December 14, 1997

James A. Todhunter

"Receiving and Giving"

Zeph. 3:14-20 Philippians 2:1-11 Luke 1:39-55

One of my Christmas memories growing up in Columbus, Ohio, is the time our next door neighbor, Mrs. Erfurt, refused to get out of the bathtub. Helen and Ed, and their children, Cynthia and little Eddie, were quiet, somewhat aloof neighbors. Dad and Mr. Erfurt communicated mainly around the issue of my father's reluctance to cut down three enormous pine trees bordering their property. In fact, at Christmas time, the situation was aggravated by my father's inspiration to douse the trees from top to bottom with a garden hose, creating in the freezing weather a rather extravagant display of icicles. Then, to Mr. Erfurt's horror, he illuminated these frosty giants with three floodlights - red, green and white. I always believed that my father was not trying to be difficult, only being true to his particular esthetic vision.

Anyway, the Saturday before Christmas, as my mother was baking cookies in the kitchen, the phone rang.

"Mrs. Todhunter? This is Ed Erfurt. Next door?"

"Yes, Mr. Erfurt. How are you?"

"I'm fine, thank you. But, well, it's my wife. This is very embarrassing. Can you come right over? You are a nurse, aren't you?"

"Well, yes, of course. But what's the problem?"

"Helen is in the bath tub and won't get out of it."

"My goodness. Did she fall? Is she injured? Did you call 911?"

"No, no, she's fine, actually. It's just that...well, she says she's staying there. Staying in the tub until after Christmas. Mrs. Todhunter, that's almost a week away! I don't know what to do. Please, maybe you can help."

My mother, a kindly and patient Florence Nightingale if ever there was, immediately dropped the cookie dough and went next door. A little over an hour later she returned.

"What happened?" we all asked. The story unfolded this way. Mrs. Erfurt, a prim and formal woman in her forties, had been running herself ragged doing all the seasonal things - shopping, planning, transporting children, attending school concerts, hosting a party for her husband's law firm, and so forth. Exhausted, she had filled the tub with hot water, and climbed in to relax and re-group. Very quickly she became aware of how overwhelmed she felt, how little help she was getting, how disconnected from the true Christmas spirit she was, and how simply wonderful it seemed to lie there and soak in the steaming water. When it came time to get out, she could not move. Her body | told her not to go anywhere; to stay there until it was all over: the tree, the decorations, the presents, entertaining the in- laws, Santa - all of it. Everybody else could take care of Christmas for themselves.

Mother had sat on the edge of the tub and listened quietly (discretely separated from Mrs. Erfurt by the drawn shower curtain - like a confessor I rather thought; and with Mr. Erfurt pacing outside the bathroom door). After an hour of Mother's patient ministrations, Mrs. Erfurt found she was indeed able to rise and get on with Christmas and her life. I do not know what my mother said. I do not really know the impact of this incident on the Erfurt's Christmas that year, or on their life as a family thereafter, though I was greatly impressed with my Mother. It occurs to me now that she was mothering the mother, nurturing the nurturer.

Why do I tell this story? Frankly, in this season, have you ever felt like Mrs. Erfurt? Have you ever felt like climbing into the tub, or crawling into bed and turning the electric blanket up to nine and staying there until it was all over?

Many feel that way, I'm afraid. And it's a pity, because Christmas can be a most wonderful and glorious time. But what gets in the way? My guess is that what happens is that we handle Christmas like we handle our lives during the rest of the year - only more so. Overly busy, strung out, doing for others, managing details, and wanting everything to go perfectly. And the toll of all this - exhaustion and resentment - become unavoidable. Our culture is of little help, of course, with merchants hustling such essentials as a sterling silver pastry bag lapel pin with 14-karat-gold icing ($90 at "La Cuisine"), annoying canned music in the malls, and another televised Christmas with Kathie Lee and Frank. Wouldn't a nice hot bath for about a month be preferable?

