So to honor him
It is late — no longer Christmas unless you’re using a very traditional calendar and insisting that you’re celebrating until Feb. 2. But our home, like everyone’s, it seems like, has been hit by a series of illnesses that have left us doing the absolute bare minimum for longer than I’d like, and I haven’t been able to write anything.
So it’s not Christmas anymore, but here is my Christmas post, some ideas that have been turning over in my mind for a couple months while “The Little Drummer Boy” was a minor obsession in our household. Here are the words:
Come, they told me
A newborn king to see
Our finest gifts we bring
To lay before the king
So to honor him
When we come
Baby Jesus
I am a poor boy, too
I have no gift to bring
That’s fit to give a king
Shall I play for you
On my drum?
Mary nodded
The ox and lamb kept time
I played my drum for him
I played my best for him
Then, he smiled at me,
Me and my drum.
The juxtaposition of poverty and royalty is interesting here, I think. The king of the universe, in a radical act of solidarity, became one of us. He became human, and not a rich human, but a poor human. This is what we celebrate at Christmas.
But the drummer boy misses all of this. He just sees baby Jesus in the lowly stable, and he connects with him in their shared poverty: I am a poor boy, too. I can imagine God smiling. This is what he wanted; this is why he became poor: to be with us. I can almost hear the drummer boy saying, “You know what it’s like.”
He continues: I have no gift to bring / That’s fit to give a king. We are given a kind of double-vision, seeing in the same child both a prince and a pauper, and the drummer boy doesn’t recognize that this is a paradox. “We’re poor, both of us, and we both know what it’s like to have empty hands. You understand how I can’t give you the kingly gift that you deserve.” Or perhaps, “We are the same in our poverty, and I wish to honor you as the king that you are.”
So the drummer boy offers what he does have: his drumming. He doesn’t have much, but he offers what he has and gives the best that he can. I played my drum for him / I played my best for him. I have to imagine that he’s not very good at it, because he’s a little boy and can’t have many years of practice. But he does it.
I think we can take this as a model for our own offerings to God. Our work may not be exciting; we may feel unskilled and, really, all I’ve been doing for weeks is blowing my nose and hoping my toddler will find something to get fixated on so I can close my eyes for a little bit. I see myself lacking in my academic, professional, and domestic ventures, and I recognize limits to my potential in all these areas. I have no gift to bring that’s fit to give a king. Who wants a wastebasket full of dirty tissues, a decent but not excellent paper, a class taught imperfectly, a mediocre dinner thrown together at the last minute?
I’m reminded here of a section of Christina Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter”:
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 him my heart.
This is what the little drummer boy did — he gave his heart. You know he put his heart and soul into his drumming, and I’m sure that, by the usual measure, it was pure cacophony. But I think we should take him as a model for our offerings to God — to give him our best even if, by the usual measure, it isn’t all that great. God has no need of our gold and silver — he wants our heart.
Then, he smiled at me, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum,
Me and my drum.