The Power of Generosity

Overview

Why is it that we celebrate Christmas with gift giving? We don’t do that at Easter. We don’t do that at Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July. At anniversaries and birthdays, we give one person gifts, but at Christmas everybody gives everybody gifts. Why? I’m not actually looking for a literal answer. I’m asking as a rhetorical question, “Why is it that everybody gives gifts to everybody else at Christmas?”

I’m here to say it’s profoundly appropriate, because it gets at the theological heart of Christmas: that Jesus Christ is the only human being who wasn’t just born but was given.

Everyone who knows something about the Bible will say that 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 is the longest, most involved, and explicit passage in all of the Bible on the subject of generosity. We’re being told 1) there’s a problem with regard to giving and generosity, 2) what will happen if we don’t solve that problem, and 3) how we can solve it.