What do you want for Christmas? I hope there’s somebody in your life who is asking that question. I am not one of those who thinks we should do away with gift-giving at Christmas. Yes, it gets out of hand. And yes, it’s very commercial. But still, gift-giving is a part of the joy of the season. Let’s not throw it away.
So, what do you want for Christmas? Those of a certain age can remember when the answer to that was framed in a silly song, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!” Remember that?! Sung by a six-year-old moppet trying to figure out what had become of her choppers. And you think pop music today is pointless? Hey, ours is the generation that spawned not only the “two front teeth” song, but also such inspirational wonders as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and that profoundly spiritual number, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”? You say they don’t write music like they used to? Let’s be glad they don’t!
But, now, really, what do you want for Christmas? I have never been good at answering that question. I have a hard time deciding what to ask for. Long about December 20th, despairing of any hints from me, my son and my daughter and my wife call each other up and ask, “What does dad want?” They cannot figure it out, because I don’t know myself what I want. You see, I was trained early on not to want things we couldn’t afford. I got introduced early to the peculiarities of Santa Claus’s budget, learning in my childhood that Santa’s budget was suspiciously similar to the finances of a postman trying to keep the house warm and put clothes on his growing boys. There were no frills in Santa’s budget! So I learned early not to want something that was out of reach anyway.
Thus, in answer to the question, what do I want for Christmas, one year I tried to go super-spiritual. I said to my family, don’t give me anything. There is nothing that I need and nothing that I want, so take what you would have spent on me and put it in the International Missions Offering. Just give it to missions, and I will be happy. Well, that was a struggle. First, they didn’t think I meant that. They know that sometimes we say things just to impress, but we don’t really mean them. And second, they felt that I had to have something to open, something under the tree. A slip of paper saying we gave a hundred dollars to missions just didn’t get it. No, they said, that’s what you say you want. But come on, what do you really want for Christmas?
Isn’t it true that what we think we want may not be what we really want? What we suppose we want at the moment may not be what we ultimately want. We may find out that down deep, beneath the surface, there is something we didn’t even know we wanted, but it is the best gift of all. Joseph found that out. Joseph, the husband of Mary, discovered that what he thought he wanted was not what he really wanted, nor was it what he got for that first Christmas. I
For one thing, Joseph thought he wanted to be rid of an embarrassing problem. He thought he wanted to be clear of something that was tarnishing his reputation. But Joseph found out that what he really wanted was to love and to be loved. All Joseph really wanted for Christmas was not a good reputation, but the love and companionship of someone he cherished.
What was embarrassing Joseph? A pregnant fiancé, and all the talk around town. What were they saying about him behind his back? Did they think him an idiot to believe this cockamamie story about a child of the Holy Spirit? Joseph had an embarrassing problem.
Now the Scripture puts a positive spin on this when it says that Joseph was a righteous man, unwilling to expose Mary to public disgrace, and so he planned to dismiss her quietly. That’s the positive spin. But I cannot help but wonder whether much of his resolve to put Mary in the closet had to do with his own embarrassment. You know, we are complex creatures, and almost everything we do has mixed motives. Was he concerned about Mary, or was he more concerned about his own embarrassment?
Just as the business of giving and receiving has mixed motives in it. When we give a gift, it looks as though we want that certain someone to have what they want. But it’s more than that. It’s about our own feelings, isn’t it? When I give a gift, it’s about wanting to be accepted. When I give you something, I say, “I hope you will like it.” But what I really mean is, “Please tell me I have not done something off the wall, so embarrassing that it will crack my fragile ego.”
I don’t know about you, but I tend to do blitzkrieg shopping. Without any real notion of what I am going for, I head into the shopping mall determined to get something – just what, I don’t know, but something. And to get something that is at least not an embarrassment. Usually that kind of gift brings a reaction something like, “Well, I guess I can use this.” And on more than one occasion the response, “You really don’t know my tastes, do you, after forty-plus years of marriage?”
Ouch! That means it was all about me, wasn’t it? It was all about my avoiding embarrassment. There wasn’t much there about giving somebody something meaningful. Like Joseph, trying to figure out what to do with this embarrassing woman in his life.
But God spoke to Joseph and said, “Do not be afraid.” Do not be afraid of what they will say. Do not be afraid of your own anxieties. Take this moment and make it a redemptive one. Just love Mary. Love her more than you love yourself. Embrace her. She needs you. She needs you – not quiet confinement, nor the whispers of gossipy relatives, nor the contempt of self-righteous neighbors, nor a glitzy package from the store. Mary needs you, Joseph. And so Joseph learned that although he thought he wanted to be rid of an embarrassing problem, God showed him that what he really wanted, deeper down, was to love and be loved. God shows us that what we really want for Christmas was the love and companionship of those we cherish.
II
There’s a second thing. There’s something else Joseph thought he wanted, but when he looked at it, he found it was not what he really wanted at all. Joseph thought he wanted to live out a normal life, doing what other people do, getting by, just an ordinary guy. But Joseph found that what he really wanted, when he got down to it, was to be significant. Joseph thought he wanted a regular, garden-variety life. But Joseph discovered that what he really wanted for Christmas was to do what God had called him to do.
There is so much we’d like to know about Joseph. Who were his parents, how old was he, what other interests did he have besides carpentry, how did he handle the young Jesus? Lots of things we would like to know, but we don’t. Could it be that that is because he was a modest, quiet person? An ordinary man, with nothing to distinguish him? Just the average fellow, no feats of skill or brawny muscle or powerful intellect? You would not have picked him out of the crowd. You would not have turned to him for leadership. Just a guy named Joe, that’s all. I resemble that remark!
