LUTHER SEMINARY CHAPEL,
TEXT: MALACHI 4 1-6
PREACHER: FREDERICK
J. GAISER
IN BONDAGE TO CHRISTMAS?
Hi, my name is Nicholas, and I’m a consumaholic. I
don’t know about you, I mean only to speak for myself this morning. God help me, I am in bondage to Christmas and
cannot free myself. You know what I mean: Christmas
not as the simple observance of the birth of our Lord Jesus, but as the
three-month-long commercial celebration of greed. Forgive me if I seem more jaded than usual
this morning. I’ve just come off a long
weekend with duty at three ‘Dales, a K-Mart, and the Big One!
How did this all happen? I was just a mild-mannered bumpkin bishop who
wanted to help the poor a little. And it
wasn’t even about Christmas--except, of course, that it was about
Jesus. Come to think of it, there wasn’t any Christmas in my neck of the woods in those days. January 6—Jesus’ birth,
yes, but mostly his Epiphany.
Now, everything from October on is about Christmas, but none of it
is about Jesus, and I’m trapped in the middle of it all.
It all started, I think, when they made me
a saint. Nobody should do that to
another human being. Who can live up to
it? Once I was canonized, life as I had
actually lived it wouldn't do. Everyday
Christian service isn’t enough for a saint.
They needed myths and miracles.
Nothing against fantasy and imagination, you know, especially for
kids--but when they made me a myth, they pretty well killed off the real me,
not to mention the simple concern for the poor.
Still, even in the
myths, most countries kept me away from Christmas. A little preparation on December 6, useful
for keeping the kids in submission for a few weeks, and then December25 was
left for the Christ Child. I could have
lived with that. I still like how it
worked in
But now? I’ve become the patron saint of greed, a
patsy for the malls, where the closest thing to evil is having no-name sneakers
or yesterday’s favorite fragrance. No
imagination in that. To be sure, even
there I run into a kid every once in a while who is genuinely needy, and then
all my original good intentions kick in--but I’ve become so conditioned to
indulgence that I forget that to give a kid one toy is to brighten their
spirit, but to give them a hundred is to kill it. And the adults are worse, of course. They think they actually deserve to be
wealthy, so they conjure up economists and psychologists to assure themselves
that greed is good and that whatever they owe they owe first to themselves. And that makes me their favorite saint. God help me, I’ve gotten fat--and I’m not
talking about around the middle. I’m
talking about my soul. I’ve become
fluff, and there is no health in me.
The Brits screwed it up first, I
think--same as they did for cooking.
Coca Cola helped. You Yanks
joined whole hog. December 6 didn’t make
sense any more. Too
confining. ‘Twas the night before Christmas when the spirit of
Christmas stuff was needed. And then, increasingly, all the weeks and months in advance. So here I am, a
cynical old joke, pretty much in his dotage, who has forgotten about the poor
and who can’t recognize real evil when he sees it. A wimpy little Pelagian: be good, get some favors; be bad, get some
guilt--but not for long. Santa doesn’t
dare stay mad--not because grace abounds, but because Ty
and Mattel wouldn’t stand for it. If
Santa won’t deliver the goods, they’ll find an elf who
can. So I’m nothing if not
malleable. I need the work. It’s called bondage.
Once upon a time, I really liked that
Malachi text. In fact, as far as I can
recall, it may be where I got that notion about lumps of coal. Back when I still had some guts, I used to
think of Malachi as something of a role model, the St Nicholas of the prophets: Be good, get the goodies, be bad, get the
coal--or worse, the coals:
See, the day is
coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be
stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the LORD of hosts, so that
it will leave them neither root nor branch.
But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with
healing in its wings. You shall go out
leaping like calves from the stall.
Real retribution
there, by God. And Malachi’s
accusations might just as well be directed at us: wholesale disregard of the
commandments; cynical assurances that God loves everyone anyway; denial of
divine justice; a religious establishment so caught up in the ways of power
that it pays only lip service to God.
Let me tell you a secret. When Malachi starts describing the wicked and
their fate, I start getting edgy I don’t know about you.
So, how do we open the windows to that sun
of righteousness and all its healing warmth?
God knows we need it, you and I.
Maybe the reason we keep adding more artificial Christmas lights every
year is that we’ve pretty well turned off the real thing. Real light burns. Neon just glows--that’s better.
So, how do I find healing? Malachi divided between the wicked and the
righteous, but if I have learned anything at all it is that, even as a bona
fide and rostered saint, that fearful line cuts right
through the middle of me. There is no
healing without the burning. There is no
leaping like calves without shoveling the crap out of our stalls. And I don’t know if I am up for it. Only God can do it, I guess, but some days I
wonder about him. Still, he keeps on
promising that he will. The one who
comes in the name of the Lord passes through the fire with me and for me, and
by his stripes I am healed. Those
healing wings give me flight.
One thing I got right as Santa Claus: God really does expect us to be good. But my ongoing lie has been that we could do
it on our own. So I modulated good and
evil into naughty and nice, until it really didn’t matter. Now, from Malachi I am rediscovering the
truth that God must do it in us. But, I
suppose, my temptation is 
to modulate that,
too. A little fix, a little shove, a little prodding--I could use
that. But healing? Change? Burning?
I’m not sure I want to go there, but I know that if I don’t I will be
left once again worthless to the poor and empty to the shallow.
God promises nothing less than to break my
bondage to Christmas. I know, it’s hard to believe.
It’s a big system, and so much of it seems sick unto death. But God heals. Christ promises to yank even me out of the
arms of evil and give me back to my mother, ready for new life.
Can I believe this? Only if I hear it daily, I think. God knows, I will never have transformation,
just as I never the gospel. They come to
me. They happen to me. And I am healed.
So, pray with me for the coming of the sun
of righteousness—that sun (s-u-n) whose warmth and light make us new just as
they make new our gardens every spring; yes, and that Son (S-o-n) whose
righteousness becomes our own. Might
Christmas ever again be for me about something more than cash registers? It seems impossible. But when Jesus enters with
healing in his wings, all things become possible. Even if it takes some
burning. The burning still scares
me, but I sure don’t like the consumaholism. So, God, free me from the bondage to
Christmas stuff and everything that it implies.
And while you’re at it, work on my friends here, too. I fear I’ve led them astray. AMEN
Frederick
J. Gaiser ©1999