As far back as I can remember, I’ve known about Jesus. Everyone one of us here probably grew up hearing about Jesus, am I right? We heard about Him in church, in Sunday School. We listened to sermons about Him. We read about Him in the Bible when we got older.
But here’s the thing … even if you didn’t grow up in a Christian home, you heard about Jesus … somehow … somewhere. Whether a person is a Christian or not, they know the name of Jesus. They know something about Him … even if it’s only from the familiar, often-told “Christmas Story” in the Gospels. They’ve heard about Joseph and Mary. They know that the inn was full and that Jesus had to be born in a manger or a stable and why. They know that there were some angels and shepherds involved. Maybe they know about the magi and their gifts … maybe not.
I mean, it’s pretty hard NOT to see pictures or depictions of the Christmas story this time year, am I right? From shows and movies on TV … songs on the radio … manger scenes and cut-out figures on front lawns … Christmas cards depicting the birth of the Holy Christ child in a manger surrounded by Mary and Joseph and animals and angels and shepherds and three magi or wise men … which is why what I’m about to ask you to do might be … well … impossible … even if you have a really, really good imagination.
I want you to try and imagine what it was like to live before Jesus was born. What would you know about God? What would you picture? What would come to mind? Since our roots are in the Jewish tradition, we would see God as huge … all powerful … omnipotent … and, most of all, holy.
We would picture Him as a column of fire or a tornado. We would picture Him as a fierce thundercloud covering a mountain or filling the Temple … His voice so loud that it sounded like thunder and earthquakes and a thousand waterfalls all at once. To look upon Him … to see His face … is more than our human minds can handle. To come into His holy presence was fraught with fear and grave danger.
When God brought His people to His holy mountain to enter into a covenant with them, they had to be consecrated. They had to wash their bodies and their clothes … remove any filth or impurity in order to be able to stand in the Presence of a Holy God. Even then they could only stand at the foot of God’s holy mountain. If they so much as touched it, they would die … and if anyone died on God’s holy mountain the people could not go on to the mountain and retrieve their body … just as they couldn’t go into the Holy of Holies to retrieve the priest’s body but had to pull it out using a cord tied to the priest’s ankle. Like the people before God’s holy mountain, the priests had to fast, sacrifice, and bath for weeks to purify themselves before they could enter God’s Presence in the Holy of Holies … a very fearful and possibly fatal thing to do. When Moses asked God if he could see His face, God denied his request, explaining: “no one may see me and live" (Exodus 33:20). Wow! Understandable … but still, wow! … amen?
Sometimes it’s easy to think of God as distant … somewhere way “up” there … far removed from any of the worries and woes that we mortals have to struggle with here on earth. We picture God as somewhere “way up there” in some place that we can’t see or reach … like the heavens or a mountain top or behind a curtain in the Holy of Holies.
What does God … immortal, omnipotent, and eternal … know of our lives? How can Yahweh … El Shaddai … Adonai … relate to what we puny little human go through down here? What does God know about having an empty belly and no money to buy food? What does God know about lying awake at night worrying about paying the bills? What does God know about being afraid? What does God know about being sick or in pain? What does God know about being lonely? What does God know about the pain of losing a loved one? What does God know about being sore and bone-tired from working in the fields all day or guarding sheep all night? What does God know about being oppressed and discriminated against? What does God know about being chased out of town because you’re weird or different? What does God know about being mocked and ridiculed for His belief? What does the great and all-powerful God in Heaven know about any of this? How can the Great “I AM” relate to us or what we go through here on earth? [Pause.]
Well … actually …
The very heart and soul of Christmas is that God took on flesh and dwelled among us, isn’t it? God emptied Himself and became a human being … the Great I AM … Creator and Ruler of the universe shrunk down to the size of a baby … born in a barn to an engaged couple from the backwater town of Nazareth.
The shepherds were the first to hear the good news of the Savior’s birth. I find it interesting that God first made this announcement … an announcement that the nation of Israel had been waiting for for several generations … to shepherds. Verse 8 doesn’t tell us much about who these shepherds were. It simply says that they were shepherds tending sheep in the nearby hills. Beyond that, we know nothing about them … their names … where they are from.
