"A Christmas Carol"

Matthew 24:36-44

November 28, 2010 + First Sunday in Advent

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

Some literary characters are so familiar that we have an instant mental picture when their name is mentioned. Say “Huckleberry Finn,” and we see a boy floating down the Mississippi on a raft with his friend, the runaway slave Jim. Say “Sherlock Holmes,” and we see a man in a deerstalker cap, a calabash pipe in his mouth, prowling through a “pea soup” London fog searching for a criminal. Say “Scrooge,” and we immediately think of a mean-spirited old miser who responds to a “Merry Christmas!” with a “Bah! Humbug.” Scrooge is so well-known that his name appears in the dictionary. To call someone a “Scrooge” is to call them a miser. How ironic, since Scrooge didn’t turn out to be that way at the end of  “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, but we’ll get to that in a few moments.

First, I want us to ask ourselves a searching question: How old do we have to be before no more real change is possible for us? At what age do we become – for the most part – the person we will be for the rest of our lives? What age is that for other people we have known? Have we reached that age ourselves? When did we last have a new idea that challenged the way we have been thinking of ourselves? When did we tell ourselves that we really weren’t Popeye the Sailorman after all? You remember Popeye told other people “I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam.” When do we reach that point in our lives when we are who we were?

When is that age? Freud said our basic personality is pretty much fixed by the time we are five. That’s a depressing thought! By the time we figure out who we are, it’s too late to do anything about it! Personally I appreciate much more the work of another great psychoanalyst, Erik Erikson, who saw all of life as a series of challenging opportunities. Imagine that we are in “school” all our lives and every stage of life, every “grade,” offers us the chance to become more than we were before. We build on what we were before, building on what we have learned and achieving new possibilities. That’s a wonderful vision of what your life and mine should be.

Sadly, too many people don’t believe in the possibilities of their own lives. They give up on themselves too soon. Sometimes the results of that kind of thinking are tragic. We think today of the suicides of school children. They were bullied into believing that there was no hope for their lives. They ended lives that had hardly begun. Other young people give up on themselves as teenagers and through “sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll,” escape into video games, or membership in a gang decide that their future has little meaning or hope.

Some people give up on themselves in their twenties and embrace a life of mindless conformity to the fads and fashions of their peers. Some in their twenties and thirties become social reactionaries and join “Tea Parties” and other groups who believe there has been too much change already. By the time other people reach their forties and fifties they believe life has passed them by and all they can expect is more of the same. As we get to our later years, we may look back with regret, wondering why we didn’t take other paths in life. Old age can be filled with pain and disappointment.

I hope some of you are saying to yourselves just now, “Dave is not talking about me. I see many possibilities for my life. Life hasn’t passed me by yet and it never will!” Thank God, for that spirit. Life doesn’t have to pass us by at any age. Through my life I have seen many people make remarkable changes in their lives whether they were old or young. I think of my own father who lost his job as a business manager in 1958, the (so-called) Eisenhower recession. He had had to leave college in 1929 at the end of his freshman year, but he went back to school in 1958, got his Bachelor’s Degree and then, later, his Master’s Degree. He spent the remainder of his working life as a much-appreciated Elementary School teacher. Disappointment didn’t destroy him. As Robert Shuller likes to say, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” We are never too old to grow and change.

That is the real message of Dickens’ beloved story, “A Christmas Carol.” Despite the efforts of filmmakers to turn it into a comedy with Bill Murray and Jim Carrey, it is a profound comment not only on the meaning of Christmas but also on the meaning of life, your life and mine. You remember how it goes.

In his old age – 50’s or 60’s, old for that day – Ebenezer Scrooge is a well-to-do money lender. He lives only for financial gain. He could care less about other people. He mistreats his clerk, Bob Cratchit, and despises his only relative, his nephew, Fred. When Fred makes an annual visit to invite his uncle to dinner and wishes him a “Merry Christmas!,” Scrooge famously responds, “Bah! Humbug.” Scrooge is particularly annoyed that anyone would expect him to be concerned about poor people. He takes care of himself; let them take care of themselves. And, if some of them die, “better to do it and decrease the surplus population.”

Scrooge goes home on Christmas Eve to his dark, gloomy mansion and is astonished, even terrified, by a spectral visitor, the ghost of his dead partner, Jacob Marley. Marley is condemned for eternity to fly through the world chained to his ledger books, seeing the good he might have accomplished in life but never did. Now it is too late, but he has come to offer Scrooge a chance for redemption. Scrooge will be visited for each of the next three nights by ghosts.

The Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge scenes from his own life: his neglected boyhood, the kindness shown to him by the man to whom he was apprenticed, Old Fezziwig, and Scrooge’s rejection of the woman who loved him. She was too poor for his ambitions. He is also shown a vision of the woman, her husband, and happy family, a life that could have been Scrooge’s.

The Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge the real joy everyone feels at Christmas whether they are rich or poor. Scrooge is particularly impressed by the happiness of his clerk, Bob Cratchit, and his family around their Christmas table. Seeing Bob’s crippled son, Tiny Tim, Scrooge is moved and asks the Ghost if Tiny Tim will live. Not likely, says the Ghost, if things remain as they are. But if the child dies, “better to do it and decrease the surplus population.” Scrooge is ashamed to hear his own words.

Finally, the Ghost of Christmas Future takes Scrooge to his own grave, neglected and forgotten. His business associates, his “friends,” are too busy even to attend his funeral. Finally it comes home to Scrooge the waste his life has been. He pleads for another chance and, suddenly, awakes to discover that it is Christmas morning. The Ghosts did all their work in one night.

Scrooge is a transformed man. He becomes a fair and generous employer, reaches out in charity to the poor, is reconciled with his nephew, and becomes a second father to Tiny Tim who does not die. In Dickens’ words, Scrooge “became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city (of London) knew . . . and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”

A wonderful story of the transforming power of Christmas to change our lives no matter how old we are if we can only see the world again through the eyes of a child, the children we were and the children who are all about us.

But one final thought: Dickens is not scripture. What does our scripture lesson this morning have to do with what I have said? Our passage from Matthew is one of those ferocious passages so beloved by conservative Christians foretelling the end of the world. These are words of doom and gloom. No hope for any of us. But look again. After we are warned to “Keep awake,” we are told that if the owner of the house had kept awake, the thief would not have been able to break in and steal what he had.

Friends, I see this as a metaphor for human life. The thief, a symbol for the death that will find us all in the house of our life, need not surprise or terrify us. If we are ready for the end of our life by living our lives fully and faithfully, lovingly and creatively, here and now, night or day, our lives will end not in tragedy but triumph. Like Scrooge, no matter how old or young we may be, we can be transformed. We can be redeemed. We can be changed. Do you believe that?

Then, like Tiny Tim, for ourselves and all our fellow travelers on this earthly journey, we can wish, “God bless us, every one!”