stars. Their arrival triggered a whole series of events, and the birth of a new king, expected for so long, was suddenly breaking news, and had happened just where the prophets said.  So what was he like, this infant king receiving the gifts associated with kings, priests and the dying?

That’s where the picture of the stable at Bethlehem comes in.That’s what the early church saw as the nature of God’s kingdom.Around the King of Kings in that stable, kneel shepherds (the lowest of the low, but local people) and kings (the rulers, but foreigners).Around the King of Kings kneel animals.Around the King of Kings kneel, in most depictions, a white man, a black man, and an eastern-looking man.It’s difficult to know when this, completely invented, scene became accepted as ‘gospel truth’.A lot of Christian traditions date from Victorian times, but this is much older. The ‘three kings’ were given names and back-stories and were widely believed to be buried in Cologne Cathedral. But it’s a wonderful picture of inclusion, of a kingdom with a universal reach.Only one woman, though, but without Mary, of course, none of this would have been possible. A wonderful picture of inclusion: such a pity that the church hasn’t lived up to it.  But that’s another story…let’s go back to the stable.

So, gifts are offered at the stable.  What are we bringing to the King of Kings?  Part of the answer is in the carol I’ve just quoted, because it answers the question with ‘what I can I give him?’  ‘Give my heart’.  All we have to offer is ourselves, as we did on New Year’s Eve when we said ‘yes’ to God. 

And if we’re wondering what that might look like

today, let’s consider another, well-known passage from Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus divides people up according to how they treated him.  When Jesus was cold, hungry, in prison and so on, one group of people saw him and helped.  ‘What?’ they said, ‘but where were you?’   Jesus’ reply shouldn’t surprise us: ‘I was the abused child, the homeless man, the unpopular colleague, the black girl arrested when a white girl knocks her to the ground and kicks her (that’s a real and all too common occurrence), the lonely neighbour, the bullied person with learning difficulties.  I was there in many other people too – you just didn’t recognize me.’

‘What can I give him, poor as I am?’  That’s what, and I think I’ve answered my original question. What we do for others we do for him; that’s what we give the person who has everything, that’s what we give the King of Kings’.                         

Amen