KEEPING CHRISTMAS: FETTERED
Matthew 3:1-12
Keeping Christmas – Part 1
First Sunday of Advent – November 27, 2016
Rev. David S. Cooney
Today begins the season of Advent. Musically, we would say this is the prelude to
Christmas. Theologically, we would say this is the precursor to the Incarnation.
Practically, we might say only twenty-eight days until Christmas. However we think of it
or say it, the focus is Christmas for these are the days of preparation before the Christ
Child arrives.
To this, we might join Scrooge in saying, “Bah! Humbug!” It is just another day,
and one that interferes with the regular routine of life at that. But, I’m guessing that if
you felt that way you would not be here this morning. No, more likely, we are excited
about Christmas, looking forward to celebrating the birth of our Savior. We eagerly wait
for the coming of the Lord.
As we begin Advent, it might be worth asking why. Why do we eagerly await
Christmas? It is a question worth asking because it is not enough to say because Christmas
is such a festive season and we just love it. It is not enough to say that the Christmas trees
and lights and tinsel and traditional holiday treats and foods and the carols and Santa and
the images of sleigh rides and sitting by a roaring fire as it snows outside and the spirit
that somehow makes everyone just a little bit friendlier for a few weeks, makes it the best
time of the year. Oh, I’m all about that. All of those things are great. But that’s not
enough. Honestly, we can come up with a great festive time without Christ. Look what
we have done with pseudo religious holidays like Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day and
Halloween.
No, there has to be more. I think that ultimately Advent, the waiting for Christmas,
connects with a deep longing that transcends any and all of the special things that
surround the season. It has to do with our deep longing for a Messiah to come to free us
from our fears and sins. We sang it earlier. “Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set
thy people free; from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee.” This
speaks to our hope. This speaks to our longing.
Now, this longing is not new or unique to us. It was true even before there was a
Christmas. We see it in the gospel lesson today. The lesson is about John the Baptist,
who was baptizing in the river Jordan and calling for repentance. Now, let’s be honest. I
am being kind when I say John was edgy. He lived in the wilderness and wore scratchy
camel’s hair for clothes and ate bugs and wild honey. He had no social skills and his
preaching was abrasive. By all objective standards, you would think that he would empty
any church in short order. But that is not what happened. It was just the opposite. This
wild man was going off on the banks of the Jordan River, and Matthew tells us that the
people of Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region along the Jordan were going out to
him, and they were baptized and confessed their sins. Really?
What pulled them to the Jordan and John? It was not that he was a silver-tongued
orator waxing eloquently along the shore. No! It was that they believed him when he
told them that the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire was coming. They
believed that this coming judge would separate the wheat and the chaff. And, they knew
that at that moment they were chaff, but they wanted to be wheat. They wanted to be
free from the sins that kept them from being what they could be, and they knew that their
hope rested with the one John was proclaiming. They were not looking for Santa Clause,
holiday movies, turkey dinners, or eggnog. They were looking for salvation. They had a
deep longing to be free.
Of course, not everyone had that longing. Some Pharisees and Sadducees also
showed up at the river, not because they believed John and certainly not because they
no longer wanted to be chaff. They didn’t think of themselves as chaff. They believed
that they were wheat. No repentance was needed on their part. They came just to see
what all the hubbub was about. They came to say Bah! Humbug! What did John know?
They were the most religious among the chosen people, descendants of Abraham, and
thus already in good graces with God. John, again, not the diplomat, called them a brood
of vipers and challenged their presumptions. He said, “Do not presume to say to
yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these
stones to raise up children to Abraham.” He let them know their mortal souls were in
jeopardy because of their presumption.
It is the same thing Marley did for Scrooge in The Christmas Carol. Marley had
been Scrooge’s business partner until his death seven years earlier. They were two peas
in a pod. They were tight, uncharitable, joyless men who had no time for or interest in
the needs of others or for any sort of frivolity or days like Christmas that interrupted their
money-making. It irked Scrooge that he had to give his underpaid, underappreciated clerk
a paid day off on Christmas.
Well, as we heard in our story reading this morning, Marley’s ghost came to visit
Scrooge. Marley was a ghostly and ghastly sight, frightening and alarming, and Scrooge
at first tried to pass him off as his imagination fueled by indigestion. But Marley
responded with moans and cries and with the shaking of a large chain he dragged with
him. This is when Scrooge noticed the chain and made the observation: you are fettered.
You are fettered.
This was what captured Scrooge’s attention. Marley was enveloped in chains. But
here is the point Marley made to Scrooge. The chain was not given to him in death. The
chain he wore had been forged in life. Marley said, “I made it link by link, and yard by
yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” Marley wanted
Scrooge to know that he, too, was forging a chain, link by link, but for him there was yet
time to be free of the chain. He would have to repent, to change his ways, too, as John
told the scrooges by the river, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” Still, there was time for
him.
This was hard for Scrooge to grasp because he thought that being good at business
was equivalent to being good. He told Marley, “but you were always a good man of
business, Jacob.” Listen to the reply. “Business! Mankind was my business. The common
welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my
business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean
of my business.” Jacob Marley learned this lesson too late. He wanted to help his partner
Ebenezer Scrooge while Scrooge still had time.
This really was what John was doing for all the folks of the region, including the
Pharisees and Sadducees. He was both making it clear that they were fettered and that,
more importantly, they could be free of those fetters. John did this for the Israelites.
Marley did this for Scrooge. The Advent season makes this possible for us.
Hopefully, we are aware of the chains that bind us. If you are not, look more
closely, and pay more attention because we all wear the chains we have forged link by
link and yard by yard. Don’t think that because your father or your grandmother was a
devout Christian or that you have a sibling in the ministry or a relative helped build the
church, that you are exempt from chain making. Holiness is not genetic. God is able from
these stones to raise up children for Abraham. We all wear the chains we have forged
and are forging.
But, we almost certainly do not want to be forging chains. We very well may be
trying our best, trying to live as morally and ethically and gracefully and generously as we
can, but somehow we still manage to do the wrong thing or to hurt another or to succumb
to our lower instincts. We still manage to add another link to the chain and there seems
to be nothing we can do to shorten it. Paul writes about this in Romans, and I’m quoting
Peterson’s paraphrase: “It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I
decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s
pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight.”
You can call that the reality or the bad news of our existence if you want to. But
here is the good news. Jesus unfetters us. The chain that fetters us is the chain that Jesus
removes. That which keeps us bound is that from which Jesus frees us. The forged iron
we cannot break is broken by Jesus. Our sin weighs us down but Jesus lifts us up.
This is why we look expectantly to Christmas. This is why we wait and hope and
watch and pray. This is why we keep looking toward the manger. We don’t want to be
fettered and Christ is the only one who can break the chains.
We will be talking about what it means to keep Christmas throughout this Advent,
season but we can already see today and will see again that keeping Christmas is not just
about, or even mostly about, keeping the traditions or putting up the decorations or
preparing the usual dishes. It is about keeping the hope, the belief that the day is coming
when our Messiah, our Lord, will once and for all free us from all that binds us, from all
that weighs us down, from all that constrains us from experiencing true peace and joy,
from all that prohibits us from giving and receiving unrestrained love. It is about trusting
the Lord, who from our fears and sins releases us.
Let me tell you about the one who is coming, John said. Look around and pay
attention, Marley said. They were helping us to prepare for the Messiah. Open your heart
to receive the Christ and get off of the chain gang and live unfettered. It is that for which
we long. That is keeping Christmas.
Amen.