The Scrooge in All of Us
Matthew 2:13-18
Christmas is one of those times that almost demands that we be creative with the familiar- the story of Bethlehem, and the baby Jesus in a manger. The angels we have heard on high. You might feel that you are familiar with the story that you know it and that you don’t need to take another look. But we can all get so used to things that we ignore the detail. We think we know what it’s all about, but do we really?
Another example is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Published in 1843, it’s one of the best-loved stories to be set at this time of year. Its frankly one of my favorites. We probably think we know the story back to front. After all, it’s been adapted into over 200 films, and is such a powerful tale that it’s credited with helping to define our contemporary understanding of Christmas. But a fresh look at this all-time classic, reminds us that it’s far more than just a feel-good festive tale featuring a miserly old humbug with one of the oldest catchphrases in the world. The book’s main character, of course, is the mean and intimidating Ebenezer Scrooge, who lives to make money and very little else. He certainly has no use for religion or sentimentality.
Scrooge parallels many biblical characters, but perhaps no one more than Herod. Herod is the original Ebenezer if ever there was one, and represents to you and I the character of everyone and everything who tries to remove the Spirit of Christmas, and more importantly the Spirit of Christ from all of us, and all around us. Herod commands the wise men to return to him and report to him where the Christ was to be born, so that he could go and worship him also. The wise men were not called wise men for nothing. They were wise enough to see through this nonsense. They knew Herod’s reputation as one who killed his wife and two of his sons because they threatened his power. They knew he didn’t want to worship Him. They knew Herod would kill Him, and then probably kill the wise men for their effrontery to worship someone else, instead of Herod. These kinds of Scrooges are not isolated in history. Their spirit lives on even today. He is the spirit of the one who tries to remove Christ from nativity scenes at the courthouse, at the park, and other public places. He’s the one who tries to get Christ banned from our public schools. He’s the one who goes around saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. I was proud of our Christmas parade in Elizabeth City this year. Just about every float- even the secular ones, boldly proclaimed Merry Christmas.
You may remember from the story how one Christmas Eve, Scrooge receives a terrifying wake-up call. The spirit of his business partner, Jacob Marley, who died seven Christmas Eves previous and was a miser like Scrooge, comes to visit, bound and wrapped in terrible chains. Marley has been condemned to roam the face of the earth, tormented in death by the things he neglected to value in life. He reminds me of Jesus Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.in Luke 16. Look there beginning at v.28In the torment of hell the rich man cries out: Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ To which father Abraham replies They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’" ’No, father Abraham,’ he said, ’but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ "He said to him, ’If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ "
Marley is desperate to give his old colleague a final chance to avoid the same fate. ‘My spirit never walked beyond our counting house,’ he warns Scrooge. A great length of chain traps Jacob Marley’s spirit and weighs it down. Marley tells Scrooge that he alone forged it in life: ‘I made it, link by link and yard by yard.’ Chains that were forged with regrets and sins of his own making which he could not release, and hurts he would not forgive. And as he stands before Scrooge, he can see the even greater chains that bind his old colleague: ‘Would you know the weight and length of the coil you bear yourself?’ asks Marley. ‘It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it since. It is a ponderous chain.’
This, he makes clear, is Scrooge’s last opportunity to turn from selfish ways. Marley’s spirit instructs him to wait for three more spirits ¬of Christmas past, present and future. Reluctantly, Scrooge understands that this is for real, as he sees Marley float away to join a crowd of tormented souls who are wailing and moaning in the night sky. Yet even after contemplating Marley’s fate, the thought really does nothing to cause Scrooge to repent at that moment. He thinks “Well I still have time but not right now.” Perhaps the words of James 4:13-15 ring resoundingly true in the Scrooges’ ears: 13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. The spirit of Scrooge is alive and well- for he does not heed that warning. For all we know, that spirit of Scrooge may be in this very room right now. Ignoring the plea of Peter who calls us in Acts 3:19 "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that you sins may be blotted out.”
