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Episcopal Church and Student Center
1309 R Street * Lincoln, NE 68508 * (402) 474-1979 * www.stmarks-episcopal.org
The Rev. Sidnie White Crawford
St. Mark’s on the Campus
The Third Sunday of Advent
A Christmas Carol
December 15, 2013
Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt
whatever about that. The register of his burial was
signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,
and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And
Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he
chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a
door-nail.
Wait!
That's not this morning's gospel reading!
No, as you probably
recognized, those are the opening lines of Charles Dickens' A Christmas
Carol.
Like many of you, at this time of year I enjoy reading Christmas
themed books.
Now, a lot of them are pretty mushy, featuring homeless
cats or dogs, or people finally finding true love.
I skip those.
I tend
to go in for Christmas mystery novels, set in the English countryside,
where the wassail bowl is spiked with cyanide and the amateur detective
has to figure out who done it.
But of course the granddaddy of them all,
and the one that began the genre, is A Christmas Carol.
I'm sure most of you have seen film adaptations of the book, but how
many of you have actually read the novel?
If you haven't, I recommend it.
It's actually short- my copy is only 82 pages long.
But when you read
it,
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you realize how sharp-edged it actually is, and how much Dickens
reappropriates the gospel message we hear throughout Advent.
In Matthew's gospel this morning Jesus says, "Go and tell John what
you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers
are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good
news brought to them."
One of the iconic figures of A Christmas Carol is
of course Tiny Tim, the crippled youngest son of Bob Crachit.
When we
first meet Tim, he has just returned from church with his father.
Bob
Crachit says,
Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so
much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard.
He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw
him in church, because he was a cripple, and it might
be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day,
who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.
It is Tim who really gets to Scrooge; he begs the Ghost of Christmas
Present to tell him whether or not Tim will live.
The Ghost says,
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in a poor
chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner,
carefully preserved. If these shadows remain
unaltered by the Future, the child will die."
While Tim is an important symbol, he is not really the focus of A
Christmas Carol, any more than the lame are the focus of Jesus' message in
this morning's gospel.
The culmination of the list in Matthew is "the poor have good news
brought to them."
A Christmas Carol.
The poor and how they are treated is the major theme in
In the opening chapter, Scrooge is visited in his
counting house on Christmas Eve by two businessmen.
charitable contributions for a poor fund.
They are soliciting
Scrooge responds,
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down
the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses?" 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." Scrooge goes on,
"I help to support the establishments I have
mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly
off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had
better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
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When Scrooge meets Marley's Ghost, Marley tells Scrooge,
Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare
was my business: charity, mercy, forbearance, and
benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my
trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive
ocean of my business!
In Scrooge's encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge sees
under his robe two children:
They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged,
scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their
humility.
"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man's," said the Spirit. "And they cling to
me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is
Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and
all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy,
for on his brow I see that written which is Doom,
unless the writing be erased."
Finally, in Scrooge's awful journey with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to
Come, the poor women who watched Scrooge die, and the undertaker, bring
the plunder they have taken from his deathbed to sell at a rag and bone
shop.
One of the women says,
"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman, when old Joe,
producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out
their several gains upon the ground. "This is the end
of it, you see! He frightened every one away from him
when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha,
ha, ha!"
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In all these passages, Dickens' message is clear: the poor, and the
misery of their lives, is the fault of an indifferent society, and could
be ameliorated if people just cared enough to do something about it.
Scrooge, of course, repents and amends his life.
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and
infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die he
was a second father. He became as good a friend, as
good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city
knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in
the good old world. Some people laughed to see the
alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little
heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that
nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at
which some people did not have their fill of laughter
at the outset;
Scrooge is the classic example of a successful conversion.
Now Dickens is a novelist, not a theologian, and so he doesn't spell
out the underlying cause of Scrooge's new life.
He hints at it, calling
it the spirit of Christmas, or keeping Christmas in the heart.
spell it out for him.
But we can
It is the Incarnation, the mystery of God becoming
human, and in that humanity becoming the model for all of us.
We, as
children of God through Christ, should embody Jesus' message to the world.
In a way, we need to be Jesus.
apt here.
The phrase "What would Jesus do?" is very
Scrooge, in his new self, in his Christ-like self, gives
generously of his wealth, not only to the Cratchits, but also to the
faceless poor.
But he doesn't only do that.
and they respond.
He gives himself to others,
He reaches out to his nephew and gains a family.
As
for Tiny Tim, Dickens says that Scrooge becomes a second father to him.
And of course, by giving of himself, Scrooge receives, and becomes a
beloved figure in his community.
So the ultimate truth of A Christmas
Carol is the truth of love.
Scrooge loves, and the world loves him5 back.
If we love, the world loves us back.
And we know that although Dickens
doesn't say so directly, that the source of our love is the ultimate
source of all love, God-in-Christ.
"For God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten son, that whoever believed in him would not perish,
but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
So I wish you a love-filled, joyous Christmas.
say, "God bless us, everyone one!"
And as Tiny Tim would