This week, as an icebreaker for one of the numerous Zoom meetings I participated in, the person in charge of the meeting asked the question, “What is a Christmas gift that you have re-gifted?”
Surely, we all know about re-gifting. It is when one takes a gift given to them and then, in turn, gives it to somebody else — most often as if it were a new gift.
So, I wonder, what is one Christmas gift that you have re-gifted? The question made me think — and honestly, I can tell you that I cannot remember re-gifting anything recently. However, I do remember one time and it almost got me in trouble.
Because it almost got me in trouble, I can remember the year. It was 1995. A good friend of mine, who was a big cut up and jokester, went to New Orleans the year before for New Year’s Eve with his wife and another couple from the church I was serving. As they were walking down Bourbon Street, they saw a T-shirt in a store window. It immediately caught their eye and they thought, “Let’s buy that for our new pastor and send it to him anonymously. Let’s really confuse him and see if he can guess who sent it. The T-shirt read, “Jesus loves you! But the rest of us think you are an a--hole!”
Well, I can assure you that when I received that T-shirt the next week in a plain brown envelope with no return address and a postmark from out of town, I was dumb-founded. I decided to say nothing to anybody.
It took a week and then the church member who had sent the shirt could not take it anymore, and so he asked over lunch, “Hey, have you received any strange packages recently?” Well, we laughed and I swore that I would get him back, but I tucked that shirt in the back of my closet and forgot about it until next December.
The Chancel Choir, which was a rather raucous bunch, was going to have their annual Christmas party with a white elephant gift exchange. You know — where everyone brings an anonymous gift and everyone grabs one from under the tree. The goal of a white elephant gift exchange is to entertain partygoers rather than to gain a genuinely valuable or highly sought-after item. Therefore, I thought this would be the perfect gift, because no one will know it came from me.
Little did I know that recently one of our high school students had joined the choir. Yes, she was the one who grabbed my Christmas gift bag containing that T-shirt. In addition, when she pulled it out, she gasped and then turning to me, she said, as if I had never seen that word, “Oh, no, you can’t see this!” Then, when her parents saw the front of that T-shirt, her mother said, “Who would have given that?!”
So, what gifts have you given this week? I hope that none has gotten you in trouble. What is the best gift you have received?
The gospel writer John has a unique perspective of Christmas. For him it has nothing to do with Mary and Joseph and the baby born in Bethlehem. According to John, the message of Christmas is all about a gift given to us — “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” The gift of the presence. Christmas is the assurance that God is present with us. Nan Perkins reminded me this week of a quote from C.S. Lewis. “We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks incognito.”
According to John, the most important gift, the most profound gift, and yet a simple gift is the gift of presence. The most profound gift is to show up. John wants us to know that Jesus is the simple and yet profound gift of God’s presence among us.
Love shows up because that is what love does. It comes and stands by you and stands with you and will not let you go suffer alone.
But let me also suggest to you that the most profound gift you can give to another this year is your presence — standing with another — refusing to let her or him go through whatever it is alone. While you cannot be physically present with another during this pandemic, we can be present in so many other ways.
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Shive: God's presence and the most profound gift you can give