Do you know who the first shepherd in the Bible is? It’s Abel … the brother of Cain. There were other prominent shepherds in the Old Testament … Abraham … Isaac … Jacob … Moses … David. God calls Himself a “Shepherd” and He calls us the sheep of His fold (Psalm 100:3).
By the time we get to the First Century A.D., however, the social status of shepherds had changed. They had been demoted in a sense. Here are a few things that people said or felt about shepherds in Jesus’ day. By the very nature of their work, they were dirty and filthy … and therefore considered to be ritually unclean. Remember what I said earlier about coming into the Presence of a “holy” God. Because they were considered “unclean,” shepherds were not allowed to participate in any religious ceremonies at the Temple … further ostracizing them from regular Jewish folks.
Shepherds lived in isolation. They were very transient because their flocks needed a constant supply of grass and fresh water. And, because they were constantly on the move and couldn’t put down roots in any one place, they were always looked upon as strangers and suspect even in their own country which is why they weren’t allowed to testify or serve as a witness in court disputes.
This same hostile prejudice exists in Israel today. When I was in the Holy Land, I saw them living in small tents out in the fields amongst their sheep. From what I saw, they had very little and they had a very tough life … and because they have so little, they sometimes have to steal to survive … which has earned them the reputation of being shameless thieves. With clear contempt in her voice, our tour guide explained to us that nobody wants to see shepherds on their property because, in her words, they steal everything that isn’t nailed down.
So … why would God entrust the greatest message ever sent from Heaven to earth to a bunch of unclean, nomadic, kleptomaniacs? “I have not come to call the righteous,” Jesus would explain later, “but for” who? Yeah … “sinners” (Matthew 9:13; Mark 2:17). “It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick” (Matthew 9:12). When Mary was pregnant with Jesus and visited her cousin, Elizabeth, she declared that God’s mercy is for those “who fear [God] from generation to generation. He has shown strength in His arm; He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:51-53). [Pause.] He has scattered the proud … brought down the powerful … and sent the rich away empty. This is what we see happen to Scrooge during his visit with the Ghost of Christmas Present.
The Ghost of Christmas Past’s presence seemed to Scrooge like a dream, remember? It hovered near his bed … ethereal and confusing … its appearance constantly shifting, changing … like a child and at the same time an old man … appearing close then far away … light one moment and dark the next … one leg, two legs, twenty legs, no legs … a body without a head … a head without a body … fading away and at the same time distinct and clear as ever … the ghost’s voice sounding far away even though it was standing right in front of him. The Ghost of Christmas Past felt intimate … yet distant … just like our memories are intimate because they’re ours but they’re distant in that they happened in the past. The visions that the ghost had shown to Scrooge were fleeting and separated from Scrooge himself … like an outsider looking into his own life. Scrooge tried to interact with the people from his memories, but could not … leaving him with a detached experience. The weird and unique thing about memories is that you can see them but you can’t touch them. They have no weight … no substance. You can’t pick them up and put them in a box. It was possible for Scrooge to question whether his first experience with the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, or the Ghost of Christmas Past was real or just a bad dream … a “slight disorder of the stomach” … a bit of “undigested beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato” (Dickens, p. 13), but his experience with the Ghost of Christmas Present is all too real.
As Scrooge awakens from sleep and realizes that it’s time for the next ghost to appear, the clock strikes one … but no spirit appears. It takes several minutes before Scrooge sees a light shining from under his bedroom door and he is curious as to its source. He opens the door and is greeted with a glorious sight. A once gloomy room is transformed and filled with light and the signs of life. Holly wreaths and berries adorn the walls. The fireplace roars with heat and every surface is covered with food. Unlike his experience with the Ghost of Christmas Past and his memories, this room was filled with things that he could see and touch and smell. Think about it. The “present” is here … it’s now. Scrooge can see the decorations, he can hear the fire, feel the heat, smell the food, taste it if he wants … just as you can reach out right now and touch and feel and hear and smell the things around you.
The Ghost of Christmas Present towers above him. With a booming and joyful voice, he beckons Scrooge to come in and know him better … and Scrooge begrudgingly agrees to follow this festive being.
