A Sermon by Dan Calvo
Pittsburgh New Church
December 25, 2025
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Text:
Opening their treasures the wise men from the east offered gifts to the new-born Lord - gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 'Gold' here means good, 'frankincense' [means] internal truth, and 'myrrh' [means] external truth; both kinds of truth spring from good. In this instance 'gold' is the first to be mentioned because it means good, which is inmost; 'frankincense' is the second because it means internal truth springing from good; and 'myrrh' is the third or last to be mentioned because it means external truth springing from good. (…) The wise men from the east offered those gifts to the Lord born at that time to indicate His Divinity within His Humanity; for having a knowledge of correspondences and representations they knew what gold, frankincense, and myrrh each served to mean. (AC 10252)
The Christmas season is finally here, and this is such a wonderful time of the year. This is a time of the year when we get together with family we haven’t seen in a while, we get to share delicious food, we get to listen to beautiful Christmas music, but there is one main thing that every single one of us is looking forward to during Christmas, and that is presents. We all love getting presents for Christmas. Presents mean a lot to us, whether they come from a parent or a friend or our spouse, getting a present from someone we really care about can mean a whole lot to us and they make us feel very happy. And on the other hand, giving Christmas presents to someone that we love can be a wonderful way for us to show just how much we care about the people in our lives.
The reason why we exchange presents during Christmas is because we are celebrating the Lord's birthday, and like on any birthday it's very important to have presents to celebrate the person who was born that day. Imagine a birthday without presents! That would be pretty sad, right? But on the day of the Lord's birthday we are the ones usually getting the presents, while we don't really give presents to the Lord all that much. It's not easy to send a box of chocolates to heaven! But it’s very important that we give presents to the Lord, because the Lord is giving us presents all the time. He’s constantly taking care of us, and giving us good things that make us happy and healthy and fulfilled. For example, the Lord gave us life, He’s given us friends, family, the food that we eat, the water that we drink, the air that we breathe, every single good thing that has ever happened in our lives is a present from the Lord. So, if we are constantly getting presents from the Lord all year round then how can we show Him that same love? How do we give presents to the Lord so that we can celebrate how happy we are that He was born on earth?
When the Lord was born there was a group of three wise men from way in the east of Israel who had been waiting for the Lord to be born for a very long time, and so they decided to go and visit baby Jesus and His mother Mary where they were staying, and they brought gifts to celebrate the birthday of the Lord. They brought 3 gifts: they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They brought these three gifts because they had a very special meaning and believe it or not, once we learn what the special spiritual meaning of these gifts is, we can learn how to give those same presents to the Lord not only on Christmas but every single day of the year.
First, we have gold. It's very easy to see why gold was a great present. Gold is very valuable and expensive. It is very pretty, and it is used for jewelry and of course, money. So how do we give gold to the Lord? Well, the special meaning of gold is that gold is a symbol for good. Gold is a symbol for kindness, for doing nice things for others, like doing chores around the house to help our family, for being nice to people and respecting others around us. Every time we are being loving to our neighbors, it is like we are taking some gold and offering it to the Lord as a present. This is partly why the Lord told us in the Word, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did [something kind] for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of Mine, you did it for Me.” (Matthew 25:40)
Next, we have frankincense. Frankincense is a mix of special herbs and plants that when they get dried up and you burn them they smell really, really nice. Frankincense was very important to the people of Israel because they used to burn frankincense in the temple because the Lord really liked the smell of frankincense. Now the special meaning of frankincense, is that frankincense is a symbol for worshipping the Lord. Whenever we go to church to worship and pray, it is like we are giving a present of frankincense to the Lord because He is overjoyed by the fact that we are spending time with Him. Spending time with the Lord by going to church on Sunday, or praying or reading the Word is a wonderful gift that we can give to the Lord. And when we invite someone else to come to church with us to worship the Lord, we get to make that present even more special because we are sharing it with somebody else and we get to bring them into the celebration. Right now, we are giving a gift to the Lord by being here in this room worshipping Him.
And finally we get to myrrh. Now, myrrh is a very interesting thing. Myrrh is kind of like medicine, it was used to heal certain wounds, it was used to protect people's skin and sometimes it was even used during funerary rituals. Myrrh was very, very expensive because it had so many different uses to it. So how do we give a present of myrrh to the Lord? Well, the special meaning of myrrh is that myrrh is a symbol for the truth that we find in the Word. When we read the Word, when we read the stories and all of the wonderful teachings that the Lord gave us about how to love our neighbor, and how to live a better life, we are reading the Lord's message to us and we are spending time with Him getting to know Him better. And when we are doing this it is like we are giving a present of myrrh to the Lord, we are giving a present to the Lord of wanting to spend time with Him, and wanting to learn more about the things that He has to say to us. And when we share a passage of the Word with someone who may really need it, we can make that present even more special, because we are sharing all the good things of the Word with someone who could really use that support, and once again, whatever good things we do for others, are also good things that we are doing for the Lord as well.
Now there is a very important thing to consider as we are giving presents to the Lord and it's that the Lord is way nicer than we are. If you think about it every single one of the presents that we are giving to the Lord are things that are good for us. Being kind to other people and doing good for our neighbors is good for our relationships with others, and it makes us happier. Spending time in church worshiping the Lord helps us be more connected with Him, and it helps us make new friends and develop community with the people who are worshipping with us. And when we read the Word, we learn new things that are going to make us happier, we learn how to be kind, we learn how to handle conflicts with our friends and our loved ones, and we learn how to treat other people. So, reading the Word is also a present for ourselves. Every single present that we are giving to the Lord by doing these things is also a thing that ends up being a present for ourselves because what the Lord wants more than anything in the universe is for us to be happy and closer to Him. And when we share those good things with others, we are making those presents even more special because we are sharing the joy in the way that the Lord wants us to do.
We can give presents to the Lord every single day of the year. Whenever we do a kind thing for our neighbor it's like giving a present of gold to the Lord. Whenever we go to church to worship it is like giving a present of frankincense to the Lord. And whenever we read the Word to learn more about the things that God wants us to know about, it is like giving a present of myrrh to the Lord. When we make it a goal in our everyday lives to do these things we constantly give new presents to the Lord to show Him how much we care about Him, and show Him our gratitude for all the presents that He is always giving us. If we make a habit of doing these things to celebrate the Lord, we can celebrate His birthday every single day of the year and we can show Him our love and our appreciation not only on Christmas but every day of our lives. Which means everyday can be Christmas! And how wonderful would that be? Amen.