Christmas Message: “Gift Wrap”
December 24th, 2018 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: Luke 2:1-20, Isaiah 9:2-7
There’s a Christmas tradition in my family (by default, not by intention) of late night Christmas Eve gift wrapping. Perhaps some of you still have gifts to wrap tonight. If so, I want to share an idea with you.
Furoshiki – Japanese art of folding and tying cloth as a wrapping for gifts. Furoshiki invites the recipient to pause in the opening of a present to appreciate the creative and thoughtful wrapping. It becomes part of the gift itself, rather than something that is torn away and discarded.
This year the part of the Christmas story that has stood out to me, is the angel’s announcement to the shepherds: this will be a sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger (Lk.2:12). The angel was even rather specific about the kind of cloths – Luke uses the Greek word sparganao. It refers to strips of cloth, wrapped snugly around an infant – swaddling clothes. As I mulled over this Christmas sign, I was delighted to find an article by Jeff Peabody in the December issue of Christianity Today, titled “The Gift of Wrapping”, which was filled with wonderful insights into Jesus’ gift wrap.
Swaddling is making something of a come-back in infant care these days – I’ve learned this in my new role as a grandmother this past year. Kara was given a couple swaddling wraps, a sack with strips of cloth and Velcro that held Amara’s arms snug at her side or across her chest while she slept. It reminded me of the years I worked as a labor and delivery nurse, wrapping a newborn snuggly in a receiving blanket and placing it into the arms of the new mother and father.
Over the centuries, swaddling an infant has been a sign that it is loved and cared for. The prophet Ezekiel speaks of Jerusalem’s abandonment as a baby that is not wrapped (16:4). But there is also an unpleasant side to swaddling as well. Swaddling has fallen out of fashion from time to time when parents and doctors have believed it was too restrictive, causing deformity by inhibiting natural development. Try to imagine for a moment, the newborn Jesus in the rough manger, lying on prickly straw, arms and legs straining against the tight bands. What would it have been like for this particular baby, this infant God incarnate, to be wrapped in swaddling clothes, unable to move in any direction, held fast, bound tight like a prisoner in a straightjacket? What would it have been like for the Creator of the universe to have his world narrowed so severely by the restrictive confines and limitations of a human body, of a helpless infant’s body, completely dependent on other humans for survival? What would it have been like for the Almighty to be wrapped in furoshiki, a gift to the world?
I believe there are times when we, too, feel restricted by our humanness and by the brokenness of this world. It’s integral to growing children and especially of teenagers that they push against the bounds that surround them. But even as adults we can feel as though we are wrapped tight, unable to move freely, our world narrowed and restricted. Perhaps this Christmas you feel bound tight by some limitation around you – held by the limitations of a job, or tied up in dysfunction and conflict within your family, maybe bound by anxiety or by depression, restricted by an aging body or by an illness? In his article, Jeff Peabody, a pastor of a church in Tacoma WA, shares how he felt locked in the debilitating symptoms of an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; boxed in mentally and physically by an endless loop of thoughts and fears.
God came to us, wrapped in furoshiki, a gift wrap that served as a sign and a metaphor for his entire life. The vastness of the heavens closed around Godself in the body of a baby and the tight wrapping of swaddling clothes. God stepping into our world, into our confines –that is the heart of the Good News! For in the same way that Jesus’ life started, at the end of His life Jesus is bound again, this time to a cross with cords and nails. Jesus willingly remained immobilized there on our behalf. His life ends as it began, his body carefully and lovingly wrapped once more in strips of cloth and then laid in a tomb. However, the story did not end there. The gift was unwrapped again, the strips of cloth set aside by the risen Christ. He broke the power of the bindings that held him in death and emerged into complete and total freedom, opening a way for us to do the same.
This Christmas I invite you to pause in the wrapping and unwrapping of gifts, to consider the wrapping of the greatest gift of all, the gift of God-With-Us. And as you unwrap that gift, may you experience the great love and glorious freedom God has given you in a Savior that understands your struggles; a Savior that has opened for you a way into a joy-filled future with hope for the day when we too will cast aside the bounds of earthly life to live with our Lord forever.
“I bring you good news of great joy for all people” (Lk.2:10)
Amen.
Closing Song: “Silent Night” # 164
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