And maybe that’s all he wanted out of life, or thought he did. He thought he wanted an ordinary home and family, wife and kids, steady work and three meals on the table. Nothing special, just normal. But then God said, Joseph, that’s not enough. I have something special for you. I have a part for you to play in the plan of salvation. Joseph, you think you want normal and ordinary. But if you dig down deep in your heart, you will acknowledge that what you really want is to be extraordinary. You want something that has your name on it, something to do in the plan of salvation.
Oh, friends, too many of us have settled for normal. We have settled for being average. We want to be neither more nor less than the next person. We just want to keep the bills paid, maintain good health, and get by. We have settled for everydayness.
And we have not allowed ourselves to see that down deep what we really want is to be something special for our God. We have not let ourselves believe that what will ultimately satisfy us is to participate in God’s work. But if we listen, we will hear God telling us that He has something special for us to do. Like Joseph, if we listen, we will discover that what we really want is to be what God needs us to be in His Kingdom. Not ordinary, but extraordinary.
William Carey was a shoemaker in England, sitting at his little bench, repairing shoes. He could have made a modest but comfortable living. He could have lived on the respect of his family, the esteem of his neighbors, and the admiration of his fellow Christians. But above Carey’s bench he kept a map of the world, and at the center of that map the great subcontinent of India, where there were millions who did not know Christ. As Carey hammered on shoe soles, the Holy Spirit hammered on his soul, and Carey began to dream of being a missionary. A modest man, without much education, with no finances, with not even the support of English Baptists, who put down his ideas, William Carey decided that what he really wanted was not to be an ordinary shoemaker in an English town, but to be a missionary for Christ in faraway India. Do you know William Carey’s life motto? Do you know what William Carey came to believe? “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” I want you to say that with me, because it puts the lie to ordinariness: “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” Eight years in India before the first convert came; years spent learning the Hindi language, translating the Bible, writing a dictionary. Seemingly an obscure life. But today the world honors William Carey, not because he stayed with what he at first thought he wanted, to be nobody, but because he listened to God’s call and found that what he really wanted was to be somebody for the Kingdom.
I just wonder today who of us has settled for ordinariness, thinking that is what we want. But if we listen to the Spirit, what we really want for Christmas is to be somebody in the Kingdom. What we really want is, like Joseph, to go beyond average and to do what God wants us to do. There is something special for each of us; listen to your heart. Listen.
III
But friends, in the last analysis, Joseph also thought that what he wanted was just a few people to cherish him. Joseph thought he needed to have just a few folks to be there for him. Not too many. He didn’t require adoring throngs or applauding crowds. He seemed content to live his life out in small ways, in a village called Nazareth, with a sweet little wife and some children to carry on his name. Like everybody else, Joseph wanted just a little respect and a degree of acceptance. That’s not so much to ask for, is it? Not to be alone. Family and friends for support.
But look what Joseph got! Look at what Joseph received! He got for Christmas what all of us can have; he got Emmanuel! He got God with us! He got the very presence of the eternal God, right here, right now, invested in his life, and immersed in his world. Joseph thought he wanted just intimacy with Mary and two or three rugrats to care for him when he got old. But Joseph found that what he really wanted for Christmas, every day, all days, was the presence of the living God. The word who became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
Oh, the great heart hunger of every human being is to know God. We have an aching void inside that only the love of God can fill. We have a nobodiness that only the power of God can remove. We have a guilt that only Christ can heal, a shame that only He can handle. We have issues that only the presence of the Lord can cure.
That’s where the real mess lies with the commercialism of Christmas. We use things to reach out for love, but it does not work. We give gifts and receive them, thinking they will make the aching voids go away, but they do not. Someone has said that Christmas is giving things they do not need to people we do not like, paid for with money we do not have, to gain a satisfaction we cannot keep. Sadly true! When all we really want for Christmas, for any day, for any season, is to know that we are embraced by the love of the Father.
And that is precisely what we do have. That is our gift. “Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely, all divine.” Deep down, bottom line, we want to know God. We want to feel the presence and the power of the Ancient of Days, throned in glory and yet embedded in our lives. The angel said to Joseph, “God is with us”, and Joseph awoke from his sleep. He got what he really wanted for Christmas, the love that would not let him go.
My most memorable Christmas came when I was six years old, almost seven, exactly the same age as my granddaughter Olivia is now. 1944, a rough year in our family. My little brother had been born in February, and right after that our mother went into post-partum depression. She had to be sent to a sanitarium for nearly a year. My desperate father did what he knew to do for his sons – he imported both grandmothers and a great-aunt, and found that they spent as much time arguing with one another as they did taking care of us. It was a rough year. But when Christmas came, my father, exhausted not only by the turmoil in his home but also by the demands of his work as a postman, pulled me up into his lap next to the Christmas tree, and told me that he understood. He knew there weren’t many toys. He knew it had been tough on a small boy not to have his mother around. But he told me, this father of mine, that he loved me, he understood what I was feeling, and soon mother would be home and we would be all right. I do not remember all that he said. But I do remember sixty-three years later that I felt loved. I do remember feeling understood. I did know that my father was in my world. I knew that he would never fail me nor forsake me.
And that is all I really wanted that Christmas. That is all that any of us really wants for any Christmas. To know that our Father God is with us. To see that He understands. To find Him in our world, now and forever. God Himself is with us; Emmanuel. That’s all anybody could ever really want for Christmas.
