Rags to Richmas

Today is the Tuesday before Christmas and I’m not sure what that means to each one of you. For some of you it may be a time to reflect on Christmas and what it means - the birth of Jesus. For some of you it could be just a holiday that you are looking forward to, one that comes as a gift to you. For some of you it’s a bit of a letdown as it comes on a Saturday which is anyway a holiday. I thought I’d take this opportunity to share what Christmas means to me and hopefully and vicariously I can leave a message that can encourage you too about Christmas this year.

G. K. Chesterton had a quote that said, ”Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.” And rather than allow Christmas to be a tradition I thought we could see where the fire was and maybe that fire could help us during these days.

I want to share a story that was told by a professor of mine. It’s a story written by Walter Wangerin Jr. and went like this:

I saw a strange sight. I stumbled upon a story most strange like nothing I had ever seen in my life, my street sense or my tongue had ever prepared me for. Early one Friday morning I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the streets of the city. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes new and bright, and he was calling in a clear voice, “Rags! Rags! I’ll take your tired rags and give you new clothes.” Now this was a wonder for the man stood six-feet-four and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner city?

So I followed him. My curiosity drove me and I wasn’t disappointed. Soon the Ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into a handkerchief, sighing and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X. her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking. The Ragman stopped his cart. Quietly he walked to the woman, stepping around tin cans, dead toys and used Pampers.

“Give me your rag,” he said to her gently, “and I’ll give you another.” He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver.

Then as he began to pull has cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing; he put her stained handkerchief to his own face; and then HE began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left without a tear.

“This IS a wonder,” I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing Ragman like a child who cannot turn away from a mystery. “Rags! Rags! New rags for old.”

In a little while, when the sky showed grey behind the rooftops, he came upon an old tumbledown house with shredded curtains hanging at black windows. There stood a girl whose head was wrapped in a bandage, whose eyes were empty. The bandages were soaked with blood and a single line of blood ran down her cheek.

Now the tall Ragman looked upon this child with pity and he drew a lovely yellow bonnet from his cart. “Give me your rag,” he said, tracing his own line on her cheek, “and I’ll give you mine.”

The child could only gaze at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it and tied it to his own head. The bonnet he set on hers. And I gasped at what I saw; for with the bandage went the wound! Against his brow it ran a darker, more substantial blood – his own!

‘Rags! Rags! I take old rags!” cried the sobbing, bleeding, strong, intelligent Ragman.

The sun hurt both the sky, now, and my eyes; the Ragman seemed more and more to hurry.

“Are you going to work?” he asked a man who leaned against a telephone pole. The man shook his head. The Ragman pressed him; “Do you have a job?”

“Are you crazy?” sneered the other. He pulled away from the pole, revealing the right sleeve of his jacket. It was flat, the cuff stuffed into the pocket because he had no arm.

“So,” said the Ragman, “give me your jacket and I’ll give you mine.” Such quiet authority in his voice.

The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman – and I trembled at what I saw: for the Ragman’s arm stayed in its sleeve. And when the other put it on he had two good arms, thick as tree limbs; but the Ragman had only one. “Go to work,” he said.

After that he found a drunk, lying unconscious beneath an army blanket, an old man, hunched, wizened and sick. He took that blanket and wrapped it round himself, but for the drunk he left new clothes.

And now I had to run to keep up with the Ragman. Though he was weeping uncontrollably, and bleeding freely at the forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, old and sick; yet he went with terrible speed. On spider’s legs he skittered through the alleys of the city, this mile and the next until he came to its outer limits and then he rushed beyond.

I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I needed to see where he was going in such haste, perhaps to know what drove him to do the things he did. Then the little old Ragman came to a landfill. He came to the garbage pits. And then I wanted to help him in what he did, but I hung back, hiding. He climbed a hill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. Then he sighed. He lay down. He pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with an army blanket. And he died.

Oh, how I cried to witness that death. I slumped in a junked car and wailed and mourned as one who has no hope – because I had come to love the Ragman. Every other face had faded in the ownder of this man and I cherished him, but he died. I sobbed myself to sleep.

I did not know – how could I know? – that I slept through Friday night and Saturday and its night too. But then on Sunday morning I was wakened by a violence.

Light – pure, hard, demanding light – slammed against my sour face, and I blinked, and I looked and I saw the last and the first wonder of all. There was the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive. And besides that, healthy! There was no sign of sorrow or of age, and all the rags that he had gathered, shined for cleanliness.

Well, then I lowered my head and trembling for all that I had seen, I myself walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name with shame, for I was a sorry figure next to him. Then I took off all my clothes in that place, and I said to him with dear yearning in my voice: “Dress me.”

He dressed my. My Lord, he put new rags on me and I am a wonder beside him. The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ, who came down at Christmas time many years ago so that he could make a difference in each one of our lives.

What a beautiful story! And yet it has such eternal truth for each one of us today. Like the child who was crying, maybe there are tears in your eyes too. Maybe you are crying.

My daughter once wrote a one-liner which touched me so much. “Jesus: the only one capable of drying the tears I don’t cry.” And sometimes we can’t even cry. Tears don’t come – sometimes because of our culture or maybe it’s more difficult for men, but deep inside we’re crying. But God sees that and he dries those tears.

Or maybe it’s like the little child with the bonnet and wound on her head and maybe today you are carrying wounds which may not be bleeding but ones that hurt deeply. God can touch that part of you as well.

Or maybe you are like the man with one hand, maybe there’s something that’s debilitating in your life. Maybe it’s something that’s physical or emotional or intellectual or social, that’s keeping you from doing the work that you want to do, and do so well. Maybe this Christmas, God can help you with that.

That’s what Christmas is for me, that God came down to be with us; that there’s a place that we can move on to.

I want to end with this: Spain once controlled both sides of the Mediterranean at the Straits of Gibraltar; a powerful position for any seafaring nation. With great pride, the Spanish minted a coin depicting the two Pillars of Hercules – the name given to the promontories of rock on either side of the passageway. Over the pillars, they placed a scroll that read: ‘ne plus ultra’ which means ‘no more beyond’.

But one day, bold Spanish sailors made their way through the Straits of Gibraltar and headed for the high seas. They sailed on to Africa and then round its horn to Asia; eventually across the Atlantic to the new world. The Spanish re-thought their position and stamped a new set of coins exactly like the old, but they removed the word ‘ne’. The new coin just said ‘plus ultra’ – more beyond.

Maybe today there is more beyond, just the way you think that Christmas this year might provide the way for you to think beyond and allow God to come alongside your life and lead you, to take you by the hand and give you a wonderful Christmas.

That’s my hope and my prayer for each one of you, my friends.

God Bless You All.