Christmas Presence

Isaiah 35.1-10

Luke 1.46-55

Christmas Presence

(God Bless Us Every One!- III)

Third Sunday of Advent

When I was seven or eight years old, there were times that I was so excited about Christmas that I couldn’t get to sleep.  So instead I would tiptoe down the hallway in the wee hours of the morning past my parents’ bedroom, turn the television on very softly, and watch whatever happened to be on – and since those were there was only a handful of stations, and since it was usually around 2 or 3 a.m., this meant whatever happened to be on were mainly old movies – which is how I was first introduced to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  I remember it vividly - it was the 1951 version that featured Alistair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge, and it became the standard by which I measured all other versions of the story.  There was one earlier version, in 1938, with Leo G Carroll as Marley’s ghost and a young June Lockhart as one of the Cratchit girls.  Others came later:  There were two animated versions, one in 1962 starring Mr Magoo and the voice of Jim Backus, and one in 2001 with the voices of Nicholas Cage and Kate Winslet; and at least two other live-action versions that I know of, the 2009 one with Jim Carrey not only playing the role of Scrooge but also all the ghosts but Marley’s; and the 1984 version with George C Scott as Scrooge, the version we’re going to be showing this Saturday night right here in the sanctuary.  Now, I’ll admit it is probably because I saw them both before the Froggatt house had a color television, but it is the two earliest versions that I tend to prefer; I guess Victorian London just seems more authentic in black and white.

Our two scripture lessons this morning are twins, of a sort, and I think you could hear that when we read them.  Both passages are songs of redemption:  “The wilderness and the dry land will be glad,” Isaiah proclaimed, “the desert will rejoice and blossom… the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”  It describes a time when God will lift up the weary and heal infirmity.  In a similar way, Mary’s song, the Magnificat, draws a like picture:  “[God’s] mercy is for those who revere God from generation to generation… [God] has lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things.”  In Mary’s song, which could also be called her prophecy, the one who is about to be born will be a champion of the poor and outcast, will lift up the weary and will heal the infirm.

In certain theological circles, both these passages reflect what has sometimes been called God’s preferential option for the poor.  As Catholic canon law puts it, “The Christian faithful are obliged to promote social justice, and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor.”  When I was in seminary, Latin American Liberation Theology leaned heavily in this direction.  But I confess, I was more than a little surprised to find the same sentiment in Dickens’ Christmas Carol as we have been reading through it this Advent.  As the Spirit of Christmas Present leads Ebenezer Scrooge through the streets and homes of London on Christmas Day, and they are jostled by people coming and going to and from church and on to their Christmas dinners, the Spirit invisibly sprinkled what Dickens called a kind of incense on the passers-by and on their dinners from the tip of the torch he carried.  As Dickens tells it,

“There emerged from scores of by-streets, lanes and nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners…  The sight of these poor revelers appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him at a baker’s doorway, and taking the off the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinner from his torch.  And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humour was restored directly.  For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day.  And so it was!  God love it, so it was! “Is there – is there a peculiar flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?” asked Scrooge.  “There is [the Spirit replied], my own.”  “Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?” asked Scrooge.  “To any kindly given,” the Spirit said, “To a poor one most.”  “Why to a poor one most?” asked Scrooge.  “Because it needs it most.”

It appears that the Spirit of Christmas Present also possesses a preferential option for the poor:  imagine, finding Liberation Theology in a nineteenth century novel!  Now to be sure, Charles Dickens was not a particularly religious man; in fact on more than one occasion he expressed his contempt and disdain for visible religiosity, particularly of the evangelical and Roman Catholic varieties.  Dickens was more prone to Unitarianism, and for a while attended Anglican services.  But his was really a civil religion, and this is what comes through most in his Christmas Carol.  Scrooge reflects Dickens’ conviction that salvation comes from an authentic encounter with the self, and is achieved through loving one’s neighbor, and offering a cup of water to one who is in need.  As Steven Rost wrote in Christianity Today, “The New Testament teaches that such acts are the result of spiritual conversion; for Dickens they were the means.”  To Rost’s citation of the New Testament, I would add that the same can be said of the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah included.

But what really begins Scrooge’s transformation in this third chapter of the story is not the Spirit’s encounter with the poor, but rather Scrooge’s encounter with himself as seen through the eyes of two families at Christmas dinner – the Cratchit family, and that of his nephew Fred, whose invitation to join them Scrooge spurned with his characteristic “Humbug!”

At the first, Bob Cratchit raises a Christmas toast to his employer – over his wife’s strenuous objection.  Lifting his cup, Cratchit says, 

“I give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!”  “The Founder of the Feast!” cried Mrs. Cratchit; “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 to 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…  I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s, not for his.  Long life to him!  A merry Christmas and a happy new year.  He’ll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt.”  

And they all drank a toast to Mr. Scrooge.

The scene at Scrooge’s nephew’s home is a similar one.  The conversation turned to how Scrooge had been invited there for Christmas dinner, but rudely declined.  Fred’s sisters have little good to say about their uncle, but Fred, a good humored young man, refused to defame him.  “He’s a comical old fellow,” Fred said, 

“that’s the truth; and not so pleasant as he might be… [But] I am sorry for him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried.  Who suffers by his ill whims! Himself, always.  Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won’t come and dine with us. What’s the consequence?  He don’t lose much of a dinner… I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him.  He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can’t help thinking better of it – I defy him – if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year and saying ‘Uncle Scrooge, how are you?’”

These two scenes which unfolded in the presence of Scrooge and the Spirit constitute a kind of turning point in the story.  While they had every reason to find fault with Scrooge, as the women of the families did, both Fred and Bob Cratchit found something positive to say about the man.  And as if to punctuate this, Fred finally convinces his sisters and household to toast the man:  “He has given us plenty merriment I am sure, and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health.  Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge!’”  “Well, Uncle Scrooge!” they cried.  “A merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is… Uncle Scrooge!”  And then Dickens reports, “Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time.”

If those people most adversely affected by his penny-pinching and meagerness can find something good to say about Ebenezer Scrooge and find something good in him, odious, stingy, hard and unfeeling as he may have been, there is the beginning of Scrooge’s redemption, such as it is.  And turning of his own heart to the needs of the poor are the means of getting there.

Turning our hearts to the needs of the poor – both Isaiah and Mary use this kind of language as a way of preparing to receive the promised one of God.  “Strengthen the hands of the weak,” Isaiah said, “make firm the feeble knees.”  Mary sang, “God brings the powerful down from their thrones and lifts up the lowly; God fills the hungry with good things, and sends the rich away empty.”  God’s clear preferential option for the poor.  If we are still looking for ways to make this Advent season meaningful, this is a very good place to begin.

Let us pray.