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The scripture reading of the morning is from the prophecy of Micah, the sixth chapter. I begin the reading at the verse which is numbered six. "With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands

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of rams with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?" And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his work. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Throughout the Sundays of Advent I would like to think with you this year about some questions common to this season, and this morning one that you have heard many times. What do you give to someone who has everything? The catalogs have been coming in now for about the last seven months,

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and as I've looked through them for gift-giving ideas, I found things like his and her hot air balloons. There was a beautiful bracelet made out of diamonds and rubies that was only $395,000. There was a Roman sculpture from the second century BC, which was only $29,000. Of course, it was cheap because there was no nose on the statue, and I even saw an advertisement for a

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mink belly button brush. But none of these, it seems, answers the question, "What do you give to someone who has everything?" Of course, when you really think about it, there is only one who has everything, and that one, of course, is our Father God. The planets bear his name, the smile of a violet is his smile, the galaxies are the expressions of his thought, and he writes his

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signature in redwood trees. So the question, "What do you give to one who has everything?" might be more aptly stated, "What does God want for Christmas?" Does he want more worship and praise, crowded sanctuaries and the like? The prophet Micah, whose words I just read to you, says, "Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers

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of oil? Shall I offer my own children the fruit of my body?" Is that what it is? Not to miss any of the services during the Advent season? To put a $50 bill in the Christmas offering envelope when it comes? To make sure there's a star on the top of the tree and a creche under it, and to say to the children on Christmas Day, "Now remember, this is Jesus' birthday." Is that what God wants for

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Christmas? Micah says, "No, because, you see, God has always been interested in a lot more than religion." What then? What do you give to this one who has everything? Well, Micah answers the question, "He has showed you what is good, and what does the Lord require of thee?" That is, what does he want from thee for Christmas? To do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly

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with thy God. To do justice. What does that mean? We talk a lot about justice. People become very excited if they see something which that they interpret to be a miscarriage of justice. How many times we've heard people say, "It just isn't fair." You've heard people rage against God. Perhaps you have yourself about some injustice you feel that has been received from his hands. I

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remember a student coming to me on one occasion with swearing and profanation, blasphemy coming out of his mouth, and saying that he did not believe that God was just, and all he expected of God was justice, and since he didn't get that justice, he wouldn't believe in God anymore. And I said to that student, "Son, if what you're seeking from God is justice, then you better be

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careful you don't find it. For the very words you've just used, the blasphemies with which you have spiced your speech, those words, if treated justly by God, would lead him at this very instant to blast you into nothingness. We need to be very careful when we ask God to be just, when we ask God to show no partiality. The fact of the matter is that if God were to be perfectly, legalistically

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just in his dealings with each and every one of us, then we wouldn't stand a chance. Like that woman who was having her picture taken by a photographer and she went to see the proofs, and she said, "I don't feel you've done me justice," and he looked at her and said, "Madam, you should not be seeking justice, but mercy." Now of course when I'm using the word justice in

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this context, I'm using it as a kind of ethical norm. I'm actually using an idea of justice which comes to us out of the Roman world, justicia. The biblical world presents a different concept of justice, for the word for justice which is used in the Scriptures is sedaca, and it means a loyal, loving relationship. Justice on the pages of Scripture means grace, not legalism, but rather

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costly caring. The Apostle Paul illustrates this in a very interesting way in the fifth chapter of Romans. He's talking about what a remarkable thing it is that Christ was willing to die for us even though we are altogether unworthy, and in expressing this thought he says, "Why a man will hardly die for a just man, though perhaps for a good man we might dare even to die." What Paul is

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saying is this, no one would die for a strict, rigid legalist. Well there is the possibility, he says, that someone might die for a good man, that is for one who is loyal and loving, and this he uses to illustrate the sacrifice of Christ who dies out of a loyal and loving concern, even for those who many times don't show that loyalty or that love. I think of it this way,

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in the British Navy, if you want to know if you have a piece of top-grade rope, you cut through it, and in the very top level of rope manufacture in the British Navy, you will find woven into the rope a scarlet thread, and the presence of that scarlet thread testifies to the fact that you can safely bet your life on that piece of rope. Well cut through the pages of Scripture anywhere that

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you wish, and you will find running there the scarlet thread of God's justice, of his loyal, loving, and caring. So the question, "What does God want for Christmas?" Micah answers by saying, "Do justice as God does it." Well I hear someone say, "That's all well and good, but it's not very Christmassy." Well let me put it in as Christmassy a term as I know.

