This is the second in a series entitled, “God Blesses Everyone: The Transformation of the Scrooge In and Around All of Us.” The readings come to us and ask us to face the past—to awaken to what’s hurt and troubled within us. Shining a light on the past requires courage and hope. In Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Past makes a visit. Ebenezer Scrooge is immediately afraid of the light that emanates from the visitor. But as he begins the journey into his memories, he begins to awaken to his feelings, especially the feeling of grief and he shows signs of compassion for his former self. It may feel odd to focus on grief as we approach Christmas. We’d prefer happier themes. But the wisdom of our spiritual tradition knows that without this backward journey, there is no healthy way forward for us and for the world. But if we take this journey, there is hope, there is the possibility of transformation. Find the audio recording here.

Have you ever wanted to give up? Ever come to a point where you say, “I’m done!”? Have you ever wanted to say, “Stop! Enough! I can’t take any more!”?

There are times when life gets so heavy, when things get so hard, when the past becomes so painful, when we can’t see any reasonable way into the future. We feel hopeless, and when we feel hopeless it’s not hard to say to life, “Stop! I can’t take any more!”

Quite a cheery way to start a sermon on this second Sunday of Advent!

Decorations are going up, lights are turning on, holiday music’s playing in our heads, and Christmas cheer is all around. But not all is bright and cheery. Beneath the tinsel and lights, unpleasant emotions always linger. None of us is without them. We all know, to one degree or another, grief and hurt and worry. To varying degrees, we all know fear and anger, insecurity and confusion. All these unpleasant emotions we tend to dislike, hide away, relegate to the shadowy edges of our lives.

Our theological and spiritual tradition is honest about all this; it’s no stranger to the unpleasant side of our humanity: the Christ Child, born into the deep of winter’s night, born to a pair of young peasants while traveling, born in such a way that the birth excited not only the curiosity of a tyrant king, but also his wrath and violence. There were plenty of unpleasant emotions that first Christmas. Christmas is about the light shining but always in the midst of darkness. Christmas is about something new, something divine, something being born. But there’s no birth without pain, no healing without tending the wound.

This is why today, on the second Sunday of Advent, our Advent journey into Christmas brings us face to face with the theological, spiritual, and psychological truth that we’ll never truly get into Christmas and Christmas will never truly get into us unless we learn to face and learn from the emotions we don’t want to feel, the experiences that keep them alive within us.

In our first reading, the prophet Jeremiah faces the unpleasant emotions.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Jeremiah was summoned by God to speak truth to power in ways that put his life in jeopardy. It was a time of political corruption, geopolitical turmoil, religious compromise, and terrible violence. For speaking God’s truth, a truth too few wanted to hear, Jeremiah was harassed, threatened, and attacked not only by friends, neighbors, and colleagues, but also by the government. At one point the government imprisoned him. He was left in a dank cell to bleed and starve.

In the pit, he fell into a fury. Unable to direct his anger toward his opponents, he turned his anger on God:

“O God, you lured me into this stupid work. You overpowered me, enticed me with vain promises, and now look at me; I’m crushed and dying. Is this what you wanted? I’m the laughingstock of Jerusalem. They accuse and ridicule me all day long. And where are you, anyway? You called, got me into this, then disappeared.”

Then, because God didn’t seem to care, he turned the anger upon himself:

“Why did God bring me forth from my mother’s womb to see all this trouble, to feel all this pain, to spend my days in shame?” “Cursed be the one who brought my father the news of my birth.”

He wanted to give up. He was saying, “Enough! I’ve had it! Make it stop! I’m done.”

If you’ve ever felt this way, you’re in good company.

And yet, a light broke into the night of his soul’s journey into wholeness. A way came to him. Against the odds, he found a way out of his soul's night; Jeremiah became one of the greatest of God’s prophets, whose reckoning with his unpleasant emotions led him into transformation. Late in life, Jeremiah could declare: “God will turn our mourning into joy; God will comfort us, and give us gladness instead of sorrow.”

Something miraculous can happen when we honestly face unpleasant emotions. Something miraculous can happen when we come to the point of giving up, when we want off the wild ride of life, when we learn from the truths our unpleasant emotions can teach us, when we no longer repress them and try to send them to the shadowy edges of our lives.

There are reasons Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

In the second part of Charles Dickens’ beloved story of Ebenezer Scrooge’s transformation, the Ghost of Christmas Past carries Scrooge, unwillingly, into the unpleasant emotions he’d long repressed, emotions that, regardless of his efforts to hide them, still lived in him—emotions that, unacknowledged and buried, made Scrooge the broken, ugly man he’d become.

The Ghost of Christmas Past carries Scrooge unwillingly into five different Christmases of his past:

In the first Christmas remembered, the Ghost returns Ebenezer to his childhood. He sees his classmates again and “rejoices beyond all bounds to see them!” The other children are all going home for Christmas. But “the school is not quite deserted.” Says the Ghost, “a solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still. . . . At one of the desks a lonely boy is reading near a feeble fire.” Seeing himself as he once was, feeling for the child again, awakened again to feelings long buried, “Scrooge sits down upon a long bench and weeps to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be.”

