A Gift for Everybody--January 4, 2024
"Simeon took [the infant Jesus] in his arms and praised God, saying,
'Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,So, this past Christmas morning, one of the gifts my wife opened was a set of tickets to go see a particular play later this winter when the traveling production comes to town. But it wasn't just one ticket (for her alone), and it wasn't even just a pair so I could go along. It was for the whole household--all four of us getting to go see the show--which means that the gift, while in a sense "for her," is really for everybody. We all benefit from a gift that she opened, which she had been hoping to get to see.
My guess is that you've got some experience like that, too, whether as the giver or the recipient of a gift that turns out to be for everybody in the household. The grill that Dad gets for Father's Day means hamburgers, steaks, and hot dogs for everyone. The year your parents got the kids a cable subscription to the Disney Channel as a kid was meant to be enjoyed by the whole family. Or the membership your family gets to the zoo, or the YMCA, or the swimming pool--these are all gifts that benefit more than just the name on the tag, but everyone in the house.
Gifts like this, which are meant to be shared, are not lessened in the least by the sharing, but in fact are made all the more enjoyable because these other people get to share in the benefit of the gift, too. The shared experience of getting to go to the zoo or see a play or have the burgers on the grill is not a zero-sum game, where one person's gain means someone else's loss. It's not like pie, where a larger piece for me means a smaller piece for someone else. Sometimes joy is actually multiplied by sharing, and goodness expands by including others.
Well, that's precisely the way dear old Simeon understands the birth of the long-awaited Messiah. As he holds the infant Jesus in his arms, he breaks into praise over the child he has at last been able to see with his own eyes. "My eyes have seen your salvation," he sings (or at least, it feels like a song, and the church has borrowed his words for its own song over the centuries), "which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples." But this isn't just a matter of everyone else watching (jealously) as Mom opens a present that is just for her. No, Simeon continues, "a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel." Jesus, it turns out, is a gift for everyone.
Maybe that seems obvious to us, but it's pretty radical if you consider what Simeon is really saying. For centuries before Simeon's own lifetime, the people of Israel and Judea had been hoping for God's "anointed one" (what the word "messiah" literally means) who would restore their hopes, end their exile, and overthrow the shackles of foreign empires who had run roughshod over them for hundreds of years. The hope for a Messiah was hope unique to their story, their people, and their prophets. Conventional wisdom said that when the Messiah finally came, he would mean good news for people of Jewish ancestry, but that wouldn't necessarily mean anything for anybody else. If anything, there were certainly some folks who saw things as a zero-sum game, and they would have said that the Messiah meant good things for Judeans and bad things for Gentiles! But here Simeon says that this gift isn't a piece of pie: the coming of the Christ is good news for both the insiders who have been waiting for him and the outsiders who didn't even know to hope for his arrival. The Gentiles (foreigners, outsiders, "those people") are to be included in the good that God is up to with the birth of Jesus; he is not merely the private possession of one group over against another, but God's own gift for all humanity. The tickets, so to speak, are for the whole family, not just the one opening the envelope.
Listening to Simeon's declaration about what Jesus means, we might find our theology is in need of a bit of rethinking. So easily, we treat Jesus as our private possession, and the life, salvation, and grace he gives as our exclusive assets. But God has always intended Jesus to be a gift for all, yes, including folks who didn't even know to be hopeful or that they needed him. When we church folks treat Jesus like he is our property, to be commodified, marketed, and sold as we choose (and with our controls and stipulations) we miss out on the wonder of what God has really done in Jesus. We are all collectively the recipients of a shared gift that has been meant for all humanity all along, even if we didn't realize what we had been missing. And when the church changes its mindset from being the gatekeepers of a limited supply of a scarce resource (call it "salvation" or "eternal life" or "going to heaven" or what have you) to being co-sharers in a gift that God has given for us all, it changes things. We no longer have to worry about who's worthy to have access to the gift or who has really earned their ticket, but we can share with any and all takers. There are hamburgers for everybody in the family, even the kids who didn't do any of the cooking. There is a seat for everyone to get the show, and the enjoyment isn't any less for having all of us there for the performance. That's the wonder of a gift for everyone.
That's what we have been given in Jesus.
Lord Jesus, keep us from being stingy in sharing the gift of your own presence, and enable us to see ourselves as co-recipients of your goodness with all peoples.
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