Can Christmas be different from this, because the real point of Christmas is just the opposite. Christmas is not really about our frantic attempts to organize our lives to do for others - buy and send the gifts, give the party, make it wonderful. Christmas is really about what God is doing for us.

One of the expressions I have come to profoundly dislike is the hyphenated term "self-sufficiency." I involuntarily cringe when I hear it. Welfare reform is designed to move families on the dole to self-sufficiency. Our goal as parents is to create independent and self-sufficient young men and women, rugged individualists who, out of their self-sufficiency, can contribute to society. It has become a very convenient catch word. But I think that, without a doubt, in the Christian community, "self-sufficiency" is a term we should banish forever. Not one of us is truly self-sufficient. Our lives are, in fact, an interplay of dependencies and inter-dependencies. Yes, there are such important attributes as self-confidence and inner strength. But that is not, to my way of thinking, self- sufficiency. Those are qualities that enhance relationships. But the term self-sufficiency perpetuates the myth of personal control and autonomy and isolation, and the assumption that strong people take care of others and don't need it themselves; that there are care-givers, and then there are care-receivers.

I would argue that if anybody ever had a legitimate claim to self-sufficiency, it would be God. God was in the beginning, God created everything; God - almighty and omniscient. But from the beginning God realized that, even for God, self-sufficiency was not enough. It was out of loneliness that God created. The whole story of the Old Testament was God's saying to us, "I love you, I want to be with you, I want to care for you. Just let me do that. Let me do for you." The human response to this was, "I can do it better myself."

So God resolves, in loneliness and yearning, but in loving determination, to try again. God says at Christmas, "Will you please let me love you? Let me give you the gift. All you need to do is receive it." The scripture from Zephaniah is all about what God does. Paul's word to the Philippians is about the extreme self-emptying love of God for us. And Mary's lovely Magnificat is about what God has done for Israel and what God will do for her.

In the Magnificat, Mary becomes a model of our faith. She trusts what God says and unconditionally receives God's love. At Christmas we are reminded that the essence of faith is receptivity and submission. But not submission to rules or law; submission to love and the to Lover. On bended knee.

Our culture has raised "self-sufficiency" far above the Christian or pagan virtues. We value action and independence, decisiveness and strength. How outrageous and truly counter- cultural to say that our faith values receptivity and submission. Now let me be clear that I am not talking about the false dichotomy of passivity and aggression. It is said that our culture rewards passivity in women and aggressiveness in men, and that to break out of those stereotypes women have to feel more empowered to be assertive, and men need to let go in order to be more receptive. I don't have any argument with that at all. But that is not what I am talking about here.

It goes far beyond that. It is the dance of inter-dependence - of receiving and giving. Christmas is about receiving and giving. For we cannot give what we do not allow ourselves to receive. God says "I loved you first. And because of that now you are able to love." Unless we are able to receive God's love, we really are like a dead battery when the car stalls in the dark of winter. You've got to get charged up before you can get started. But instead of getting charged up, we insist on charging off - trying to do it all, feeling responsible for everything, and bitter when we end up feeling so empty. Like poor Mrs. Erfurt in the bathtub.

We have to make room in our Christmas for being loved, being cared for, befog filled, being appreciated, being mothered. Yes, we have the image of Mary, the grateful recipient of God's love, and of God the Creator reaching down to our world to be with her and us. But we also have, along with Santa, Mrs. Claus. Let's not forget her. While Santa is out there handling distribution, she is at home, updating the data base, managing the elves, ordering fodder for the reindeer, nurturing the nurturers. Like my Mom, taking care of exhausted Mrs. Erfurt.

Christmas is about honoring the Joyful mystery of receiving and giving. We bring gifts to the Christ Child. But at the same time, that child is God's gift to us. The baby Jesus is really the gift of God's self-disclosure. God, our self-sufficient Creator, comes to us in the form of the babe at Bethlehem - the most helpless and dependent human creature imaginable - the baby that must be loved and cared for if it is to survive. What a gift it is to let ourselves be loved and cared for in the same way.

Amen

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