“Every Good and Perfect Gift”

Preached by John DeBevoise
At Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church
On December 24, 2001
11:00 PM Service

I don’t know about you, but on this night, particularly this night, I feel the presence of the communion of saints in a powerful way. Not just those I love, but those I have loved. People I’ve been with in other congregations. People who now live with the Lord. I just feel them gathered with us here.

You know, it’s a mystery, but Christmas Eve is a time for mystery, isn’t it? I feel the presence of the communion of saints here with us. And I can only imagine that in heaven, they also gather to join together in this worship this evening.

I am drawn to a verse on Christmas Eve that comes from the Letter of James. I keep thinking I’m going to be moving off of another text on Christmas Eve, and I keep being drawn to this text from the first chapter: Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

Every generous act of giving, every perfect gift, is from above. What’s the best gift you ever received? Can you recall it? What’s the best gift you ever got? Is there one that comes to mind? Or are there some that come forward? Consider it.

Here’s one of mine. I’ve had a little more time to think about it than you. I remember one year when I was nine years old, and approaching my tenth birthday, my father and I went to the mall. We walked into a toy store there in the mall, and I was ambling around, looking. As I turned a corner, I looked up one shelf, a little above my head, and there was the most magnificent castle I had ever seen. Of course, this was at a time in my life when I was intrigued with medieval history, Arthur and the Round Table, and knights and that sort of romance.

So it struck me as magnificent. This castle that was there was just about this big. It had these wooden walls that were painted gray with painted boulders around them. And three towers. Each tower had a red tile turret at the top, with a yellow flag and a black eagle emblazoned on it.

I can still see this castle on that shelf. It had a working drawbridge that you could down on a moat that was built around the base. It had these painted knights all around it, and a little working catapult, a metal thing. It had a rubber band that propelled it. You could shoot popcorn at the castle and lay it under siege that way.

It was up on a shelf. I remember gazing at it when my father came around the corner, and I pointed it out to him. We stood there and admired it together, and I mentioned the fact that my tenth birthday was coming up. I remember, he turned to me and he, I remember his exact words. He turned to me and he said, “John, you will have to wait for your ship to come in before you get that castle.”

I just accepted it. I just accepted it that a castle like that could be admired, but that it was just beyond the means of my family.

Do you think that when he said it, he knew when he said it, that he was going to give it to me? Or did he rethink it later and slip back out to the store and get it, after sleeping on it overnight. I never knew. But I remember that birthday, walking up to the table and finding this big box on it, and opening up that box and, to my astonishment, finding this castle. To my total surprise! I remember still my astonishment at the extravagance of that gift.

And James says, “Every act of generous giving comes from above.” Do you believe it? Including that one? In ways that I still do not completely understand, the gift of that castle was an act of God’s grace in my life.

Every generous act of giving is from above.

In the second year of our marriage, Emalee and I were nine hundred and fifty miles away from home. We were living in a two-room (mind you, that is the total number of rooms), a two-room apartment that the seminary had prepared for married students. A two-room housing unit that was designed to cultivate intimacy in the community and to instill a total reliance on God in the part of young pastors living there with their spouses. She had gotten into, that year, cross-stitching in a heavy way. One night, about a week before Christmas, we were standing at the sink in the other room, standing at the sink doing dishes, and she turned and said to me with a gleam in her eye, “I bet you can't guess what I’m getting you for Christmas.”

Holding that dish towel in my hand, I turned and I looked at her with an incredible act of inexplicable intuition, I just looked at her and I said, and I really was not consciously aware of this at all, I don’t remember any external clue, but I looked at her and I said, “You’re cross-stitching the academic seal of the seminary and you’re going to have it framed for my first study.” Shazaam! Bam!

And now the astonishment was on her face. Only it was an astonishment that suddenly turned into tears, as the loving gift that she had so laboriously and carefully and secretly been working on all semester was so capriciously and cavalierly exposed.

I learned, at that moment, in an indelible way, never guess right again!

Sounds like some of you have learned that lesson, too. Now I just always guess “a flashlight.” No matter what they say, “Guess what I’m giving you?” A flashlight.

What love that gift represented. What a labor of newly married love that was! I thank God it was one of the things that did not burn up in the fire. It’s a sign of God’s goodness to me.

James says every generous act of giving comes from above. Including that one? Do you believe it? Every generous act of giving that comes in some way to you comes from above, from the Father of all lights? Do you believe it? Are you a literalist?

