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"Jesus Christ Is Coming To Town"
By Dr. Mickey Anders
First Christian Church
Pikeville, Kentucky
December 3, 2000
Text: Jeremiah 33:14-16
Oh! You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town!
He's making a list,
Checking it twice,
Gonna find out who's naughty or nice.
Santa Claus is coming to town!
He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!
Oh! You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town!
It's a song we all know by heart, but it's a secular song that still sounds strange when we sing it in church, especially during a worship service. Today I use it as an introduction because I believe this secular song captures the spirit of the Advent season that we celebrate in the church. After all, the song speaks about the coming of an important person, a person who knows all about us, a person who is good and loving and who expects us to be the same. All that we have to do is to substitute the name of Jesus for the name of Santa Claus, and we have the essence of Advent. We also have the theme of Jeremiah, which is, "We must repent to get ready for the coming of the righteous Branch."
The four weeks before Christmas is the time that the Church sets aside to celebrate Advent. The word "advent" means "coming." Christ came into the world in the little town of Bethlehem 2000 years ago. Christ will one day return in the final days of history in what we term "the second coming of Christ." And there is a special sense in which Jesus is always coming again into our hearts.
Advent helps us prepare for the coming of Christ at Christmas. We spend these four weeks preparing ourselves, reliving the anticipation of that first Christmas, and looking forward to that last fateful return of Christ in the heavens.
This year, we will be using the Old Testament get us ready for Christmas. All of my sermons for the year 2000 have come from the Gospel of Mark, so we need the balance of a few Old Testament texts at the end of the year. Over the next four weeks, we will use words from Jeremiah, Malachi, Zephaniah, and Micah as the starting places for our Christmas messages. The passages that we will use are the ones that prepared the world for the first coming of Christ.
Hear again those words from Jeremiah:
"The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the
promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In
those days and at that time, I will cause a righteous Branch to spring
up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.
And this is the name by which it will be called, "The Lord is our righteousness"
(Jeremiah 33:14-16).
Jeremiah was one of the most colorful and dramatic prophets in the Old Testament. He came on the scene during the darkest days of the history of Israel - the last forty years of the independent state of Judah.
Perhaps the two most important historical dates associated with the Old Testament are the years 722 B.C. and 587 B.C. In 722, the Northern Kingdom fell to the Assyrians. In 587, the Southern Kingdom, called Judah, fell to the Babylonians.
Jeremiah had the difficult challenge of delivering God's warning and judgment to the people during the trying times just before and after the fall of the Southern Kingdom. He began his ministry during the encouraging times of the good King Josiah. Josiah restored the temple, found the book of the law, and called the people to a renewal of their covenant with God. He re-instituted the observance of the Passover, which at the time had not been observed for several hundred years. (I still find it shocking that David, Solomon, and all the kings that followed them had managed to ignore something so important to the Jewish faith as the Passover.)
The people had wandered far from God. In 2 Kings 23, we find an amazing litany of the items that Josiah had to destroy in order to make things right with God. There were vessels made for Baal and Asherah being used in the temple of God. There were priests to foreign gods who made offerings to Baal, to the sun, the moon, the constellations, and all the hosts of heaven. There was an image of Asherah in the house of the Lord. There were houses of male temple prostitutes in the house of the Lord. There was a place called Topheth where children were sacrificed to the God Molech. There was even an altar built for the God Astarte by King Solomon. All these Josiah destroyed.
They had combined the true faith with myths about other gods from their culture. Jeremiah called them to repent of that assimilation and return to a pure faith in God. The people who were called "the people of God" had forgotten what God was all about!
In similar ways, today's people of God often forget the real meaning of Christmas. We confuse the celebration of the coming of Christ with harmless legends of Santa Claus, jingle bells and the grinch who stole Christmas. In the cloud of activity, legend and cute children's stories, we sometimes forget the reason for the season - the coming of the Savior of the World. Jeremiah would not let us do that.