On the stroke of one o’clock, the spirit of Christmas Past arrives and takes him on an unforgettable trip down memory lane, on a visit to his own childhood. Scrooge is astonished to see old, familiar faces playing happily in the open air. As the spirit takes him into a schoolroom in the late 1700s, however, they see a lonely little boy sitting by the fire, whose only companion is the book he is reading. Scrooge remembers his loneliness, and how he longed for the presence and warmth of friends. He recalls his past desires for the love and approval of his family, but then sees all the people who tried to reach out to him, who attempted to stop his slide into self-absorption. He sees his former fiancée, Belle, who came a poor second to Scrooge’s passion for wealth. ‘A golden idol displaces me,’ she complains to him from the past. ‘All hopes have merged to a master passion; the thought of money engrosses you!’
We spring ahead to the 21st century, we can fall into a similar trap, seeing money - and the things it can buy - as the answer to our problems. The spirit of Scrooge seems to highjack every Christmas; turning our pilgrimage of faith into pilgrimage to the mall. Its true that the tradition of Christmas presents was inspired by God’s gift to us in the Savior whom the angels proclaimed, For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. But Scrooge has taken that tradition and run it out as far as he could so that it no longer resembles the Christmases of our past, or even what God meant for this celebration to be. We perceive the ‘good life’ as being about an abundance of bigger, brighter and better things. And if we start to feel guilty, we can excuse ourselves with the thought that we want our children to have the things we missed out on. Because of Scrooge I doubt very seriously that any of us have the strength of character to resist getting caught up in all of this. How do we stop it? Unless we can identify and confess the Scrooge within us all, we cannot do it.
II. If Scrooge has been shaken by the visit of the first spirit, then the second is no less disturbing. The Spirit of Christmas Present arrives to take Scrooge on a tour of the people he now knows. He finds himself standing in the home of his poor clerk, Bob Cratchit, where he feels the warmth of a large and friendly family who are making the best of what little they can afford on the tiny salary Scrooge pays. He experiences their anxiety over the fate of Tiny Tim, the Cratchit’s sick youngest child. Scrooge is clearly shown the effects of his selfish nature; but the spirit helps him understand that even though he is utterly hard-hearted, others have not entirely given up on him. As they sit down to their feeble Christmas dinner, Bob Cratchit thinks to toast his boss, despite protests from his wife. Tiny Tim answers the toast with one of his own: “God bless us, everyone!”
Then, when one reads the original Dickens’s tale, the Spirit reveals two hauntingly thin and deathly children from within his cloak. You seldom see them in the movie version. They are called IGNORANCE and WANT - two of the grim realities of Victorian life. The Spirit describes them as the ‘children of all who walk the earth unseen’. On their brow is written the word: ‘DOOM’. As Scrooge pleads for them to be removed from his sight, the Spirit explains that ‘doom spells the downfall of you and all those who deny their existence.’
It’s true that the Victorian age may have been such a time of ignorance and want, but we have our own specters in the 21st century. We know ignorance and a poverty by different names. Instead of ignorance, we have loneliness. Instead of poverty of wealth, we have poverty of character. These are things, like Scrooge’s ghosts, that we are ashamed of, and do not wish to see. How much poverty do we allow ourselves to see? The Spirit responds, ‘They are hidden, but they yet live.’ Dickens holds a mirror not just to Scrooge’s face, but also to ours. Now, don’t get me wrong. I think we are pretty good about helping the needy, the homeless, and the down and out. We live in a country whose desperate poor are considered wealthy by the standards of the poor in Africa or Asia. Our poverty of character is breeds a dearth of relationships. Never before have we seen such loneliness- where relatives don’t know each other or see each other anymore like they did in Christmases past. We chat up somebody endlessly on the internet who lives in Hong Kong but won’t take a trip across the street to get to know our new neighbors. But we are descending to new lows all the time. Things that we used to think were indecent and decadent, that good Christian people were too respectable to do, why we don’t think anything about any more.