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Think for a minute of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." You can't get much more Christmassy than that. And you remember when Ebenezer Scrooge encounters the ghost of his previous business partner, Jacob Marley, and Marley is wrapped in chains, and Scrooge asks why this is so, and Marley answers, "I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link."

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And Scrooge interrupts and he says, "But you were always a good man of business, Jacob." And the ghost responds, "Business? Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business. Charity and forbearance and benevolence, these were the things of my business. At this time of year," he continues, "I suffer most. Why did I walk through the world of fellow beings with my eyes turned down and

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never raise them to see that star which led the wise men to the place of the poor?" What Marley is saying is, "Why didn't I love as I myself was loved?" He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice. And also, the verse continues, "To love mercy." Now the essence of mercy is forgiveness, and I believe we live in a time when there is a

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famine of mercy. Stand on the sidewalks or in the midst of the holiday shopping crowds or sit in a restaurant and listen to the conversations that are going on about you, and it won't take you long to discover that there are many in these days who are full of sorrow and acquainted with grief. It's very sad to contemplate them and the arrogance with which they have to deal in life,

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the hard-heartedness which is so many times extended to them, the selfishness that they must deal with, the petulance, the cold, barren lovelessness of the lives that they lead. I often think of it in terms of the Roman Colosseum. You remember how it was in the Colosseum that when two gladiators had done battle, when one of them finally fell, the victor would look about at the

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crowd, and if the crowd held their thumbs up in majority, then that meant that the victim would be helped up and helped out of the arena to fight another day. But if the Roman crowd put its thumb down, and this is the fashion in which they did it, not like this but rather like this, if they put their thumb down, then a blade would flash in the sun and the victim would die and be dragged

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across the crimson sand and thrown into the refuse. Well, people are much like that. There are thumbs up people. They are the merciful. And then there are the others, those who hold on to grudges, those who cherish animosities, who nurse ugly feelings, those who harbor anger and vindictiveness and bitterness and a desire for revenge. And you see, those kinds of venomous thoughts have a way

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at eating at you until there's a hole where your heart was. And this kind of person has contempt for mercy. I think this morning of a young man, I'll call him Al Masters because he doesn't live that far away, when he was 15 years old he took the family car one night without permission and illegally, of course, not old enough to drive, and he went for a joy ride and in a moment of

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carelessness he hit a three-year-old child. And the father of the child carried the child to the hospital and begged that they might save the child, but it was too late and the little one's life was lost. And the father was filled with a great anger and a great bitterness and he said, "I want this Al Masters executed. I want his life for the life of my son." But of course Al was only

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15 years old, so he was put into a reformatory for some time and then given extended probation. It was almost two years before the parents of the child who'd been killed went to church again for the first time, and it was at Christmas, and they didn't like much of what they heard because the preacher was talking about mercy. And there had been all the while eating down inside of them,

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because they claimed the name Christian, there had been all the while gnawing away at their midst this need to talk with Al Masters. And so they decided to seek out the boy. It was hard to find him because he did not want to be found by them. He'd looked at their red-rimmed eyes too many days in the courtroom. He never wanted to see those eyes anymore. But finally they got together and

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they sat on opposite sides of the room. But in the course of the conversation, as the passions began to flow and his honesty began to come out where diplomacy had been, they moved closer and closer to each other until they were almost face-to-face in their speech. And there was great pain in that conversation. There were three kinds of pain. There was the pain of a mother who lost

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her son. There was the pain of a father who lost his son. And there was the pain of a boy with an awful guilt. And they wrestled, quivering with that pain until the tears flowed and release came. And then they invited Al Masters home for dinner and he came. And later that father who lost his boy gave a job in his shop to the one who had taken the little boy's life. I said a while ago

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that in the British Navy you can tell when you have a good piece of rope because there's that scarlet thread woven through it. And that that thread of justice runs all through the pages of the scripture. Notice please that it's scarlet, it's red, because it's a bleeding justice. It's a justice of mercy. So what do you give to the one who wants everything? A big birthday party

