The Greatest Gift
When I think back to the first Christmases I can remember, I can remember only one gift. A stuffed seal that would issue a loud bark if you hugged it hard enough. I hugged it hard enough so many times that, today, it no longer barks.
I cannot remember any other gifts. But that is not to say that I do not remember anything else. I remember plenty. I remember arriving at Granddad’s house after the long car drive to Kentucky, how he would greet me by saying in the deepest voice he could manage, “Big John!” and how he would hug me so hard I would almost bark and how his beard would prickle roughly against my cheek. I remember how my grandmother would prepare hot chocolate as an excuse for us all to gather at the table. I remember how at Grandpa and Grandma’s house (my other grandparents), there would be berries in the cereal each morning because they knew my brother and I loved berries. Grandpa and Grandma weren’t quite as huggy as Granddad, but they hugged us in other ways. Berries were one of them.
What these memories tell me is that, as a young child, the greatest gift I received was not a gift tied with a ribbon or a bow. It was not a gift I unwrapped. It was a gift that wrapped around me, embraced me, hugged me. It was the gift of another person who delighted in me. What I remember best from these first Christmases is being delighted in.
Not Correction, But Healing
Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest in Los Angeles and the founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention program in the world, preaches a simple gospel. God delights in you.
In his experience, gang members are not evil people who need to be fixed. They are diamonds covered in dirt, children of God who do not know it yet. The problem is not them, but the tragic wounds of their upbringing that keep them from the truth that God delights in them. Boyle writes that, “during Advent, we are called to prepare the way…to ‘make straight the path’ and make smooth what is rocky. … Our hardwiring is such that we hear these invitations as a demand to ‘straighten up’ or ‘get our act together’. But it’s not we who need changing—it’s our crooked path that needs to be smoothed…so we can be reached by God’s tenderness.”
Greg Boyle explains that a common question asked at Homeboy Industries is, “What’s the thorn underneath?” In other words, these former gang members are not viewed as bad people who need to be reformed, but as God’s children who have great wounds and need to be healed. In this light, the gospel is not that we are crooked people who need to be corrected, but wounded people who need to be healed.
And if that strikes you as being too warm and soft and fuzzy, as letting these hardened gangsters off the hook too lightly, it may help to remember that Jesus himself speaks in these very terms. When he’s eating with Levi the tax collector and others are grumbling that he hangs out with sinners—that is, bad people—he explains: “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick” (Luke 5:31). Jesus does not look around and see evil people. He sees wounded people who need to rediscover the truth that God loves them.
“She Has Become a Filthy Thing”
When the empire of Babylon conquered Israel and destroyed the temple and forcibly expelled the survivors from their homeland, many Israelites understood what happened in terms of God’s judgment. And, to be clear, they were not entirely wrong. It’s just that, as my grandfather would put it, they were putting the em-pha-sis on the wrong syl-la-ble. The biblical story is clear that the Israelites had strayed from God’s way of caring for each other. What happened was the natural consequence—which is another way to say “judgment”—as greed and pride grew into competition and oppression, and ultimately resulted in social disintegration and collapse.
But many Israelites interpret God’s judgment as a matter not just of what Israel had done, but who Israel was. Listen to this song of lament from Lamentations: “Jerusalem sinned grievously, so she has become a filthy thing; all who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans and turns her face away” (Lam 1:8). Through the lens of shame, these Israelites see God as one who has rejected them because they are a “filthy thing.” While they hope for restoration, there lingers the fear that, as the same song puts it, “you [God] have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure” (Lam 5:22).
“I Delight in You”
It is into this doubt and despair that Isaiah proclaims, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me…” Now, before we listen to a word that Isaiah says, it’s worth remembering that when the spirit of God descends upon Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, a voice from heaven declares, “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). In other words: “You are my child, and I delight in you.” With that good news echoing in his heart, Jesus proceeds to share the same message with others, and especially the wounded who have no inkling that God delights in them.
Returning to our scripture today, we can begin to trace the outlines of the same message in Isaiah’s prophecy. With the spirit of God upon him, Isaiah begins to proclaim in all sorts of ways God’s good news: “You are my child, and I delight in you.” Isaiah does not condemn and call for correction. Isaiah proclaims unconditional restoration: healing for the brokenhearted, freedom for the enslaved, comfort for the grieving. The language here echoes the laws in Leviticus about the jubilee year, which was a special occasion prescribed for every 50 years when all Israelite debts were cancelled and land was restored to its original owners. What is so radical about the jubilee year is that it obliterates the accumulations of savvy business people and restores a baseline equality in Israel. It prevents a meritocracy where the rich get richer and poor get poorer. It guards the dignity of every Israelite.
Cherished People Cherish People
Perhaps you’ve heard the adage, “Hurt people hurt people”? It echoes the wisdom that Father Greg Boyle expresses when he points to the underlying wounds (“the thorn underneath”) of the ex-gang members in his community. If we invert this adage, if we turn it inside out, I think we end up with the gospel on display in today’s scripture: “Cherished people cherish people.”
There is a subtle inside-out movement in Isaiah’s prophecy. Yes, God delights in Israel and will restore the Israelites, but the process doesn’t stop there. The people of Israel will become “priests of the Lord” and “ministers of … God” (Isa 61:6), which is to say, they will do unto others as God has done unto them. Isaiah imagines being clothed with “the garments of salvation” and “covered … with the robe of righteousness” (Isa 61:10). It is as though Isaiah is saying, the people of Israel will wear God’s delight in them “on their sleeves”; they will be unable to hide it. They will radiate God’s joy and will delight in others. Cherished people cherish people.
Greg Boyle tells the story of one of his ex-gang members, who came into work at Homeboy Industries on his day off. Thinking that maybe he’d gotten his days mixed up, Greg asked him, “What are you doing here?” “I just came by to get my fix,” he replies. “Of what?” Greg asked. “Love.” Again and again, Greg sees the same transformation. An ex-gang member hears the good news that God delights in them. They get off the streets. They begin to care for themselves and their family. They begin to delight in the community around them.
God’s delight is like a seed. It does not stop with the person who receives it. It grows into all kinds of restoration (cf. Isa 61:11). It grows into delighting in others, actually wanting to be in their company. It transforms life from a battle or an obligation or a test into a gift.
When we try to be good, to measure up, or when we try to save other people, we ultimately burn out because we’re not in control, and it’s exhausting when you try to do what cannot be done. But, as Greg puts it, when we let go of saving others and can simply savor them, that’s when the real saving happens. When we know God’s delight in us and we delight in others, that’s when the saving really happens.
My first Christmas memories are, I think, the truest. It’s not things that save me. Nor is it anything I can do or achieve. It’s the good news that I am delighted in. Or as Jesus heard on the banks of the Jordan, “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.”
Prayer
Holy God,
Whose good news seems too good to be true—
We instinctively divide our world up
Into good and evil, winners and losers, saved and not,
And in the process miss out on your delight
In all your children.
Restore us to your embrace, your cherishment,
Where we can take it easy
And savor others around us,
Trusting that we are all being saved in your love.
In Christ, whose good news we believe: Amen.
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