3 Gifts

We all know about the wise men who brought 3 gifts to Jesus - we’ve just met them down here.

I met a wise man once, and he also carried 3 gifts. His gifts weren’t gold, frankincense or myrrh - this wise man’s gifts were words. He said that there are 3 things that we all need to hear, 3 gifts we need to receive from the people around us. And, he said, we all need to hear these words often.

And because he was wise, and because I thought his gifts were precious, I want to share them with you this evening.

He said the 3 things that we all need to hear - and to hear often - are :

I love you

I forgive you

Dinner’s ready.

And he’s right isn’t he. We all need the people around us to say those things to us, often. Children need to hear them from parents, wives from husbands, husbands from wives, friends from friends; I love, I forgive you and dinner’s ready.

We need to know that we are loved. Full stop - not loved, ‘so long as’ or loved, ‘just until’, but loved.

And we need to know that we can be forgiven; that we are not defined by our mistakes or that thing we once got wrong.

And we need to know that dinner’s ready - that there’s a place where we belong, a place at a table somewhere which is laid up for us and where we are welcome.

I love you, I forgive you, dinner’s ready.

And tonight, on Christmas Eve, as we recall and retell again this greatest of stories, as we hear again how God chose to get most fully involved in His world, those three things are on his lips too. These are the gifts he brings to us. 

This child, this fragile life, has come into our world - not a story world from 2000 years ago, but this world, the actual world that we live in here today - to say to us those same three things. Jesus comes to say to us; to you and to me - I love you, I forgive you, dinner’s ready. 

He has come to say, I love you. You aren’t just a random collection of DNA floating around in the world until your time is up. You are hand created, beautiful in the eyes of your creator, and loved; loved beyond any human conception of love. Loved exactly as you are, no ‘ifs’, no buts, no maybes. God just loves you. Can you hear that truth - not just with your ears, but deep within your soul. In that part of you that knows the really, really important stuff. Can you hear Jesus say, ‘I love you’? Because he does, in fact that’s why he was born.

And he also comes to say I forgive you. I know we like to pretend that we’ve got it all sorted, but in my experience, most of us are carrying a burden of guilt and shame about something. Jesus was born, Jesus lived, died and lived again, so that we can be free of guilt and shame, so that we can let the burden go. Can you hear that? Can you hear Jesus saying ‘I forgive you’? Be free? Because he does, because that’s why he was born

I love you, I forgive you, and he also comes to say - dinner’s ready. Jesus loves and forgives us as individuals, but he also knows that we need to belong - that we need to be part of something bigger. He knows that we are made for relationship and for community - dinner’s ready. You are not on your own, you are made for others. So come and belong. Can you hear him offer that invitation to you? Come and be part of a community where you are known, supported and cared for, a community where your gifts are used, a community that says - dinner’s ready, come as you are? 

I love you, I forgive you, dinner’s ready. 

3 gifts that I received from a wise man. 3 gifts that Jesus offers you today.

Happy Christmas.

Amen