Dickens never tells us whether Scrooge was once a man of faith or not. He doesn’t tell us what, if anything, Scrooge once believed. But Dickens does include one interesting detail in his carol that you’ll never see in any movie adaptation of Dickens’ carol. “The fireplace was an old one,” says Dickens, “built by some Dutch merchant years ago.” Here’s the interesting or revealing part. The Dutch merchant had “paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh’s daughters; Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract [a person’s] thoughts” (Dickens, p. 11).
Before the appearance of the Ghost of Christmas Present, Dickens described the fireplace as having grown cold and dark … like Scrooge’s heart. If Scrooge had had any religion … if he had had any faith at all … it had faded into the background a long, long time ago … overshadowed by his love for money and his love for the darkness, which, as you remember, Scrooge liked because it was cheap.
For Scrooge, Christmas was just a day to “pick” his pocket … a day when he was made to close his counting house instead of making money. He would have been happy if Christmas were just another day on the calendar or didn’t exist at all. He saw absolutely no value in it whatsoever.
As he and the Ghost of Christmas Present travel through the streets of London, he notices how dreadful and dreary everything looks. The houses look bleak. The sky is gloomy. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town. It was not just the dirt and the squalor that Scrooge saw everywhere … it was also the heavy grayness of it all that left little room for good tidings and the usual cheerfulness we have come to know during the Christmas holiday season.
And yet …
Like the night that Jesus was born, there was a spirit of hope and joy in the air … “a cheerfulness abroad,” says Dickens, “that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavored to diffuse in vain” (p. 33). Despite the gray, dreary bleakness, Scrooge notices that there’s something else present. The people shoveling snow in front of their houses and shops are jovial; “calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball” (Dickens, p. 33). The produce in the shop windows were radiant and the shopkeepers were joyful … “soon the steeples called good people all, to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces” (Dickens, p. 34). Maybe for the first time, Scrooge is beginning to see the “spirit” of Christmas for what it is … a glimmer of hope in a bleak and hurting world.
You know, it’s one thing to read about poverty or hear stories about poverty but it’s another thing altogether to see it up close and personal, amen? As you recall, two gentlemen had come by Scrooge’s office on Christmas Eve to ask him to give a donation for the poor.
“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”
“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.
“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
“And the Union warehouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”
“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “ I wish I could say they were not.”
“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.
“Both very busy, sir.”
“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”
“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”
“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.
“You wish to be anonymous?”
“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned – they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there” (Dickens, pp. 7-8).
“Many can’t go there,” said the gentleman, “and many would rather die.”
Listen to Scrooge’s response: “If they would rather, die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population” (Dickens, p. 8). Yikes, amen? I also hope you picked up on Scrooge’s assumption that many people … even today … assume … that the poor are poor because they are idle … and that their poverty is somehow their fault.
“If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population” (Dickens, p. 8). These words will come back to haunt Scrooge because the first place that the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge is to the humble home of the Cratchit family … and suddenly poverty has a name and a face … a very personal face … the face of his clerk, Bob Cratchit … the face of his wife … the face of Bob Cratchit’s daughters … and especially the face of his son, Tiny Tim Cratchit.
Dickens describes the Cratchit home as plain and simple with a surplus of both love and hardship. Far from “idle,” everyone in the home is working hard and doing their best to survive and support one another.
The apple of Bob Cratchit’s eye is obviously his crippled son, Tiny Tim. Under the “present” conditions, the boy has no future but he is able to do the one thing that no one else can … he pierces Scrooge’s cold, hard, dark heart! For the first time in a very, very, very long time, Scrooge shows compassion for another human being:
“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, “tell me if Tiny Tim will live.”
“I see a vacant seat,” replied the ghost, “in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.”
“No, no,” said Scrooge. “Oh, no, kind Spirit! Say he will be spared.”
“If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,” returned the ghost, “will find him here” (Dickens, p. 39) … meaning Tiny Tim will not live to see another Christmas.
Remember how I told you that Scrooge’s words to the charitable gentleman would come back to haunt him? “If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race” returned the ghost, “will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population” (Dickens, p. 39; italics mine).