In the second Christmas remembered, the Spirit brings up a memory a few years later. Scrooge is still at school, evidently banished there by his father, who, for reasons we don’t know, has sent his son there for good. But on this Christmas, Scrooge’s sister has come for him. “I’ve come to bring you home, dear brother!” Father is so much kinder than he used to be; home’s a little bit like heaven now.” It’s a happy memory, but laced with pain. The Ghost reminds Scrooge of another painful memory he’d buried: his beloved sister later died having given birth to the nephew Scrooge had come to hate.

The third Christmas remembered is of Scrooge as a young man, apprenticing with Mr. Fezziwig, the generous and gregarious businessman who loved Christmas with all his heart and celebrated it with dancing and feasting every year. The memory makes Scrooge painfully aware of what he once loved and how far he’s departed from the practices of the man who mentored him.

The fourth Christmas, Scrooge is a business man who chooses money over love. Belle has come to him to break off their engagement. “You are changed, Ebenezer. You fear the world too much,” she says. “I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you.” The younger Scrooge does not disagree, and when Belle, in tears, walks out the door, the Scrooge who’s watching the scene wails, “Spirit! Why do you delight to torture me? No more!” cries Scrooge, “I wish to see no more. Show me no more!”

But then, writes Dickens, the relentless Ghost seized both of Scrooge’s arms “and forced him to observe what happened next.”

There are times we want mercy but mercy isn’t what we need. A good physician won’t stop cleaning a wound just because we cry. We must be forced in the direction of healing. There is no healing without pain.

This last Christmas remembered is the culmination of all the wounds Ebenezer has locked away within him. Each one builds on the others, each one feeds on the other and increases the intensity of the pain. It’s little wonder Scrooge has turned in upon himself; his pain is extreme and so is the force he must exert to keep himself from feeling it.

The school boy left alone for the holidays, whose father had rejected him, whose beloved sister had died, later turned against the ways of his generous mentor, and finally rejected the woman who tried to love him.

And who could blame him? So much loss made the things greed could give him seem so much more secure than the fragility of human love.

But God knows, unless Scrooge feels the unpleasant emotions he’s split off and hidden away, he’ll lose his soul forever.

So, in an act of severe mercy, the Spirit of Christmas Past “forces him to observe what happened next.”

Fifth, the Spirit shows him a most joyous scene of a Christmas, not actually remembered by Scrooge but an experience forfeited by him. Belle, once his fiancé, is gathered with her family. “The joy and gratitude and ecstasy” writes Dickens, the “wonder and delight . . . all, indescribably” wonderful.

“‘Belle,’ said her husband, turning to his wife with a smile. ‘I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon.’ ‘Who was it?’ ‘It was Scrooge. I passed his office window; and as it wasn’t shuttered, I saw him in the light of his thin candle. His partner lies upon the point of Death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the world.’

“Spirit!” said Scrooge, in a broken voice, “Remove me from this place. I cannot bear it! Leave me!”

Scrooge has seen the past, the loss and pain he’s experienced and kept under lock and key, the unpleasant emotions living in him, feeding his attitudes and behaviors—making him who he is in the present.

It is a severe mercy, but still it’s mercy—merciful, like the mercy of a doctor who cleans your wound in order to heal you.

The gospel of Jesus declares, “Blessed are you who mourn, for you shall be comforted.”

The gospel of Christmas warns, you will never fully experience the grace of Christmas morn, unless you find a way to mourn.

The gospel of Ebenezer Scrooge proclaims that something miraculous can happen when we honestly face and find ways to learn from our unpleasant emotions. Something miraculous can happen when we come to the point of giving up, when we want off the wild ride of life, when we chose, or, perhaps, are forced by something or someone in our lives to pay attention to the truths hidden inside our most painful memories.

The tale offers one more insight into the nature of healing: we don’t heal alone. Scrooge is companioned by Presences, Spirits, who assure him he doesn’t walk this journey alone. Neither do we.

And so companioned, Scrooge can enter his memories and feel what he feels about the love he needed as a child, the love denied him as a child, and later, the love he himself rejected, so afraid was he of losing love again.

And so, he comes to realize that he’s became a prisoner to a frozen heart.

These spiritual companions help him warm his heart, feel the loss, feel the hurt, and begin to feel the faint flicker of love’s flame burning within him again as he re-enters the memories he’s shut away, the pain he’s never truly mourned.

“Blessed are you who mourn,” says Jesus, “for you shall be comforted.”

Scrooge has two more visitors and two more trials he must endure before he wakes on Christmas morn. But comfort will come. And with it, abundant joy, a transformed life.

Dickens’ story of Ebenezer Scrooge is the story of an ugly life made beautiful again by Christmas, a journey into wholeness.

And if Scrooge can heal, everyone of us can heal. If Christmas can happen to Scrooge it can happen to any of us; no one and no situation is ever without hope.