Gifts
Matthew 2:9-12
Happy New Year! 2025 brings us many opportunities to hope for the future. But 2025 also brings us a reality of the fractured society we live in. As I write this to you, a car has driven through a crowd celebrating the New Year on Bourbon street in New Orleans and a Tesla Cybertruck was left in front of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas to explode. As of this writing, one has died and seven were injured.
Hope isn’t something for when times are easy. When the Magi were visiting the toddler Jesus from the east, times were hard. Uprisings against the Roman Empire were violently crushed. The wealth gap was growing. Corruption was rampant. This hardship created fertile soil for hope in a King. The prophets of the past promised a Messiah, an anointed king from the ancient line of kings that established the Kingdom of Israel.
And the first people outside of Mary, Joseph, and the prophets Elizabeth and Zachariah who held this hope in Jesus were three foreigners. Three gentiles from the East who gained access to God’s revelation a different way. And their response to this hope was to pay homage and give gifts, gifts befitting a king they believed Jesus to be.
I wonder how surprised they were to find a toddler in a working class family in Nazareth. Nonetheless, they gave their gifts. And those gifts were full of meaning. Gold because, well, what other precious thing do you give a king but Gold? Myrrh, the fragrant oil used to anoint kings. Frankincense, used to embalm the dead. All gifts that forebode Jesus’ story.
And Jesus’ story was the fulfillment of the hope of the people of Isreal, suffering under the thumb of Roman oppression.
What gifts can we give, or be, to fulfill the hopes that our world has today? A world full of poverty and sorrow? A world full of rage and violence? One gift certainly is rooted in our story. A story that reminds us that the point of our life is to love God, and to love one another.
What kind of gifts can we be that give meaning to our story of love? Maybe it is to be a people who follow the primary call on our lives from God to uplift the downtrodden and poor. Maybe it is to bring to life the teachings of Jesus that named some of the most important work is feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, care to the sick, presence to the imprisoned, and clothes to the naked.
Let’s keep giving the gifts God is calling us to give and to be in 2025. Happy New Year!
