Following Manchester United’s 5-0 home defeat to Liverpool at the end of October, striker Marcus Rashford took to social media to say ‘We’re working hard to try and fix this. We have to redeem ourselves’. Things continued to get worse, however, and less than a month later, United legend Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s time as manager came to an end. Since then the ship has been steadied, first by temporary interim manager Michael Carrick, and now by more-permanent interim manager Ralph Rangnick.
Although the picture at Old Trafford is now very different, I’ve thought quite a lot about Rashford’s words since I first read them. In fact, his comment ‘We have to redeem ourselves’ provides two very different ways of approaching Christmas.
At this time of year, many of us get a sense that we haven’t been living the way we should have been over the previous 11 months. Even if we wouldn’t admit it, we recognise that we’ve probably been a bit self-centred, and that our priorities have been fairly narrowly-focused. And so we try to redeem ourselves with acts of kindness. Food banks and homeless shelters don’t struggle for volunteers over Christmas.
Not that I’m knocking a bit of Christmas kindness. An awareness of our blessings should certainly make us more keenly aware of those who have so much less than us. As the two men who asked Scrooge for a donation put it, ‘it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices’.
But if we’re doing our good deeds in an effort to redeem ourselves, then we’ve missed the point of what Christmas is all about.
And on the other side of the coin – if we’ve realised that we’ve done so many bad things that we couldn’t possibly redeem ourselves – what amazingly good news it is to hear of someone who came to redeem those who could never redeem themselves.
After all, why did Jesus come into the world? Why was he born as a baby in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago?
Was it just in order that he might be an example for us? That’s probably what most people think. We’ve perhaps heard that Jesus came to save us from our sins. But we tend to think that he ‘saves’ us by showing how to do better. We’re still the ones who need to redeem ourselves.
Even when we recognise our excesses over Christmas, our first reaction is to try and turn over a new leaf in January. Whether it’s through New Year’s Resolutions, Dry January or whatever – our default reaction is to try and redeem ourselves.
But in doing so, we get things completely upside down. We forget that the very reason Jesus came was because we can’t redeem ourselves – and so we need someone else to redeem us.
The words of John the Baptist’s father Zechariah are often read at this time of year. His first words in response to the news of the coming of Jesus are ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people’.
From the very beginning, Jesus’ arrival into the world was seen as bringing redemption.
But how was that redemption achieved?
It came about through that little baby growing up. As the prophets had foretold for centuries, it would require his death to bring us life. He would take the curse we deserved, in order that we might know undeserved blessing. As the Apostle Paul put it in a letter he wrote to Christians in Galatia: ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us’.
On the face of it, the life of someone trying to redeem themselves, and the life of someone trusting in Jesus, might look pretty similar. They’ll both do good things – but their motivation will be completely different.
In fact, trying to redeem ourselves is lifelong slavery – because we’ll never quite be sure if we’ve done enough. Whereas knowing that we’ve been redeemed by the sacrifice of another sets us free to live for him and pour ourselves out for others.
To say ‘We have to redeem ourselves’ is ultimately to reject the true joy on offer to us at Christmas. It’s to look at God’s greatest gift to us – his own Son – and say ‘I don’t need him’. It’s to sing with Frank Sinatra ‘I did it my way’.
But if our way worked, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to come.
So this Christmas – are you still trying to redeem yourself? Or have you met the Redeemer?
Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 23 December 2021