Yeow! Pow! Zing! Right in the old spiritual solar plexus, amen?
A devastating revelation for Scrooge. “Scrooge hung his head,” says Dickens, “to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit” (Dickens, p. 39). And listen to this! Dickens goes on to say that Scrooge … that “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner” (Dickens, p. 3) … ”was overcome with penitence and grief” (Dickens, p. 39) … penitence and grief!
I once read a story about a man who wanted to know what other people were saying about him. His wish was granted and he was given super hearing. The experience of hearing what people were saying about him behind his back was so painful that he begged for his super hearing to be taken away before the day was over. The same sort of thing happens to Scrooge.
After finishing their paltry Christmas dinner, Bob Cratchit proposes a toast. “Mr. Scrooge!” said Bob; “I’ll give you Mr. scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!”
“The Founder of the Feast indeed!” cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening. “I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.”
“My dear,” said Bob, “The children! Christmas Day.”
“It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,” said she, “on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!” (Dickens, p. 39).
She and the family toast Scrooge’s health but, in Dickens’ words, there was no “heartiness” in it. “Tiny Tim drank it last of all,” says Dickens, “but he didn’t care twopence for it. Scrooge was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full five minutes. After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done with” (Dickens, p. 39).
Ouch, amen?
When the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to the home of his nephew, Fred, he again has to listen as he is made the butt of jokes and has to be defended by his nephew from the harsh criticism and resentment of Fred’s wife and friends.
It has been said that before we can hear the good news of what God has done for us, we must first hear the bad news … otherwise the good news and the cross make no sense or are pointless. If we believe that we are sinless, if we believe that we can atone for our sins through our own actions, then there is no bad news and no need of a Savior, amen? As I explained last Sunday, the problem with being lost is that we often don’t know that we’re lost. Before I can repent … before I can “turn around” and change the direction that I’m going in … I have to hear the bad news … that I am, in fact, going in the wrong direction … and that the only way that I can turn around and start heading in the right direction is if Someone … with a capital “S” … takes on the difficult and unpopular responsibility of pointing out that I’m going in the wrong direction so that they can get me headed in the right direction. It is only by hearing the bad news … that we are all sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) … that we can truly hear what the Good News has to say … know that it’s good … embrace it … and then desire to make a change.
In both the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and in your story, the goal is the same: It’s all about redemption! It’s all about bringing you back into a right relationship with people and with God while there is still time. Once life is over, it’s too late, my friend. The change must happen now … by choice. Like Scrooge, we must be brought to the place where we not only see ourselves as we think we are but as we truly are … and that can only happen if we see ourselves through other people’s eyes and through the eyes of God … however painful that may be. At the beginning of Dickens’ Christmas carol, Scrooge liked his life. He had absolutely no desire to repent … to change his life or change the direction that his life was going … until the Ghost of Christmas Past showed him who he used to be and the Ghost of Christmas Present showed him what other people thought of him.
As Scrooge is confronted with the man he truly is, he doesn’t like what he sees. He has had his head stuck in his books and ledgers and his mind focused on money for so long that he no longer sees the real world around him. He has become uncaring, cynical, and angry at life. There is no joy in his life … just bitter sarcasm. He thinks everybody around him … Bob Cratchit, his nephew, even the poor … are out to get him … to take away the money that he has worked so hard to accumulate.
What a terrible, terrible life it is to live for “self.” Many, many people do and many, many people are more and more unhappy, amen? As YOU go through life, do you “see” those in need around you? Or do you choose to ignore them and keep moving on? Pass them by without a nod or a word … let alone look them the eye? Do you walk right by them without a thought … without compassion … because, after all, they brought this on themselves with their bad decisions and their idle ways, amen? Like Scrooge, do you donate money to this organization or that … like the Salvation Army or Pathways or the Canton Community Kitchen … and then let them deal with the needs of the unseemly and the unwashed?
And I’m not just talking about homeless people, either. We are surrounded by people in need … who are lost … who are searching for someone or something … anything … to give them hope … even if they don’t know it. How many of them are lost in sin? Putting on an outward appearance of having it all together when deep down inside, if they were to get honest, would tell you that they are empty or hurting? How many are lonely and discouraged but we don’t take the time or have the courage or the sympathy or the desire to try and lift them up … or tell them of the love of Jesus?
