For a Christmas meditation this year, I turn to William Willimon, who served as dean of the chapel at Duke University, then spent eight years as a Methodist Bishop in Alabama, and recently returned to Duke as a professor:
We enjoy thinking of ourselves as basically generous, benevolent, giving people. That’s one reason why everyone, even the nominally religious, loves Christmas. Christmas is a season to celebrate our alleged generosity. The newspaper keeps us posted on how many needy families we have adopted. The Salvation Army kettles enable us to be generous while buying groceries (for ourselves) or gifts (for our families). People we work with who usually balk at the collection to pay for the morning coffee fall over themselves soliciting funds “to make Christmas” for some family.
We love Christmas because, as we say, Christmas brings out the best in us. Everyone gives on Christmas, even the stingiest among us, even the Ebeneezer Scrooges. Charles Dickens’ story of Scrooge’s transformation has probably done more to form our notions of Christmas than St. Luke’s story of the manger. Whereas Luke tells us of God’s gift to us, Dickens tells us how we can give to others. A Christmas Carol is more congenial to our favorite images of ourselves. Dickens suggests that down deep, even the worst of us can become generous, giving people.
Yet I suggest we are better givers than getters, not because we are generous people but because we are proud, arrogant people. The Christmas story–the one according to Luke not Dickens–is not about how blessed it is to be givers but about how essential it is to see ourselves as receivers.
We prefer to think of ourselves as givers–powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people whose goodness motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate. Which is a direct contradiction of the biblical account of the first Christmas. 
There we are portrayed not as the givers we wish we were but as the receivers we are. Luke and Matthew go to great lengths to demonstrate that we–with our power, generosity, competence and capabilities–had little to do with God’s work in Jesus. God wanted to do something for us so strange, so utterly beyond the bounds of human imagination, so foreign to human projection, that God had to resort to angels, pregnant virgins, and stars in the sky to get it done. We didn’t think of it, understand it or approve it. All we could do, at Bethlehem, was receive it. A gift from a God we hardly even knew.
—William Willimon, taken from an article in The Christian Century, Dec 21-28, 1998
Wow . . .
William Willimon is right about me: just when I thought I was being generous, I found a mixed motive. But “in him there is no darkness at all.”
“Luke and Matthew go to great lengths to demonstrate that we–with our power, generosity, competence and capabilities–had little to do with God’s work in Jesus. God wanted to do something for us so strange, so utterly beyond the bounds of human imagination, so foreign to human projection, that God had to resort to angels, pregnant virgins, and stars in the sky to get it done. We didn’t think of it, understand it or approve it. All we could do, at Bethlehem, was receive it. A gift from a God we hardly even knew.”
Good reminder for me this AM. Thanks.
Thank you for taking time to connect with us all and to share your feelings on a variety of issues. I agree with Billy Graham, you are the best evangelical writer EVER.
Merry Christmas.
Sue
This has nothing to do with the blog. I am reading your book, “Where is God when it hurts?” I wish I could give every person in Newtown, CT this book. I am sure that a book is the last thing they would like to read right now, but in my experience with grieving and hard times, and asking the question “why?” all the time, your book gave me some clarity. It will not bring back those children, nor will it make hard times go away, but it gives you a little piece of mind at a time of need. I thank you for that more than words. If only you could speek to them too. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Sincerely, Reaghan
Hello, I just got to your chapter on miracles, and before I read it I have some questions about how to treat them. Today as much as ever, as I am sure you state, they are regarded by some as insanity or grandiosity or altogether not real. There is a debacle on how to approach them and it never feels safe to say to a neighbor that one has occurred.
Then there is the voice of doubt in the goodness of what happened and there is the sentiment that all that is happening is from deep evil power. I approach these things with a gentle poise but they never find solace or resolve in me or with me.
Ultimately I find myself wondering about how Satan tempted Jesus in the desert and he would not do it. The Jews are very specific about how and when they let people into their communities. I always want to look for fundamental goodness in people and beyond prayer to the extent I believe I am capable see good things in people life but there is this prevailing feeling that I don’t really know what I am doing and I should not be doing it.
its been 6 years now where I have never been comfortable being party to anything that would be labeled a miracle even though its just energy flowing though me and part of the great I am. I don’t like to think my hearts been hardened but the idea is suggested without end.
You seem like a peaceful man. And I am a peaceful man. War happens, but we should avoid it at all cost, and this same voice of doubt tells me I am being a victim and need to fight.
I wish to give and I wish to accept freely. But there is nothing that is free. Thats all I keep hearing. great. even if its true.. who the zippidy doo da thinks that point needs to be hammered in and reminded on a daily basis. And the fact that I am a Republican makes me Big Foot in this regard and I don’t find that right either. The idea that I am willing and able if need to be but avoid it at all cost should not make me big foot. I find that to be a solid principle. (steven colbert made a joke about moderate republicans in that regard and I find it funny.. but dont like being big foot).
God always allows evil to endure, he thinks of eternity and he cares for the poor but knows they will always exist.