I have never been inside a
jail. I haven’t been in a federal penitentiary, a state prison, or a county
jail – not even to visit. What I know about prisons I know from watching crime
shows on TV. But those shows tell me all I need to know about life inside “the
big house.” I’ve watched scenes of handcuffed felons shuffle down hallways
between burly guards, and heard the sound of a cell door swinging shut with a
loud metal clang. I know that if I was in prison, I couldn’t go where I wanted
to go, do what I wanted to do, even eat when I wanted to eat. If I were in
prison, a 10 p.m. attack of the munchies would just have to wait until 7 a.m.
breakfast. Someone else would tell me when to eat, when to sleep, and when to
exercise – if I could exercise at all. Prisoners can only do what someone else
tells them to do. A prisoner’s life is lonely, frustrating, and humiliating. Prisoners
have no control over their own lives; never mind the ever-present threat of
violence from guards and from other prisoners. Prison is a living nightmare.
And it’s even more so for those who shouldn’t be there at all – those men and
women who have been wrongly convicted, or who are political prisoners, held
captive because of the whims of tyrants. No wonder that scripture often
mentions prisons with the same horror that it mentions illness and death.
It is the Messiah, proclaims
that same scripture, whose job it will be to loose the captive and set the
prisoner free. When we sing about the Key of David in our songs of Advent,
that’s the Messiah. He is the one who holds the key to every lock that keeps us
imprisoned. And there are many kinds of prisons. Not all of them are made of
stone and steel, like Alcatraz or Leavenworth. Some of them are conditions that
people are forced to endure. Some people are imprisoned by physical disability
or mental limitation. They rely on wheelchairs, oxygen tanks, and medical
devices. Others are prisoners of their own experiences – military veterans
suffering from PTSD, for example. Still others are prisoners of the economy. If
you don’t believe that being unemployed is a prison, ask anyone who is seeking
a job and can’t find one. None of these folks have done anything to deserve the
prisons in which they are held. But they are nevertheless dependent on others
for food, clothing, and shelter. Their lives are as limited as if they were
behind bars. But through the grace of God, these prisons are being knocked down
brick by brick. Physical limitations are constantly being addressed through
medical research. Lost limbs can now be replaced with prosthetic ones; and
medication can keep many chronic illnesses under control. Emotional conditions
like PTSD are being treated by long-term therapy. And certainly we are all
trying to create a society in which everyone who wants a job has one! We differ
in our opinions as to how best to do that; but the health of our economy is on
everyone’s mind. Yes, these prisons may yet disappear – not in our lifetimes,
perhaps, but with God’s help and our own hard work.
These are dreadful kinds of
prisons – physical prisons of stone and bars, and those we must endure because
life’s lottery has put us there. But we can be freed from those. Most prison
sentences have a completion date when the prisoner will leave his cell and rejoin
society. And as we join together to address physical and mental limitations, we
will freed from those conditions, as well. But there is another kind of prison
that is just as bad as the ones that I have already mentioned – the prisons
that we build for ourselves. If you’re familiar with the story A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, you’ll also be familiar with the ghost
of Jacob Marley. Marley’s ghost was
in a prison of his own making. As he climbed the staircase to visit Ebenezer Scrooge
in his sitting room, he dragged a heavy chain behind him. Dickens described it
this way. “[The chain] was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was
made… of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought
in steel.” When Scrooge asked him, “You are fettered. Tell me why?” the ghost replied,
“I wear the chain I forged in life. 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. Is its
pattern strange to you? Or would you know the weight and length of the strong
coil you bear yourself? It was as full and heavy and as long as this, seven
Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!”
Indeed, a ponderous chain. Marley had focused on nothing but his own financial
gain; and that focus had imprisoned him in a cell of greed, blinding him to the
cares and needs of the world around him. Scrooge was in the very same prison,
and headed for the very same fate.
Now, most of us don’t drag
Marley’s chain behind us. Oh, sure, we worry about paying the bills; that’s
just part of life. But the generosity in this congregation tells me that we’re
not in the prison of selfishness and greed. But we may very well be imprisoned
in another way. Well, here – let me describe some common prisons to you; and
you can judge for yourselves if any of them are a little too familiar. Some
people are caught in a web. Oh, it’s not a spider’s web. It’s much stronger
than a spider’s web; and they have spun it with their own hands. These folks
have paid way too much attention to the expectations that others have for them;
and they are tied hand and foot by those expectations that pull them this way
and that. Dad expects him to carry on
the family business, although he really wants to be a forest ranger. Mom
expects her to go to medical school,
even though she’d rather try her luck as a Broadway actress. The neighbors
expect elaborate landscaping around the house – after all, they live in a nice
neighborhood – and so they spend countless hours every summer mowing the grass
and weeding the flower beds. The boss expects lots of overtime; and how
important is the preschool Christmas pageant, anyway? With every additional
expectation, that web holds tighter and tighter, until you can’t move without
offending someone or other. But the good news is that Christ has not only the
Key of David, he also has a very large pair of scissors. He can cut us out of
our web of expectations if only we will allow him to do it. After all, his expectations are the only ones that
count. He expects us to live as free people, answering to no one but God.
If that web of expectations
doesn’t sound familiar, try this one on for size. It’s the prison of
appointments. Now, all of us have commitments that sometimes get in the way of
other things that we would like to be doing. That’s just life. But when we
build a prison of appointments, we trap ourselves inside a cell that doesn’t
allow us any time for activities that enrich our souls. The walls of this
prison are built of calendars, Post-It notes, clocks, and appointment books. There
is no soothing music inside this prison, only the ring of alarms and reminders.
If we consider even for a moment taking time to just relax and be, a telephone rings with another
request for help. Pretty soon, the walls are so high that we can’t even see the
possibility of anything else. But the good news is that Christ has not only the
Key of David, he also has a very efficient paper shredder. He will eliminate
all those calendar pages and appointment books if we’ll only allow him to do
it. He can free us from the tyranny of obligations.
The last prison is one of the
most powerful; and I think that we all suffer from it in one way or another. It
is the prison of the past. Now, we all have had experiences that we’d like to
forget. We have all made bad choices, done foolish things, and generally behaved
badly. Who hasn’t? But some people are trapped by their experiences. They carry
deep wounds of anger or resentment that have never healed properly. Instead of
putting that anger behind them and moving ahead, they revisit those wounds over
and over. Pretty soon, those wounds of yesterday are dictating what they do today. They are crippled by grudges,
trapped by feelings of worthlessness, or unable to form close relationships.
They are covered with so much emotional scar tissue that they can hardly move! But
the good news is that Christ has not only the Key of David, he also has a very
good first aid kit. He will tenderly bandage our open wounds, carefully cut
away the scar tissue, and allow us the freedom to heal.
Freedom, after all, is what
the Messiah offers us. And like a beautiful diamond, it has many facets. God
shows us the way out of the prisons that keep us trapped in old ways of living.
God invites us to be open to new ways of doing things – to change, grow, and
develop in healthy ways. God’s freedom is a path away from death and towards
life. Because the Messiah has come among us, the way to freedom is open to us.
The Key of David has unlocked the door, now and forever. Thanks be to God!
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