Re-Gifting Christmas: The Wedding Ring
December 18, 2016
Dr. Tom Pace
I John 4:16-19
John 13:34-35

Our first Scripture lesson is from the First Epistle of John and I invite you to follow along in your Inside Out Habits Guide.
So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.
(I John 4:16-19 NRSV)
Let’s pray. O God, open us up. Open our eyes that we might see, our ears that we might hear. Open our hearts that we might feel, and then, God, open our hands that we might give. Amen.
Cody Garrett is a member of our music staff, he plays keyboards in our Encounter service and out at our Gethsemane campus and does a lot of arranging for our band. When we were planning our re-gifting series… this whole series is on re-gifting, that we receive and then we pass on. He shared this story. He said, “My grandfather James - also known as Papa - was the spiritual leader and anchor for our family. He and my grandmother read Scripture and prayed together each evening. He sang in the church choir and he organized an outreach program at church visiting disabled homebound members. My grandmother helped to organize the frequent church blood drives and my grandpa always seemed to have a bandage on his arm from giving.
“He was a responsible leader for his wife and three daughters and I was the first boy to come along as the first grandson. After his passing a couple of years ago, my grandmother wore his wedding ring and held on to it. She then re-gifted it to me when I prepared for marriage last December. As I wear the ring, it now signifies the covenant between me and Marissa and between us and God. But also my responsibility to lead the future of my family with the same love and care that Papa taught me. The ring is monogrammed with the initials of my grandparents along with their wedding date and I hope it will be re-gifted and have the same significance for generations.”
I want to just bring up again in review, for those of you who are with us every week, our three basic principles of re-gifting. First, that the most important things cannot be bought or manufactured but only received as a gift. The second principle is that you cannot give away something you have not yet received. And third, when you receive those very important things as a gift they carry with them the expectation that they be re-gifted. And in that re-gifting the gift is multiplied.
So today we’re going to be talking about the gift of love. Re-gifting love. And I want to talk about four things. First, the source of love. Second, the acceptance of the gift. Third, the delivery of the gift, and fourth, the manner of the gift.
First is the source of the gift. Papa gave love to his wife and so many others, but the gift did not begin with him. He did not create love. That love came to him. It was given to him. He wasn’t the source of it; the source of it was God. It’s pretty specific. It says, “God is love.” God is the source of it.
We don’t manufacture it. You don’t create it by mental energy. No, it’s a gift from God.
So any time you see love just know that it is of God. It is divine.
When I see a mother holding a small child and nurturing that child, there’s something of God there that’s divine. When one of you takes a poinsettia to one of our homebound members and sits with that person for ten or fifteen minutes or just expresses our concern, there’s something divine. When I see two people praying together, there’s something divine in the expression of love for one another. Every time you see it, know that you’re catching a glimpse, you’re beholding God. God is the source of all love.
Second, I want to talk about the acceptance of that gift. You see, a gift isn’t just given; it also has to be received, to be accepted.
My wife does much of our Christmas shopping and she ordered a lot online this year. It seems to be more and more that way. She ordered something and it didn’t come. So I checked the little tracking number that you click on and it said that it had been delivered. So I called the place and said, “Hey, we never received this.” And the person on the customer service line said, “Well, it says it’s been delivered.” I said, “Well, it was not received.” And they said, “Well, it’s been delivered.” And I said, “Well, it’s not been received.” We kind of went on and on that way. It took a while and finally I said, “Well, I’m just going to tell the credit card company to cancel it.” And they said “Okay, okay, we’ll send you another one.” They finally did that.
Then I made a mistake in something I was ordering. Somehow I’m not sure exactly how it happened but I managed to send it to my daughter’s old address in Austin, not to our house. She doesn’t even live there anymore. She’s back here. So we had to send one of her old friends over to snatch it off the front porch of that place and bring it to us from Austin.
Now my point is really simple and it’s that one has to receive a gift, one has to accept a gift.
Isn’t it interesting that we use the term when talking about becoming a Christian we say, “Have you accepted Christ?” What we’re saying is, “Have you accepted this gift of love that God is offering you?”
I think that’s what I John 4:16 meant when he says, “So we have known and believed the love God has for us.” We have accepted this gift.
You see, sometimes what we do is that we don’t want to receive a gift of love. We don’t want to accept it. I suspect that you can think of times when someone has given you a gift of love and you just weren’t sure you wanted to enter into that kind of relationship. You wanted to hold someone at arm’s length. Either because you were afraid there’d be an expectation that you return that love, or because you were just afraid.
