Prayer for the (Advent) Offering

Over the Advent season I've found the offertory prayer more difficult to write than usual. This is partly because the consumeristic spirit of Christmas these days leaves me hesitant to associate Jesus with the gift-getting impulse of our annual, year-end Saturnalia. Full confession: there's a growing part of me that deeply struggles when I hear things like "Jesus is the Greatest Gift of All" at Christmastime, because it leaves me wondering if we aren't really saying, or at least leaving non-Christians with the impression that we're saying: "Not only does Jesus endorse the hedonistic, consumeristic, materialistic frenzy of December, he is, in fact, nothing more (or less) than its ultimate climax."


As I continue to wrestle with this, I thought I'd post a few of the gift-giving prayers we've prayed at the Freeway.


Father in Heaven,

As we pause in the middle of this busy time of year, it seems almost silly for us to say: Jesus is the Reason for the Season. The one who came to give us divine simplicity, pure generosity and holy rest; is he the reason for all of this hectic buying and getting and rushing around?

But God, he is the reason for what we do in this place this morning, because he is your gift of life and love and hope to us. And his presence has always inspired joyful gift-giving in the hearts of his followers.

So when three learned star-gazers followed the omens at his birth and found him lying in the lap of his virgin mother, they gave gold and frankincense and myrrh in humble awe.

And later when he came to eat in the house of a humiliatingly-short tax-collector who’d climbed a tree to get a glimpse of him, that tax-collector gave half of all he owned to the poor for pure joy.

And later still, when he sat in the house of his friends the week before he would be executed, a woman named Mary gave a pint of pure perfume, poured a year’s wages-worth over his feet and wiped it with her hair in deep gratitude.

God, can you inspire that kind of gift-giving in us again?

And as we worship him through our gifts and offerings today, we invite you to teach us once more the divine simplicity, and pure generosity, and holy rest that is your gift to us in Christ Jesus.

Amen.


***

God, as we give our tithes and offerings today,
We want to do it with the all trust and simplicity of a child.

After all, your Son Jesus told us
that we would enter the Kingdom of Heaven
only if we could receive it with the humility of a child.

And so on this second Sunday of Advent, we remember that
Old children’s carol, and make it our humble prayer today:

What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.
If I were a wise man, I would do my part.
Yet what I can, I give him, give him my heart.

Amen.