You say, “Look, preacher I don’t want to hear about this kind of thing. Its Christmas. I want to see the baby Jesus in the manger. I want to see the shepherds and the wise men and Mary and Joseph and sing Silent Night.” Friends we have been silent too long. The baby in a manger never saved anybody until He went to the Cross, whose blood can forgive us and cleanse us of all the things that I spoke of. I know its not a pretty picture, but the ghost of Christmas present bids us to look presently at the condition of our hearts just now if the baby Jesus is going to mean anything at all to us.
III. For speaking of losing one’s voice, comes the final spirit, the Spirit of Christmas Future, who has no face and does not speak. It merely points. Scrooge looks to where the spirit is leading him, and sees the Cratchit family again, worn down in their struggle against poverty, and now without Tiny Tim, whose lonely crutch stands unused in a corner. The Spirit takes Scrooge to visit the house of a man who has died in his sleep. A maid and a cleaner are dividing up his belongings before the undertaker arrives. Two associates out in the street are discussing whether it’s even necessary to hold a funeral service, since no one would bother to come. ’But who is this man?’ asks the miser. The spirit leads him to a grave, whose headstone bears the name ‘Ebenezer Scrooge’ Died 1843. No other words adorn his grave marker. Two grave diggers leave his open grave to visit the local pub. It seems that Scrooge lived long enough to make it miserable for everyone. The Bible tells us The days of our years are threescore and ten and if by reason of strength they may be fourscore years." Psalm 90:10 (KJV) Yet there is for none of us such a guarantee. It’s a chilling reminder that no one lives forever; that the journey of life is brief. As the Bible says, ‘our days on earth are as a shadow’ (1 Chronicles 29.15). That’s why we need to be saved today, for Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. - 2 Cor.6:2
I think I have probably preached 100 funeral services in my ministry, yet it never ceases amazes me to see people at the graveside of loved ones and friends who never take one thought of their own souls. “Keep it short and sweet” they say- so they won’t need to contemplate the grim reminder of their own mortality. How they have allowed their hearts to get so cold as to allow one thought of repentance to enter their calloused hearts. Fortunately for Scrooge, this is the life-changing moment when he understands that it’s now or never. He asks whether it’s possible to mend his ways and so alter his life and destiny. Surely the Spirits wouldn’t be visiting him if not? As Christmas morning dawns and he wakes, once more, to the world, Scrooge realizes that he has been given a reprieve- a second chance. Just as Dickens believed we have all been given another chance, only because of the birth of the hero of the greatest Christmas story, Jesus.
The good news is that if we will learn from the past, we can change now so that we can create a better future. Just as the spirits of Christmas wanted Scrooge to change for good, so God knows us better than we know ourselves, and loves us enough to help us to change and make a difference. Christmas is the time and place where God draws back the curtain, so we can see his face. Jesus has come to free us, because we are bound by chains that bound old Jacob Marley . But we must look to the Christ who went to the cross who died for you and then to the grave who rose again to give you victory. The good news is that we, like Scrooge, are still alive. It’s not too late: we can choose to change. Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. Whatever our past has been, we can have a better future.
At the heart of ‘A Christmas Carol’ lies Scrooge’s transformation. Transformation means change. Change from a selfish, greedy and bitter old man, we see him become a grateful, generous and compassionate figure. A man filled with deep regret sees his life transformed, to the point where Dickens concludes he became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew.’ We assume that Scrooge learns his lesson, and experiences what amounts to a ‘conversion’. He responds by changing his ways and living out the lessons that he learnt on that Christmas Eve. He repents and changes his destiny.
Jesus, the Son of God, invites us to do the same. What better time than Christmas to receive forgiveness, renew our faith, release our fears and rebuild our friendships? Faith, after all, is made real in thought, word and deed.
Yes there’s the Scrooge in all of us that needs to be repented of and dealt with in all of us this Christmas and at any season and it is called sin. Why not let Jesus be born into your life, this Christmas time? God bless us, Everyone!