Christian Century magazine published a wonderful commentary on the secularization of Christmas in 1986. In the article, the author, Michael Martin, asked, "What if most of what people knew of Christmas was what they heard in Christmas songs and in fables told to children? Worst of all, what if all they knew about the Christmas celebration was how we actually live it? What might the Christmas story sound like if it were told incorporating all the various myths, misunderstandings and attitudes that in fact permeate our celebration?"
Then he suggested that it might sound something like this:
"Once upon a time, a decree went out from Caesar in August that everyone should be taxed so that the deficit would not get too big. Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem. Mary rode on a donkey named Rudolph, who was embarrassed to be seen carrying an unwed mother. He blushed so at the thought that his nose glowed red…
Upon arriving at Bethlehem, they could not find a place to stay.
(It was, after all, the Christmas season, and the press of tourists was
crushing.) As they knocked at the door of the last inn in town, the innkeeper
pushed back the shutter and threw up the sash.
His figure appeared so nimble and quick. They knew in a moment
his name must be Nick…
Meanwhile in a field nearby, seven dwarfs who were shepherds were startled to hear a group of angels singing Handel's Messiah. At the end of the concert they were told to stand up… and to go to Bethlehem. So off they marched to the beat of their friend, the little drummer boy. When they arrived at the stable, they met Joseph, Mary, the child and a fat little man made famous in song, Round John Virgin."
This hybrid story demonstrates that it is easy to blend secular myths with the sacred story. The author suggests that we mistake the true meaning of Christmas with the "Celebration of Santa Christ," the "Sweet Baby Syndrome," or, possibly, the "Mercantile Messiah Motif."
There are problems with all three. The Santa Christ is the jolly god who lives far, far away, and is only mentioned once a year. Actually, all mature people know that he doesn't really exist; but he's a convenient excuse for celebration. Jeremiah would not let us get away with that.
The Sweet Baby Syndrome celebrates the lovable infant in his crib, smiling and cooing. He doesn't make any demands on anyone; he just lies there and looks sweet. He spends most of the year in the closet with all the other Nativity scene paraphernalia. But once a year, we get him out and say, "What a sweet baby." Of course, we always put him back in the closet when the New Year begins. Jeremiah would not approve.
The Mercantile Messiah proclaims that Christmas is all about giving. "Christmas is all about giving, so let us sell you something that you can give to somebody else," say the advertisements. What would Jeremiah say?
The problem with Santa Christ, Sweet Baby and the Mercantile Messiah is that they come and go, and everything is the same as before. They don't change anyone. They don't reveal anything about God. They don't make demands. They are meaningless, thus implying that Christmas is meaningless. (A Prophetless Christmas by Michael Martin, The Christian Century, December 24-31, 1986, quoted by Phil Gilman, PRCL, 12/1/2000)
When we look carefully at our practices surrounding Christmas, we realize that we are not much different than the people of the Southern Kingdom during Jeremiah's time. We too have imported foreign gods and strange theologies.
Jeremiah proclaimed a resounding message of judgment, righteousness and hope. Our text says, "He shall execute righteousness and judgment in the land." Jeremiah knew that the people needed to repent. The coming of the Righteous Branch would require that they examine themselves and repent of their sinful ways. He proclaimed a costly coming of the Messiah.
Deep down we seem to know that Christmas is a time for repentance. Even that our secular song about Santa includes a call to repentance and righteousness though the idea is expressed in much simpler words:
"He's making a list, checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty and nice… He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!"
Jeremiah says it this way, "He will execute justice and righteousness in the land." Same concept. What the song says about Santa may not be true, but it is certainly true of Jesus.
Oh! You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
Jesus Christ is coming to town!
He's making a list,
Checking it twice,
Gonna find out who's naughty or nice.
Jesus Christ is coming to town!
He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!
Oh! You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
Jesus Christ is coming to town!