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and a clamoring parade? Christmas cards with puppy dogs on them? Toy machine guns under the tree? Whiskey bottles wrapped in ribbons and bright colored papers? Is that enough? He has showed you, oh man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love mercy? And one more thing, to walk humbly with thy God. You see that scarlet thread that

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runs through the rope of the Bible and that is to run through the rope of our years, that thread of justice read with mercy. One end of it is in our experience but the other end of it is in the hand of God. And to walk humbly with God is to follow as he pulls that thread. Have you ever stopped to think about the modesty of the methods of God? How he never comes on at us with frontal assault,

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how he doesn't push and pressure his way into our lives, how as silently as he was born in a stable, so he comes in gentle, subtle presence into our experience? That's part of the charm of Christmas, isn't it? These next weeks, we all know it, will be filled with claptrap. But there will be some moments, perhaps not till the very end, but some moments when gentleness and lowliness and the

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unobtrusiveness of God will be made evident to us. And we who so often opt for the showy will be stopped short by the lowly. The silence of the power of God, he holds the planet in its course with the mightiness of magnetism, and you never hear a sound. He lifts the tides with the awesome strength of gravity, and you don't hear even a whisper. He builds mountains of snow and lifts

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acres of wheat without a single sound. He never hustles us. He even allows us to edge him over into an inn or to try to edge him out on a cross. What we see in the humility of God is what the nature of life is to be. It is to be caring and compassionate and loving and feeling and lifting and healing and benevolent. That's what it is to have the humility of God. I met them, though not

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face-to-face or in conversation, coming out of a pharmacy in a Midwestern city. It was just before Christmas. I was going to the pharmacy for Pepto-Bismol, which I always seem to need when I'm on the road. They weren't dressed in a poor way, but their clothes were very plain, warm, appropriate for winter, nothing fancy. He had two bags in his arms, she had one, and as they came

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out of the store, they stopped, and that's how I heard their conversation because I was right behind them and they didn't know that, and they stopped and they looked across the street, and there on the sidewalk across the street was a man who had no legs. He was riding on one of those little wooden platforms with the wheel. You've seen him somewhere, sometime, someplace, and they

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were talking about whether they should take something over and put it in the tin cup. What must have been a very cold tin cup because it was a snowy night, and she said, "All we have left is is what I've got in my purse," and he said, "Yes, but we've got our Christmas in these bags, so we don't really need that," and that seemed to settle the discussion, and so they went across the street

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and they did it so quickly that I'm not even sure the man saw it, and I certainly hadn't the wisdom to have seen it had I not heard what was about. They walked over and she walked up to him so quickly and just turned over the purse and spilled the cash and the change right into the cup and said, "Merry Christmas," and they were gone just like that, and I remember thinking to myself,

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"He wasn't speaking the truth. He said they had their Christmas in those bags. They didn't have Christmas in those bags. They had Christmas in their hearts." Now there's some, of course, who sneer at that. They say, "Well, that's all well and good and perhaps at this season of the year," but it's a frail way to approach life, and life is much too threatening for that. Once a year,

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maybe, but the real world demands something else, and to all of those people I say, "You lie." For there are more mangers in life than there are palaces and more crosses than there are crowns, and that is the reason that we name our dogs Nero and our sons Paul. If it is true that God rules over all the earth, and if it is true that the Son of God calls us to follow his Father,

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and if it is true that the Spirit speaks to us through the voice of conscience, and if it is true that the kingdom of God will outlast even the stars, and if it is true that the eternity of God is that toward which each and every one of us is inevitably moving, and if it is true that the throne of God is that before which each and every one of us will stand, if these things are true,

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if these things are facts, then they are the most important facts in all the universe, and they ought to be at the very core of our lives, for they alone are real, and those who carp at those things and sneer at those things and judge those things and scorn those things and clutch instead of give, they lie. Because life is a child in a manger, and a man doing good,

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and a cry of forgiveness from a cross, and the Lamb of God wounded opening the scroll of life, this is what life really is. So what do you give to the one who wants everything? What does God want for Christmas? He just wants for us to live life as he intended it to be lived, nothing more than that, and nothing less. Let us pray.

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What can I give to him poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would give him a lamb. If I were a wise man, I would do my part, but what I can, I give him. I give him my heart. Amen. [Silence]