Nicholas of Myra

December 6 is the feast day of Nicholas of Myra—Saint Nicholas. He was a real person: a fourth-century bishop of the Church who may have attended the Council of Nicaea (from whence we get the Nicene Creed.) He is remembered as the patron saint of seafarers, sailors, and children. 

Little is known that can be clearly distinguished from the many legends about his life, but one thing we are fairly certain we know is that he was tortured and imprisoned for his faith during the reign of Emperor Diocletian. His memory and example was brought to this country by Dutch colonists in New York, who called him Santa Claus.

For my money, Miraslov Volf, who is the Director of  the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and Professor at Yale Divinity School, is one of the most creative theologians of our time. He wrote an extraordinary book a decade or so ago entitled Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. 

Volf makes an important distinction between God and our images of god. (Paul Tillich was making the same distinction many years ago when he spoke about “the God beyond God.”) That is to say there is this God who is beyond all of our knowing—“I AM” who encountered Moses at the burning bush but would not give a name—the God we can only glimpse and never control. And then there are the images we make—some of them iconic and some of them graven—but all of them limited and therefore always needing to be critiqued.  

Two common (but according to Volf false) images of god are god the negotiator and god the Santa Claus. Sometimes we imagine god as the one with whom we can play “let’s make a deal:” god, if you do this for me then I will do that. And conversely, if I do this for you then I want you do that for me.  Even our prayers (especially our prayers!) can become a means to an end: we want what lies behind door number one or curtain number two. If God will make my child better then we will go to church every Sunday. Promise. 

Alternatively, we run to the god of consumerist materialism to sit on his lap: the god who knows when we’ve been bad or good, so we better be good, for goodness’ sake! The god who gives everything and yet demands nothing. We go to this god with our shopping lists: insisting that we have discerned not only what we want but what we need.

I don’t want to caricature these images, and Volf doesn’t either. But they permeate American Christianity. And Volf challenges both images as idolatrous, insisting that the God of the Bible is first and foremost a Giver. He insists that the God of authentic Christian faith is the God who has created us and the world in love. But unlike Santa Claus-god, the Giving God’s gifts require a response in us, because God takes us seriously. God’s gifts, Volf writes, oblige us to a “posture of receptivity.” And once we have received God’s gifts, that marks not an end but a beginning. As we move toward gratitude we move also toward a willingness to respond in kind and to act in a similar way in the world. And so his title: it is not only God, but we ourselves who are called to “giving and forgiving” in a culture stripped of grace.  

I think we need to reclaim the Bishop of Myra as a saint of the Church. The problem for us is that "Santa Claus" has been co-opted to the point where the guy at the mall and coming down the chimneys bears little resemblance to the Bishop of Myra, who knew the cost of discipleship and whose generosity most definitely grew out of his encounter with the Giver of all things, the Maker of heaven and earth. So I think that old St. Nick needs a good press agent, and needs to be reclaimed by the Church.

By this we know that we abide in Christ, and that Christ abides in us: because he has given us of his Spirit. Even in Advent, even as we prepare for the birth of the holy child, we remember that in his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit to be with us. We have been given gifts—each of us—to do the work of ministry. Each of our congregations have been given gifts. Some we already recognize and claim and use. Some we are only beginning to claim, or even identify. And still others have been buried deep within us, and remain unacknowledged—these need to be unearthed and discovered like pearls in a field so they can be claimed and used for the sake of God’s reign.

This season of Advent puts in front of us an opportunity to once again encounter the God who truly is beyond God—and beyond all of our doctrines, all of our images, and all of our language. It gives us an opportunity to be still in the presence of this God who refuses to be used by us or domesticated by us or co-opted by us: this God who is the Giver of all things.

My prayer is that this Advent season we might each encounter this living God anew—the One who so loves the world that he sends Jesus into it in order that we might have life and have it abundantly. And that in a couple of weeks we might recognize the Gift that comes to us wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. When we do, I pray that we might receive the Gift with gratitude and then respond with our lives. Or as Christine Rosetti put it:

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 can I give him, give my heart.