FIRST FRIDAY CLUB - DECEMBER 5, 1997

Al Gustavson’s invitation had to do with The Wall Street Journal
article about religion and money and the sermon: Money and

Meaning
Jacob Needham - book by that title

JN says what many are saying (Robert Withnow) et. Al.
1. Money is important (best line “Show me the money)
2. How we get it and use it defines who we are

3. Expresses our ultimate values and commitments more than
anything

Your credo is written in your check style

insurance commercial-— Jack Benny impersonator, cheapskate
Rainy night - man accosted by mugger

“Your money or your life!”

Silence

Repeat

“Vm thinking it over.”

When we finally arranged date, it was December, so Al said “Talk
about money and Christmas — not hard.”

After all, money is what this is about.

70-80 % of retail business between Thanksgiving and Christmas
Make or break time

Gorgeous -— lights/decorations

Michigan Avenue crowded

Saxophonist — ten years

Winter Wonderland — at Water Tower

Eif at Drake giving Tribune and Frango Mints. Why? It’s the season
for giving.

In the midst of it, something important — it has to do not so much with
money — only peripherally — and everything in the world to do with
giving and receiving.

So let’s thank —

[If you are fortunate — someone once taught you to give and to
receive —

| recall it well. | was about 11 or 12, |suppose. My mother had taken
my brother and me to do our Christmas shopping, a fairly simple
procedure: big blue work handkerchiefs and razor blades for Dad;
inexpensive scarf or department store perfume for Mother. What Dad
really wanted, we ail knew, was a new pocket watch. He was a
railroader and a good pocket watch was standard equipment. | have
recalled the memories of that pocket watch, which he used to pull
from his vest and wind loudly in church when he decided the
preacher had gone on long enough, to my mother’s horror and my
delight.

Mother had found just the right pocket watch. It was in a jewelry
store | had never seen before, on the second floor of a bank building.
lt was elegant. There was a dark blue carpet all the way up the
stairs, and the owner, Mr. Sellers, a very distinguished man about
town, waited on us. He knew my mother’s name. | was impressed.
The object of our search was in the glass case. We looked at it. Mr.
Sellers took it out of the case, placed it on a piece of felt on the
counter, showed it to us and carefully opened the back to display the
works which he assured us were fine. It was expensive. Mother told
him we’d have to think about it some more. So down the stairs we
went, out onto the sidewalk and she called a conference. “How much
money do you have?” she asked me. | had a paper route sol hada
few dollars. “And how much do you have?” she asked my little
brother who produced a handful of loose change from his pocket.

“Good,” she said, as she took two or three dollars from me and some
loose change from my brother. “Now we have enough.” Up the blue
carpeted stairs we went. Mr. Sellers was waiting for us and we
bought the watch!

What excitement! What anticipation! What an adventure! We could
hardly wait for Christmas morning to give it to him. | have since
concluded that Mother orchestrated the whole thing. Of course, she
didn’t need our two dollars and change. What a gift she gave us by
teaching us a precious lesson about the joy of giving: that the gifts of
Christmas are to be given as well as received.

One of the most beloved Christmas stories of all isGifts of the Magi
by O. Henry, which was the pen name of William Sydney Porter, a
turn-of-the-century American author.

The story is about Mr. and Mrs. James Dillingham Young, Jim and
Della, in their early twenties, trying to make a go of itin an
inexpensive and shabby flat in New York. Mr. Dillingham’s wages
have just been cut. It’s Christmas. Della has managed to save $1.87
to buy a present for her husband. Jim has no money to buy a present
for her...

“Now there were two possessions of the James Dillingham
Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s
gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s.
The other was Della’s hair.

“Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft
Delia would have let her hair hang out the window some day to
dry and mocked at Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King
Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the
basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he
passed, just to see him pluck at his beard fram envy.”
On the very day Della acknowledged the fact that her paltry savings
were not going to provide much of a gift for her husband, she stood
looking at herself in the mirror, her beautiful hair cascading down,
and she made an inspired and fateful decision. She ran to a hair
goods shop and impulsively sold her hair for $20.00.

“Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. She was
ransacking the stores for Jim's present....

“She found it at last. It surely had been made for him and no
one else. There was none other like it in any of the stores. It
was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly
proclaiming its value.... As soon as she saw it, she knew that it
must be Jim’s.”

The watch chain cost $21.00 and she hurried home with her
treasure.

She tried to repair the damage her generosity had caused by
curling the little hair left on her head and prepared dinner, eagerly
awaiting Jim’s return, worried now about his reaction to her new
look.

When Jim arrived, he stopped, stared at her — stunned. “Your
hair,” he said. “it’s gone.”

“Yes,” Delia said. “It’s sold and gone.”

“Out of his trance, Jim seemed to quickly wake .... Jim drewa
package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the
table....”

Delia tore at the string and paper — her cry of joy changed to
tears....

“For there lay The Combs — the set of combs, side and back,
that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window.
Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rims — just
the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. There were
expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved
and yearned over them without the least hope of possession.
And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have
adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

“But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able
to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My hair grows so
fast, Jim!”

“Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to
him eagerly upon her open paim. The dull, precious metal
seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent
spirit...

“isn’t it a dandy, Jim? | hunted all over town to find it. You'll
have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me
your watch. | want to see how it looks on it.”

“Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put
his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

“Dell, said he, let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep
‘ema while. They’re too nice to use just at present. | sold the
watch to get the money to buy your combs....” [Jack
Newcomb, editor, A Christmas Treasury, p. 209-213]

There is required, i have observed, both art and science in the giving
of gifts and in the receiving of gifts. The brilliance of O. Henry’s story
is that Jim and Della have both. They know how to give and they
know how to receive.

