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Don't we all want to be Ebenezer Scrooge?
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| 12/25/2007 |
We gather tonight to celebrate that when the baby Jesus was born
in the barn in Bethlehem, the light of God’s love broke yet again into
the world. At Christmas, we pray for God’s light to break specifically
into our personal, spiritual darkness.
Christmas is about God’s light coming into our darkness. The prophet Isaiah predicted that when the messiah came into the world, then “the people who walked in darkness” would see “ a great light.”
In the Christmas story, the shepherds are inundated in this “great light” as they keep watch over their flock in the darkness. In the glare of God’s love, darkness is gone.
I’ve learned a lot about this darkness, and the light of Christmas that removes it, from Ebenezer Scrooge. Each Christmastide, I read again Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Whether or not we’ve ever read that book from 1843, we mostly know the story, of how the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is transformed in one night from being lost in the darkness of a miserable life and finding himself in the light of a new Christmas day. In the darkness of Christmas Eve, he cannot be penetrated by God’s love. In the light of Christmas day, not only is he abundantly filled with God’s love, he fills the lives of others with that love that only gives and expects nothing in return.
Remember that on Christmas Eve, Scrooge is locked up in the darkness of his dim house. Dickens tells us, “Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.” Indeed, we still know that darkness is cheap, easy to manufacture, and its raw materials of despair and denial are in constant supply. Scrooge liked darkness, as we often do, because it hides what we fear, keeps us from facing what is true, and allows us to be blind to truth. But like so many things that come cheaply, our overindulgence in them comes at great cost.
Out of Scrooge’s darkness appears the ghost of Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s former business partner. Marley comes not to haunt Scrooge, but to free him. Scrooge sees that Marley is bound in chains. “Why are you fettered?” Scrooge asks.
“I wear the chain I forged in life,” Marley says. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard,” and he tells Scrooge that the chain that will fetter him in the darkness is even longer, heavier and harder
still, if he does not leave the darkness.
There is wisdom here. Though chains placed by others might fetter us, most of our chains are forged by the part of our spiritual self that likes the darkness and shuns the light. Marley was fettered to cashboxes, deeds and ledgers, as would be Scrooge. What would fetter you?
Jesus coming into the world—God in human skin—heralded what had been hoped for eons—that the captive person would be released from the darkest prisons—physical and spiritual. To our inner spiritual soul, our chains and fetters will be crushed, if we are willing to leave the darkness. Like Scrooge, do we need to be scared out?
Scrooge could not receive the simple gift of Christmas, so ghosts rather than grace were deployed. But, the result is love. We need the light of God’s love that by its very nature is the love of parent for child--unconditional, expecting nothing in return—a love that comes to give us value and worth, not a love that comes because we are already valuable and worthy.
In fact, the entire point of A Christmas Carol is that Scrooge is entirely unworthy of God’s mercy, because Scrooge has no mercy. Still, mercy and love come to Scrooge through the judgment of the ghosts, and this transformation makes the unworthy Scrooge worthy again.
The light of God that comes as love, forgiveness and hope is a light that brings judgment. I know that most of us get uncomfortable when talking about God’s judgment, as if we are going to be declared unworthy of God’s love. But, look to Scrooge. Without God’s light, without the promise of God’s love, Scrooge is doomed. It is love and judgment bringing him into the light. Can we strive to see judgment by God as a form of God’s love?
When will we ever fully learn that God does not love us because we have worth, but loves us to give worth?
God loves us to save us from the grim future that we make for ourselves when we live not defined by or subject to the unconditional love of God. God coming in human skin, to be the Christ child born in a manger, is God’s mysterious, unique way of saying to all of humanity, “I love you.”
For me, Dickens’ three ghosts are God’s love—frightening, transforming, nurturing, and forgiving. That they are past, present and future is Dickens at his most brilliant. Each of us, in striving to choose a new future—a future of God’s light and love—must use the present moment to disconnect from the mistakes, injuries and sins of the past. God forgives the past, but I think the Christmas lesson from Scrooge is that the past must be forgiven in the present to create a new future.
When a child is born, a new future begins for the family. When Christ was born, the past was vanquished, and a new future for humanity and all of creation began. But it still a future not yet complete. We must call on the Christ present in us in this present moment to change us for the sake of a new future.
When the Spirit-of-Christmas-Yet-to-Come shows Scrooge his eventual grave, and the possible reality that he will die lonely and fettered to his shadows and darkness, Scrooge begs for another chance. “I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I have been.”
I guess I have come to the place that Christmas also means allowing the light of God to lead me to say those very words. May God’s grace lead us all to say, “I am not the person I was. I will not be the person I have been.”
For Scrooge, God’s new future is a life of unbounded, transformative charity. I begrudge Dickens a bit here, because it seems to say that the point of the light dispelling the darkness is that we become charitable. In 2008, that may translate to us that Christmas means give more money away. But, that misses the point of Scrooge’s transformation.
Yes, Scrooge is being charitable, but the more important thing to see is that Scrooge has begun to love humanity unconditionally, just as Scrooge has been loved unconditionally in receiving the light of God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness. Having been transformed by love, Scrooge transforms others through the love he’s received. Money is just a tool. If he didn’t have money, he could still love. So can we.
Scrooge makes a statement of repentance to the final ghost when he realizes he will live a different life: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and keep it all year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. All three shall strive within me.”
To be like Scrooge, and “honour Christmas and keep it all year,” doesn’t mean that he or we are to be giving money away all year, but to love all year, as we have been loved by God.
In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is mysteriously visited by three ghosts—past, present and future. At Christmas, we proclaim in the mystery that is our faith that God in Christ visits all of creation, and brings the transforming love of God into the darkness of our souls. But that transformation comes from receiving the loving judgment of God, using the present moment to not bind ourselves to a broken past, and finding healing in a new future of God’s promise. May we find again this same pure joy and hope this Christmas, reminded by the most beautiful light brought by the most important child human history has ever received.
Let every heart prepare him room.
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