The Gift of Jesus

The following is a transcript of my talk last month. I was assigned the topic in the title of this post. I will include a link to the song I mention – in the comment following this one.

One of my favorite Christmas songs is a new one called, “Let Me Come Home” by the acapella group, Home Free. Here are the lyrics:

“Bright colored leaves, lost beneath the snow; a feeling dark and cold I wish I didn’t know. Like the rising sun, our lives have seasons too, but faithful hearts remain, and mine is still with you. Every year, it feels so wrong, aching for the only place I know I should belong.

Can I come home this Christmas? Please let me come home this Christmas. Remember, we’re all deserving of a little grace and love; so, can I come home this Christmas? I just wanna come home.

My favorite memories are the ones I shared with you. It’s what I held onto as the distance grew. Now I wake up to the pain of knowing we’re estranged, but it was not my choice. I’m not the one who changed. Being who I’m meant to be made me a stranger in the house that made me, me.

So let me come home this Christmas. Please let me come home this Christmas. Remember we’re all deserving of a little grace and love, so can I come home this Christmas? I just wanna come home.

The place that I recall was built on common ground. We’re family after all. Wasting precious time. Could you look me in the eyes? Would you set aside your pride for the child you recognize?

Can I come home this Christmas? I just wanna come home this Christmas. Remember we’re all deserving of a little grace and love. So can I come home this Christmas? Please let me come home this Christmas. I just wanna come home. Please, let me come home.”

The reason this song hits me so hard is that I can relate to the message. I was raised in a small, Mormon town, surrounded by extended family on both sides. I left home for the first time to serve a mission. That was acceptable to all my extended family and friends. I left home almost two months after my mission when I married the girl who waited for me on my mission while she finished high school. That also was acceptable to all my extended family and friends. I left home the third time to attend college 3,000 miles from home – and, except for a steadying time after having to leave a job without another one to provide for my family, I have spent almost 40 years away from those family and friends.

In that time, I have changed and grown (I believe for the better) – but that change has caused a clear and painful separation, emotionally at the very least, from many of those family members members and friends. I still love them, dearly, but that separation is a real and probably unchangeable thing at this point in my life. I have tried hard to show them I still am the same person they knew and loved, but geographic distance and diverging perspectives have contributed to emotional distance, as well.

What is the gift of Christmas?

I believe it is the very ministry of Jesus, prophesied in Isaiah 61: 1-2 (The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.) and announced by Jesus in the synagogue as he began his own ministry in Mark 4:18-19 (The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.)

I believe it is the core message of the Sermon on the Mount: that, as we strive to develop the Christlike attributes explained in that sermon, we can become more and more Christlike until, at the end of our mortal and post-mortal growth, we have, “In this way, become perfect (complete, whole, fully-developed, finished), even as our Father, who is in Heaven, is perfect” – and that this growth journey is infinite enough to encompass, somehow, all of our mortal human family.

This takes conscious, intentional effort. It not “natural”. It must be developed, since becoming perfect is the end result of an eternal journey. It requires humility and a willingness to see all humanity as equally divine in nature and equally eternal in growth capability. It requires patience and long-suffering – and all other elements of charity listed in I Corinthians 13: 4-7 – and it is why charity is described as the greatest gift of all. If it is the greatest gift we can receive, it also is the greatest gift we can give.

To say it differently: I believe the greatest gift we can give others is the greatest gift Jesus gave others: an assurance that they are loved equally for who they are as eternal children of God, despite the difficulties of their lives – and their differences from us. We give this gift when we willingly preach good tidings, bind up broken hearts, enrich the poor, proclaim liberty to those who are captive in some way, open the doors that are keeping people imprisoned, proclaim acceptance to those who feel unacceptable, comfort those who mourn, help people see things to which they currently are blind, treat people’s bruises in all their forms, and serve in all other needed ways.

Jesus, the half-mortal person, was not the image so many believers hold up as the object of their worship. Yes, he was divinely born and ordained. Yes, he was God, the Son. However, he also was not “privileged” in any way that humans would define that term, looking only at his mortal life. I believe the gift of Christmas is the divinely intentional message that even the most humbly-born child, believed by those around him to have been born from sin, caused to flee for his life with his parents as a refugee into a foreign country, returning only when the homeland territorial leader had died, gathering a ministry that lasted only three years and ended in betrayal, unjust condemnation, and a public, tortured death, was a model example of God’s love. Without the success of Paul’s ministry after his death, Jesus would have been eliminated from the history books and forgotten completely over time – and, if remembered at all, seen solely as a radical, failed, religious rebel.

How can someone who was seen as an abject failure by the vast majority of people who actually saw or knew of him in his own lifetime, and whose name has been used to commit unspeakable horrors in the apostate centuries since his death, be seen as a gift? I believe it is because of the core message of his comprehensive, immortal life – the heart of the Restored Gospel: That our Heavenly Parents’ gift to Their children was pre-ordained to be one of those children (their First, Chosen, Ordained Son) and the assurance that we, too, will be allowed back home, no matter what difficulties we experience in our own lives – and that there is a divine purpose for our lives, including our pain and suffering, just like there was for His.

I believe the gift of Christmas is the understanding that every, single one of our mortal relatives, extending back to the beginning of mortal beings, is loved and cherished and included in the love of God to the exact same extent – that none of us are beyond our Heavenly Parents’ and their Chosen Son’s redeeming love – and that we have the amazing opportunity to participate in that redeeming love as we strive to serve others the way Jesus served others in his own earthly life. We have the challenge of creating Zion (a mortal version of a heavenly community) in which we love and share and treat each other the way Jesus treated others during His life – no matter their mistakes and struggles and perceived uncleanliness. We have a chance to be “Saviors on Mount Zion” – not just through temple work for the dead but also through practical work for the living.

My life after moving away from home has included significant struggle, pain, difficulty, separation, judgment, and heartache – but it also has included growth, love, peace, connection, charity, and love I could not imagine in my youth – specifically because I have met and learned to love so many people who are so radically different than I am. My prayer is that we can embrace and share the gift of Christmas, the gift of Jesus, the gift of true, abiding charity in this congregation, in our communities, and throughout our reach of influence, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.