’Tis Blessed to
Receive
The light shines
in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Make no mistake about it, these opening lines of the Fourth
Gospel are the evangelist John’s story of the Nativity, of the Incarnation, of
God in Christ. No manger, no Mary and Joseph, no shepherds. John pushes it back,
all the way back, to before the “In the beginning…” of Creation itself. Before
the spirit and breath of God hovered over the waters of chaos, the darkness of
nothingness – no-thing-ness. Then there was a beacon of light cutting a way
through the darkness, neither dispelling the darkness, nor quenched or absorbed
by the darkness. Leaving open the question: Will we receive the light? Will we
walk in the light? Will we become children of God? Or, will we choose to walk
in darkness?
If we are lucky, we have all known someone who walks or has
walked in this light. Or, maybe we have heard of such people: Saul of Tarsus
who becomes St. Paul; Mother Theresa; Martin King; The Dali Llama. I have been
luck to know more than my share, and lucky for me they keep popping into and
out of my life all the time.
Take the story behind this tattered, well-worn old stole I
wear for Christmas and Easter every year. It belonged to my first rector and
life-time mentor out of Seminary. The Reverend Frank Mauldin McClain wore it at
his ordination, throughout his life in parish ministry, and was vested with it on
the day of his funeral, December 18, 2000. He had been recovering from surgery
and radiation treatments when things took a turn. When I got past the shock of
the news of Frank’s passing, I got on a train from Baltimore to Charleston, SC
to be with his family, a family that had all in one way or another contributed
so much to the earliest days of my priesthood – and there was much for me to
learn. Still is! For all of them, like Frank, are children of the Light.
Just days after I was ordained a priest, Frank was so
gracious as to assign me to celebrate the Christmas Eve “midnight service.” Now,
instead of being the deacon at the side of the celebrant, I was setting the
table to celebrate my first Eucharist: Christmas Mass! After carefully setting
the corporal out, the chalice and paten, having received the bread from Taylor
Stevenson, the Associate Rector, another mentor and friend, I returned to
receive the water and wine. I walked over to the far side of the altar where Taylor
was standing, and then the most surprising thing happened. As I reached out for
the two cruets the rope cincture that held my cassock-alb in place, and my
ordination stole tucked in around my waist, fell. To the floor. A circle of rope
around my feet. The look on Taylor’s face was priceless as he whispered, “Just
go on ahead as if nothing has happened.” Which I did. A few weeks later Frank
invited The Reverend Canon Chester Larue, a member of diocesan staff, out to
Christ Church to teach me and another new priest, among other things, a more
secure way to tie that rope around the waist!
Most of us have heard countless Christmas sermons, but the
one I remember most was the one Frank had just preached that evening. I had
asked him for a copy, and I re-read it often. After recalling his most
memorable Christmas morning as a young boy when there was a motion-picture
projector under the tree, and the journey through feeling joy, to almost
embarrassment and unworthiness to get such a magical present, and finally back
to joy and gratitude, he wrapped things up in these words:
“Christmas, we have often emphasized, has
been and is a time of giving. The letters that come in the mail, stack upon
stack of them, tend to underline those words of Jesus, “It is more blessed to
give than to receive.” This is recorded in the Book of Acts and not in the
Gospels. That of course is true – and yet, never forget it, Christmas is also a
time to receive a gift, wonderful truth.
“We will each of us receive some special
gift tomorrow from someone who loves us. More wonderful even, we will each of
us, singly and together, receive a gift from someone who loves us even more,
from God.
“In any of our lives there is a manger, now
doubtless empty, cold, malodorous, surrounded by beasts – the heartbreaks,
tragedies, and disappointments of our lives. But it is there that you will find
the child, new born, if you will look on him and be open to receive God’s gift.
“It can come to you this Christmas, that
gift, that birth within you of the Christ Child, when you become aware of and
touch, perhaps only fleetingly, the whole and complete person God intended you
to be; that God intends you to be. It can happen when you are alone or it can
happen when you are in company. It can happen here, at this present Bethlehem,
this Holy Table, when and where you receive tangible evidence, symbols of bread
and wine, God’s Body and Blood, God’s life.
“As in receiving any real gift, your
response will be astonishment, humility (Why me?), and deep, restorative joy –
to which you can only say Gratia, Thank You, Eucharist, Grace!
“Be open today to receive that gift,
open-handed, offering nothing but your need, your empty manger. Centuries of
experience assure you that God’s gift is being offered, God’s Son, born within
you. Arise and go out into the world with astonishment with humility, with joy.
Respond in whatever language you may know, Thank you, Eucharisto, Gratia. Your
gratitude will show forth – and – a Merry Christmas.”
When I got off the train, I went straight to the McClain
home in Charleston and shared with the family the whole of Frank’s Christmas
Sermon, which most of them had not heard that late night on Christmas Eve.
Later that day they gifted me this stole which at once shocked me, humbled me,
and filled me with joy – it was just as Frank had said it is when we open our
hearts to receive as well as give that we “receive a gift from someone who
loves us even more, from God.
A few days later, after I returned home from Charleston, I
was opening Christmas cards, and among them was a note from Frank. It read,
“Bless
you all! You can never know how much your e-mail correspondence has meant to
me, particularly over these last months. Now let us all have a wonderful
Christmas. Your Christmas should certainly be bright with all your little (now
not so little) ones. And you have yourselves. We are now entering a new phase
of getting back to the fullness of life. And doing what we can to do the same
for John V-H. [A mutual friend]
“May your coming year be bright and the kind
of world you deserve.
“With love, Frank/Missie”
It was posted December 6, 2000 – nine days before the sudden
heart attack that sent Frank to eternal life with his Savior after just
finishing a long period of radiation for his cancer. This note, it turns out,
would be Frank’s last gift to me. At the funeral, his friend Alanson Haughton
said, “I can almost hear Frank saying to me right now, ‘Dear boy, its true!
It’s true!’ That inner voice has given me new hope in the promise of
Resurrection and reconfirms that we may have lost a friend for the moment but
when our time to travel comes Frank will be there to welcome us in. We have all
been praying for Frank to get better, but now he is well!”
Now he is well. Words for us all to receive and remember. Alan
really summed up the Good News of Jesus Christ in just a few words. This is why
I wear this well-worn tattered old stole on Christmas. It helps me to remember
the gift of a profound truth that Frank had given to us Christmas Eve that year.
Yes, it is blessed to give, but it is just as blessed to receive – “We
will each of us receive some special gift tomorrow from someone who loves us.
More wonderful even, we will each of us, singly and together, receive a gift
from someone who loves us even more, from God.”
Or, as John the evangelist put it so long ago, “But to all
who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of
God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of
man, but of God.” Dear ones, it’s true, it’s true!
In the immortal words of Dickens’s Tiny Tim, “God bless us,
every one!” Amen.
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