My littlest kid, who is 2-and-a-half, has just this year realized what presents are. She has loved Christmastime this year (and has made it so joyful for us) because she anticipates gifts with such delight. She wonders what each wrapped present is, and hopes each gift might be for her. We did experience a few mishaps, where she unwrapped gifts that were for other people - but on the whole, we've been quite happy to tag along with her enthusiasm. And now she keeps wondering aloud in her two year old voice, "More presents?" 

 

I want to suggest that this kind of joyful anticipatory vision is what God hopes we will have when we read today's scriptures. Today's epistle (1 John 3:11-21) emphasizes love as the great message we have from the beginning - the great gift, if you will. We know love, John says, because Jesus himself laid down his life for us. John exhorts us to live in love - not just to say the words, but to do the harder but more true thing of living out our love. Are there more gifts here? How can there be MORE gifts than love - except that there are! John says that we will "reassure our hearts before him" which to me indicates a gift of peace. But even more than that, God is greater than our hearts - greater than our worries - and that too, is a great gift.

 

Then in the gospel (John 1:43-51), some of the first apostles encounter Jesus as a gift. They aren't sure it can quite be a gift - after all, the wrapping is suspect. "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" 

 

Yet the other gift is that even when we think we have reached a pinnacle, there is still more. There is always "more presents" with God. Nathaniel has the kind of peacefulness of heart that perhaps our first reading advocates. Jesus notes that he does not have duplicity in his heart - which I think is an amazing gift. Yet Jesus tells Nathaniel that he will see even greater things - there will be a continuous unfolding of gifts.

 

So yes, there are more presents and there always will be with God's abundant love! The saints are one example of a "present" - and today's saint, Bishop John Neumann (1811-1860), was the first American man and bishop to be named a saint. He is known for starting the first Catholic school system in the United States - the gift of education is surely a gift God continually offers to us!

 

Today, let us reflect on the gifts God keeps on giving to us.

 

- Jana M. Bennett