Listen, my brothers and sisters … I know that you already know this … but we need to hear and keep hearing it until it goes from our heads to our hearts. We can not live our lives only for ourselves!
We can not live our lives only for ourselves … nice words … powerful words … but meaningless words if we don’t live by them, amen? We cannot live our lives only for ourselves … nice words … powerful words … but do you believe them? Like Scrooge, perhaps we need a visitation from a ghost … a Christmas ghost, amen? Perhaps we need a visitation from the Holy Spirit to remind us that we are not here … on this earth … just to serve ourselves. Perhaps we need to read God’s Word over and over again to keep reminding ourselves that we are here on this earth to serve God by serving each other and by serving His children in need … to share a little kindness with them … to show them the love of their Heavenly Father everywhere we can every chance that we get, amen?
What becomes very obvious is that Scrooge is a product of his own history. Scrooge is the product of all his Christmases past. The Spirit of Christmas Present comes to give him an opportunity to see what his life is truly like in the here and now because of the decisions and choices that he made in past.
The Ghost of Christmas Present gives Scrooge a glimpse of Bob Cratchit’s home and his life outside of the office where … despite the Cratchit’s poverty they live in a home that is filled with joy and love and compassion for one another … a home where they still toast Scrooge and give thanks for the paltry Christmas dinner they’ve just shared together.
Scrooge gets an inside look into his nephew, Fred’s, life as well … the only person on the face of the earth who has any affection for him whatsoever. Year after year, Fred keeps inviting his Uncle Scrooge to come share in the joy and merriment of Christmas with him … and even though Scrooge keeps turning him down year after year, his nephew keeps asking him in the hopes that one of these years his “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner” (Dickens, p. 3) of an uncle will finally accept his offer to come share Christmas with the only family he or Scrooge has.
Yes, the Ghost of Christmas Present has shown Scrooge exactly what he’s become. He has exposed the hardness and callousness of Scrooge’s heart … his dismissal of the poverty and the needs of those around him … his total disregard and distain for humanity itself … but the Ghost of Christmas Present has also shown him something else. He has shown him that there are still people in the world who care about him. Bob Cratchit, for example … though reluctantly. His nephew, Fred, who also toasts Scrooge and refuses to give up on him. While Fred and his guest have a great time making fun of his Uncle Scrooge, Fred still raises a glass of mulled wine and says: “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is! He wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless” (Dickens, p. 46).
And this, my brothers and sisters, is the promise of our Christmas present! Every Christmas we are reminded that no matter how hard-hearted we’ve become … no matter how bitter and twisted … no matter how selfish we are … no matter how greedy we are … no matter how rebellious we are … no matter how “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, and covetous” (Dickens, p. 3) we have become … God stills loves us old sinners, amen? And He will never give up on us.
The story of Christmas is all about the One … with a capital “O” … who gave up all His riches … who gave up all His glory … who gave up His throne in Heaven … so that He could become a helpless baby born in a stable. The story of Christmas is all about the One who came that night, not to be served but to serve. If only we could have been there that night … maybe if we had seen the Christ child with our own eyes … our Christmas celebrations might be more like God intended for them to be, amen?
Even though we weren’t there, however, the beautiful part is that we … you and I … are part of the story … as much a part of the story as Mary and Joseph … as much a part of the story as the angels and the shepherds. When the shepherds arrived to tell Mary and Joseph what they had seen and heard from the angels, Luke tells us that “everyone” who heard it was amazed at what the shepherds had told them (Luke 2:18). Everyone who heard it. I believe that you would be very hard pressed to find anyone on this planet who hasn’t at least heard what the shepherds told Mary and Joseph that night.
Every time we hear the story of God’s gift of the Christ child we should still be amazed at the news. We, along with Mary, should always treasure this in our hearts and ponder the mystery of God being with us in the flesh every day. Maybe then Tiny Tim’s precious and prophetic prayer will ring true … “God bless us every one,” amen?
Let us pray …