I want to invite you today to accept the gift of love that God has for you. That’s what Christmas is about. We talk about it as a gift. To accept the gift of love that God has for you. To put away your reservations. To stop holding God at arm’s length. To simply receive it as a gift and know just how much God loves you. Because the gift of love that comes to you through Jesus Christ - it was meant for you. Accept it.
The Second Scripture reading this morning comes from the Gospel of John, chapter 13:34-35. You will find it in your Inside Out section of your bulletin. Please listen as I read.
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35 NRSV)
The thing I like best about Cody’s story, about the wedding ring, is that it’s such an obvious example of how God’s love is delivered. It’s delivered through human beings. Papa gave love to his wife and then that love was then given to Cody who shares that with his wife and then with others. It is the delivery system and it’s you and me. God’s love is always delivered through human beings.
So that’s why Christmas is so essential. It’s because if God loves us then he has to deliver that love by coming himself. God was born in human form. That’s the delivery system.
I find it interesting that if you think about it, he chose to be born of Mary, born by a human being. The delivery system for God’s love is you and me. I want you to think about who are the people who have delivered love into your life. Maybe a parent, a spouse, a child, a neighbor, a friend. Who were those who were a part of the delivery system? It’s always through human beings.
The Scripture says it very clearly: “A new commandment I give you. As I have loved you, so you now love one another.” Have you ever wondered why they call it a new commandment? “A new commandment I give you.”
In Israel the most important commandment is called the Shema. It says, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, The Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your mind, with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength.” That’s it.
But Jesus says, “I add to that a new commandment I give you. As I have loved you now you love one another.” You pass that love on.
There’s a difference, you see, with reflexive love. Reflexive love goes this way: when you say, “I love you, you love me.” It goes back and forth. Here’s what Jesus says about that in Luke. He says, “If you only love the people who love you, what good is that? Even the sinners do that.”
No, he’s saying that Christian love is transitive love. It comes from God into us. We don’t have to manufacture it; we receive it as a gift. And then we pass it on. We don’t pay it back, we pay it forward. It comes from God through us.
If you’re having difficulty loving someone else, perhaps it’s because you haven’t received the love you have to give, that you’re expecting that love to come back to you reflexively instead of coming directly from God.
The Scripture is really clear when it says, “As I have loved you, now you love one another.”
Now, one more thing. We’ve talked about the source of love, the acceptance of love; the delivery system comes through human beings - you and me. But when Jesus says, “Just as I have loved you, now you love one another” he’s also talking about the manner of love. It’s the same kind of love that Jesus loves us. Sacrificial love. Love that accepts just as you are.
Love that has the potential, that even though it accepts you just as you are, to transform you by love. That’s the way we’re to love.
There’s a cheesy illustration that has always meant a lot to me. I heard it from a pastor a long time ago, maybe thirty years ago, I don’t know. It’s so cheesy that I’ve struggled, but the problem is that I always remember it, and when you remember one then you think that there must be some value to it. So I want to share it with you.
It goes this way. When a young girl in Africa heard that her teacher was leaving their village, she wanted to give her a special gift. The girl didn’t have any money to buy a present for her teacher, but she finally decided what she would do. She was gone for two days and when she returned, she was carrying the most exquisite shell anyone in her village had ever seen.
“Where did you get this?” The teacher asked her. The child told her that such shells were only found on a certain far away beach. The teacher was deeply touched because she knew that the girl had walked many miles to find the shell.
“You shouldn’t have traveled so far just to find a gift for me,” She said. The girl smiled and explained, “The long walk is part of the gift.”
Long walk is part of the gift.
We use that now whenever we’re thinking of putting together children’s toys on Christmas morning. You’re putting tab A into slot B and thinking, “Long walk part of gift.”
My daughter asked my son-in-law for a birthday present to take her to “The Nutcracker” ballet. Now he’s not a big ballet fan but he did it. And he said, “Long walk part of gift.”
I wonder if you know someone who needs to be loved just as Jesus loved. Sacrificially, that you might take the love that God has created and given to you, that you might pass it on just as God has loved you in Jesus Christ.
After our service today if you feel God tugging on your heart and you want to accept that gift of love, and become a follower of Jesus, we’d love to talk to you about that. Or if you’d like to know more about joining St. Luke’s, or maybe there’s just something you want to pray about. We’d love to talk to you and we’ll be out at the Connections Center and would love to visit with you.
Let’s close in prayer. O God we thank you for the gift of love that you have poured into our hearts. And we pray that we might take that love and re-gift it to others, and make even more room in our hearts to receive the love you have for us. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.