Children, I think sometimes, are born with the instinct. A few days
before Christmas, | was talking to Carolyn on the telephone. Carolyn
will be three in January. She lives in Texas and she is my
granddaughter. “What do you want for Christmas, Carolyn?” | asked.
“ft’s a secret,” she said. And then, whispering, “But we sent you a
book and some underwear....” Don’t tell,” she added. She had all the
pieces of the ritual, | concluded. She simply had them in the wrong
sequence. Carolyn had more art than science, but her instincts are
excellent.

It is very big business — gift giving is. We spend an enormous amount
of time, energy and creativity, not to mention money, on Christmas
gifts.

Retailers makes it or don’t make it for the year based on sales in the
last four weeks. And all of it is an expanded variation on a theme first
sounded 2000 years ago when Magi — The Three Wise Men of tradition
— arrived to pay homage to a newborn infant and gave him precious
gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

They are intriguing characters in the nativity. The were astrologers
and their story has been amplified by art, music, legend and religious
myth over the centuries.

Magi were the first century equivalent of consultants. Kings called on
them regularly before mounting military campaigns. Businessmen
asked their advice before investing. Families of means hired them to
consult on matters of marriage and romance.

So when astrologers in the East observe a new phenomenon in the
heavens, they set out to discover the event it signaled, in all
probability the birth of a new king. The Adler Planetarium will tell you
about the convergence of Jupiter and Saturn at the time — if you need
a little science. And they did the logical thing: they called on Herod -
King of the Jews — in his enormous palace in Jerusalem, asking if a
new king had been born. Herod was a great king, one of history’s
most productive builders. He constructed whole cities, the mammoth
harbor at Caesarea, a series of huge and palatial fortresses from one
end of the land to the other.

He was also incredibly cruel. In order to consolidate his political
position, Herod had murdered members of his own family. When the
Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus, heard about it he said, “I’d rather
be Herod’s pig than his son.”

When Herod hears the question about a new king, he convenes the
religious authorities and says in effect: “Let’s suppose that the
Messiah, the one who will come to the throne of David (the one I’m
sitting on, by the way) came —- now. Where would he likely be born?”
And the religious authorities, with embarrassing naiveté, tell him,
quoting a little Scripture: “And you, O Bethlehem, from you shall
come a ruler.”

And so, it was Herod who pointed the Magi toward Bethlehem and off
they go looking, | suppose, for the newest baby and when they find

him, when they see the child, they do the most astonishing thing -
they give him wonderful gifts.

There is art in the receiving of gifts. | used to wonder what Mary and
Joseph did with the gold, frankincense and myrrh, not exactly baby
gifts, and decided that they used it to buy a few camels for the long
trip down to Egypt. Of one thing I’m certain and that is that Mary did
hot say what you and 1 sometimes say when we are given a
wonderfully generous gift - “Oh, you shouldn’t have done that.”

What a peculiar and significant thing to say.

John Steinbeck observed that:
“It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on
the other hand, if it is well done, requires a fine balance of self-

knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact....” New
York Times Magazine, 12-24-95]

itis more blessed to give than to receive, Jesus said, and most of us
have discovered that. But we also know that it is, in some ways,
easier, and that we are better at giving than receiving.

We know people to whom it is impossible to give anything, evena
compliment. “You look nice today” — “No | don’t, | look awful.”
“That’s a pretty coat” ~ “No, it’s an old one.”

The treat theologian, Karl Barth, thought it was a spiritual problem.
Barth used to preach almost every Sunday morning in the city jail in
Basel. And in one memorable Christmas sermon, he said:

“We do not appreciate that God does not owe us anything, that
we are bound to live from his goodness alone, that we are left

with nothing but the great humility, the thankfulness of the child
presented with many gifts.” [Deliverance to the Captives, p. 40]

Pve never heard Carolyn say, “Oh, you shouldn’t have, Granddaddy.”
But I’ve said it and wished | hadn’t. Paul Tournier, a Swiss
psychiatrist who did pioneering work in religion and psychology,
observed that even though the Christian church has been

proclaiming the free grace of God for 20 centuries, a stronger
message is:

“the psychological attitude, the idea deeply ingrained in the
heart - that everything must be paid for.” [Guilt and Grace, p.
174]

Tournier thinks that when we say “You shouldn’t have,” we may be
saying, “I don’t want to be obligated to you.” “1 don’t want to have to
respond to your generosity.” We may be saying, “I don’t want to get
this close.” And we may be saying, “I really don’t feel like | deserve
this. ’m not good enough for this gift.”

All of which is confounded and overcome and overwhelmed by
Christmas, by what the Magi saw when they arrived — a child — God’s
love and grace given absolutely, utterly, with no conditions, no
strings attached, no deserving to be earned, no correctness to be
achieved: just a gift, an absolutely gracious gift of love .... To which
the only plausible possible response is to receive it, to hold it tightly
and to say “thank you” ~ and to open your heart and your hands and
give whatever you have.

So, in these lovely quieter days of Christmastide, ponder the gifts you
gave others and the gifts you received. Ponder how much of yourself
you gave and how much of those precious others: your beloveds,
were given humbly and genuinely and extravagantly to you. Ponder
and be grateful.

QO, Henry concluded:

“The Magi, as you know, were wise men — wonderfully wise men
~ who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented
the art of giving Christmas gifts. Being wise, their gifts were no
doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in
case of duplication. And her i have lamely related to you the
uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most
unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of
their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days, let it be
said that of all who give gifts, these two were of the wisest. Of

all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
Everywhere they are wisest. They are the Magi.”