In the stories of Advent, leading us
into Christmas – Elizabeth, Zechariah, Mary and Joseph are all visited by
angels – messengers from God, whispering into their ears while they slept. For
every one of them, those whisperings guided what they did, and they trusted. Messengers.
Dreams are strange things. We can do
things in dreams that we can’t do during our waking hours. Musicians tell
stories of memorising pieces of music in dreams, or composing music in dreams. The
composer, Franz Schubert, reportedly slept with paper and pencil beside the
bed, and his glasses on, in case he had a great idea for music while he slept. Our
minds keep on working while we are asleep. Dreams tell us things about
ourselves that we aren’t always able to face otherwise. There may be a logical
explanation, but to me it is still miraculous what the mind can do, and how it
can help us see ourselves. And the line between dreams and reality is often
negligible.
During the industrial revolution, Charles
Dickens wrote stories about the abysmal conditions in which most people lived.
“A Christmas Carol” is probably the best known, and its message is timeless. If
someone had told Scrooge he was going to have four messengers, he probably would
have had some snarly and pithy answer. He tried to write off Marley’s appearance
as a piece of moldy cheese.
But those ghosts – heralds, angels,
messengers – do make their appearance, and Scrooge is confronted with his own
life in review. His old partner, Marley comes to speak to him of his reclamation.
His soul’s reclamation. And Scrooge is on his knees before Marley, faced with
the question “Do you believe in me?!!!” and in terror he responds “I do, I
must!!”
The Ghost of Christmas Past is a
spirit of great age, yet appearing young – and shining with a light so bright
Scrooge cannot bear it, and asks for it to be covered. ``What!'' exclaimed the
Ghost, ``would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it
not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me
through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow!'' It can be hard,
that harsh light of truth.
So we travel into Scrooge’s past. We
see a small boy, sitting in a classroom at boarding school, while his
classmates go home for Christmas. His mother died giving birth; and in grief,
his father rejected the baby. A little bit of this boy hardens up and closes
away. As we follow his life, a sister he loved, a harsh unforgiving parent who
refuses to acknowledge him - we find hints and suggestions of abuse, deep anger
and hurt, we never quite know exactly. This sister died, giving birth to
Scrooge’s nephew. And Scrooge rejects the nephew as his father had rejected him.
We dance through Fezziwig’s
Christmas party – every year Scrooge’s employer closed down the business early,
pushed all the chairs out of the way – laid on a feast, and Christmas
celebrations. And finally he is confronted by the woman he has loved, as she
lets him free of his promises to her. Another idol - one of gold – has replaced her. It is
telling that when she leaves, Scrooge lets her go, not having the will to let
go his obsession with only financial gain.
Christmas Present, the third herald,
is a boisterous one, full of energy and compassion. “You’ve never seen the
likes of me before, have you?” he asks. In the Albert Finney musical version of
the movie, Scrooge finds himself getting quite giddy on a drink the spirit
offers him. “I’ve never tasted the likes of this” to which the Spirit replies
“Yes, I supposed you haven’t. It’s called the milk of human kindness”. Scrooge
asks the Spirit if there is any special flavour in the water. The spirit
answers that there is a special flavour in any meal kindly given, but
especially a poor one. When asked why a poor one, the spirit responds “ Because it is needed the most.”
We see how little Scrooge knows even
about his clerk, Bob Cratchit - that Bob had children, one of whom was ill.
When Scrooge asks if Tim the child will live, he is given back his own words
“If he’s going to die, he should do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
As this Spirit moves on, he leaves Scrooge with one particularly pertinent
message. Under his robe huddle two scrawny, thin and sickly children with hands
like claws. “This one is Ignorance” says the ghost “and this is Want. Beware
both of them, but particularly beware Ignorance.” Asking if there are no
services for them, the ghost answers with Scrooge’s words in the beginning of
the story - “Are there no factories, are
there no poorhouses?”
It never ceases to strike me how
relevant this message is even today. We all know people who have been hurt by
life, through no fault of their own, but who carry the grief, who close
themselves off, or make something else more important. Scrooge is not, in fact,
a particularly complicated man. He has simply reacted to the hurt and
disappointment in his life by building protections for himself – hoarding wealth
and making that an objective.
Christmas Yet to Come, the final
messenger, demonstrates the consequences of not being attuned, not being
engaged in the world, and not reflecting on ourselves and how we affect the
world. A father walks slowly home; a small chair sits empty, with a small
crutch beside it. It is not because of anything Scrooge did which caused the
death, but precisely the opposite - he didn’t do anything. He minded his own
narrow business and the rest of the world minded theirs, or so he thought. He
blanked out most of the world - the poor and marginalised, the hungry and
mentally ill, the sick and bereaved, the lonely and hurt - they are precisely
our business - Ignorance and Want are our business. Remember Marley’s words - paraphrased – “Mankind was supposed to be my
business, the common welfare was my
business.”
Scrooge sees a man dead, and someone
stealing the very slippers off the body’s feet. He sees his own belongings
being sold off by his housekeeper. He finds himself in a graveyard, seeing his
own name etched on a gravestone. The reality of his very meagre existence comes
crashing in on him: “I am not the man I once was, I am a new person, I will
keep Christmas in my heart. Tell me these are not the shadows of things that
will be, but the shadows of things that may be”. Tell me that it’s not too late
to change the course of the future…..
Whatever we do or don’t do - either
by action or by inaction - there are consequences. Cause and effect -
everything has some kind of consequence, some kind of result. We cannot be
disengaged from the world if we are Christian. We cannot be Christian and not
take action. To be Christian means to be involved. To be Christian means to
face ourselves and our actions or inactions, and work to change.
Marley says
clearly he was so focused on one tiny part of life, that he blanked out all
those instances of the breaking in of the realm of God where he could have had
a part and made that realm more possible. Now he is doomed to keep reliving
those times when he could have been paying attention and was too busy with
himself. The chains which bind him and which he must carry are all those lost
opportunities.
Scrooge was
lucky. Somehow, even though Marley had been denied the chance for redemption,
he has somehow been allowed to return, and offer Scrooge the possibility of
repentance. Scrooge, the man whose heart had been so weighted down by despair
and pain that he cut himself off altogether, and could not see the coming. In
the Gospel, Jesus says take care that you don’t get side-tracked by things in
this life, don’t let your heart be weighed down with despair, be alert for
signs of the coming realm.
And Scrooge,
when faced with the very real work of change, does the completely human thing
and says he thinks he’s rather pass on the opportunity, and just remain the way
he is.
I can’t help but align these four
spirits with the words we sometimes use in the service of communion – the
mystery, and the hope of our faith: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ
will come again.” Christmas Past, Christmas Present, Christmas Yet to Come.
What we were, what we are today, and what we may yet be.
Christmas in all of life, the birth
of the child in our hearts, and what may grow. Thanks be to the one who calls
us into life. For Scrooge, the light of
hope and redemption shines through – he makes his walk to Bethlehem – through
the valley of the shadow of death, and out the other side into the bright
sunlight and celebration of Christmas in the world. In
this story, we go forward with the largely unwilling Scrooge, on this walk to
Bethlehem – with the light of Hope, Peace and Joy on the road. May it be so.
Sources:
- “A Christmas Carol” Stave 1. Text,
spelling, and punctuation as published by Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster
Row, E.C., London, 1890, from 1881 photographs of the author's original
66-page Chapman and Hall manuscript and compared with the genuine First
Edition {brown cloth}.
2.
“Blessed Are the Poor?”, Pamela Couture. The Churches
Centre for Theology and Public Policy.
- “The Ghosts of Christmas” Fran Ota, sermon December 2005