I think I am, here. The Bible says every good gift you have received, in some way, originates with God. The big ones and the small ones. The life changing sacrifices and the faithful daily labors. The quiet prayers and the extravagant, unexpected astonishments. Every good gift you have ever received, says James, in some way originates with God.

What’s the best gift you ever received? Not just the ones you have received, you see. What the text says is Every generous act of giving, including the ones that you’ve given. The ones you gave. Including the ones you imagine that you initiated.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Every good impulse you have, every time you find yourself thinking I think I might do such-and-such for so-and-so, every good impulse you have to an act of kindness, both those you act on and those you didn’t act on, every good impulse comes from the Holy Spirit.”

Every good gift you give originates from above, from the Father of all lights. In fulfillment of his own purpose, as a way of kind of making us, preparing us, to be the first fruits of the new creation.

What’s the best gift you ever gave? When you gave it, did you realize that it was the Holy Spirit prompting you, working in you?

Here’s a good and perfect gift coming from God kind of story, out of our community. Earlier this fall, a friend of mine, a member of this extended community of faith, was driving home, driving down his street. Suddenly he passed out. He slipped into unconsciousness. It is a terrible thing, and an inexplicable thing to happen. He lost control of the car and he drove up into the yard of some neighbors, and he hit the three children who were there playing in the yard. Lots of you followed this story with me. You feel again the tragedy that the whole community felt at that moment when those children were rushed to the hospital and were in critical condition, fighting for their lives. And the pain their parents felt. And the pain he felt. Those of us who sat with him and prayed with him. We knew he was walking through the valley of the shadow of death, too.

The theologian Carl Barth says there are sometimes dark shadows that fall on our lives that we are powerless to change. It was a moment that could never be taken back.

Within 24 hours, he and his wife wrote the parents and the children a letter, and sent it with a mediator with flowers, expressing their deep sorrow, their regret, asking if it would help to be able to meet in person. What they heard back was no, that it was too painful right now, and too soon and too devastating to meet with them or to speak with them in person. And who couldn’t understand that?

So days stretched into weeks, and weeks stretched into months, and we prayed. We prayed, and the Supple’s congregation at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church prayed, and through God working through doctors and nurses and surgeons, those children began to get better.

About ten days ago, the one who was most severely hurt joined the other two in coming home from the hospital. About a week ago, my friend, our friend, tells me that he and his wife were in their house and there was a knock at their door. They went to open it, and there was this family, the Supple family. The father said, “We don’t know if you’re busy, but we wanted to come by and visit with you for a while.”

So they came into the living room and they sat together. They worked through the initial awkwardness of talking about the accident and making an apology, and rejoicing at the recovery, the slow recovery but the full recovery we pray that the children were making. Over time the children, being children, began to play with things in the living room, and as some grace began to fill the room, and it was clear that this was a gathering that might take some time, they ordered pizza and broke bread together. Because that’s the way you break bread with children.

The evening began to involve sharing together, and one of the children is interested in learning to play the guitar. So my friend took the three children to a room that he has, because he collects guitars. He showed them some of his guitars, and they left the room to come back. As they were leaving, my friend and the youngest child, a little girl about six, were the last ones leaving the room. As they were leaving, she turned and she looked at him and she said, “You are the man who ran into us, aren’t you?”

That was an awful moment. It was the moment of being in the judgment seat of God for him. He knelt down beside her and he said, “Yes, I am. And I am so sorry. And I did not mean to. I am so glad that you are getting better.”

She looked at him. (This is a true story, by God.) She reached up and placed her arms around his neck and hugged him and kissed him and said, “It’s alright. We forgive you.”

Every good and perfect gift, says James, comes from above. What a gift of reconciliation and redemption. How about some redemption for Christmas? Every gift? From the Father of all lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Who gives in fulfillment of his own purpose. He gave us birth by the Word of truth, so that we might become a kind of first fruits of his creation.

What God did in Bethlehem, on a Christmas night long, long ago, was a good and perfect gift. Bringing forward Christ to the world. Bring forward Jesus Christ, who in great mystery is the source and the origin of all generosity. Every act of giving. And we, the family of Jesus Christ, the brothers and sisters who gather to greet the Babe born in the manger, we have this table as the family gathering point. This table is the place where we meet, where we encounter, where we greet the Giver of every good and perfect gift.

What’s the best gift you ever received? Taste and see that the Lord is good.

© John T. DeBevoise, 2001