What have you expected during Advent and what will you get and give this Christmas? December 2011 Someone told that one day, when East-Berlin was still under communist rule, the authorities emptied a truck full of garbage on the West-Berlin side. While they could have answered similarly from the West-Berlin side, instead, they sent back a truck nicely packed with canned food, bread and milk to the East-Berlin side. On the top of the truckload of freight was put the following sign: “Everyone gives what one has!””

Our Advent expectations were surpassed by God’s Christmas gesture: we throw only our garbage, our sins on to the other side, to His “afterlife”. Nevertheless, He had sent down to us His Son, to this side. We starve for the fulfillment of our life in the world of human sin, meanwhile we are littering each other’s lives with selfishness, vanity and abuse. And He had sent us the Bread of Life, wrapped so very nicely! Well, I didn’t mean our scandalous hospitality in Bethlehem, which was packed suitably in a dirty cattle manger, but I mean that God answered to all of these with such a forgiveness-wrapping!

Jóska, a long ago cured alcoholic brother, became a clear illustration to me about ten years ago. There was an alcohol addicted man in his village who always slandered and mocked him, surely because he was annoyed that Jóska had been cured, moreover that he was constantly happy in Christ’s love. One Advent Sunday night the man was drunk, fell asleep and slipped off from his unlit hay wagon. He fell into the ditch near the road, still sleeping. The horse pulled the wagon on without his master, but at a turn in the road, it became frightened by the lights of Jóska’s Dacia car and jumped at it, landing on the passenger front seat of the car, almost killing the driver. Jóska was kicked in his face, he fainted and got some minor wounds but he was not injured seriously. Soon his wounds were healed and he was allowed to go home from the hospital. Of course the car was broken in pieces. The unconsciously irresponsible cause of the accident was waiting trembling to be put in jail. What an Advent he could have had! Finally he heard with a great surprise that Jóska defended him before the police and stopped the process to imprison him, constantly emphasizing that he forgave because he knew from his old life what that drunken state meant.

The other day I met Jóska and I heard from him that after so many years that man has started to slander and attack him again in the village. Even though at the time of the accident he had apologized and was very impressed that he escaped from the sentence thanks to his own victim. As if the Christmas of the unexpected forgiveness did not happen in his life at all. Still, Jóska doesn’t mind that he had forgiven then and he continues to love him: sadly but resolutely.

Well, this is the message of Christmas for me now! We foolishly wish for a false freedom, for desires which we think are good and make us happy. We wish for an imagined freedom which is like the “paradise” of the communist East-Berlin. Meanwhile God answers these desires in a surprising way, He packs His answer differently than we would expect. He answers the litter with love, because He is aware that “neither shall wickedness deliver him that is given to it” (Ecclesiastes 8:8). He rather gives us Christ, because only He can give us freedom.

I talked with a man who was planning to get divorced and who was arguing that he became “liberated” by finally cheating on his wife and punishing her in this way. Two years later, when he relapsed, he cried and told me: "Now I see that I have remained a prisoner. Then I thought that my wish was fulfilled, I thought that if I took revenge I would become free. I had deceived myself in thinking that if she made me angry I could get revenge by drinking. But since then I have become disgusted with myself, drinking and cheating on her gave me only a temporary relief and not the fulfillment of my deepest need. Finally I have remained empty, my desire for love was deceived many years by the wrong directions I took, and which did not give me fulfillment". We agreed that it is very true that “neither shall wickedness deliver him that is given to it”, and he also had to admit with pain that “Everyone gives what one has…”

Let us ask bravely ourselves: What have you expected during Advent and what has Christmas brought to you? Jesus came not to meet our desires, but He gave Himself as heavenly Bread to feed our hunger for love and because “Everyone gives what one has.” I wonder if I will remain a thankless Christmas enjoyer this year again, like the drunken carter, or will I give in to this devoted, inexplicably still loving God.