This is the final in the Advent Series “God Blesses Everyone: The Transformation of the Scrooge in and Around All of Us,” and based readings from Stave Five of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and the prophet Isaiah (9.2 and 9.6). For the audio recording click here.
“For unto us a child is born.” “This will be a sign for you—you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
Christmas is about an event that happened long ago in a faraway place. And while we all find ourselves warmed (or wanting to be) by the spirit of the holidays, we might wonder, beneath it all, what good Christmas really does in and for a world like ours, so troubled, such tumult.
A hundred and seventy years ago, Charles Dickens found himself wondering the same thing. In the summer of 1843, Dickens, thirty one at the time, traveled northwest of London. He wanted to visit the workhouses in Manchester to see how the poor of England were managing during what were called “the hungry forties,” referring to the 1840s. The poor were not managing; they were barely surviving. He was shocked by the awful, inhumane conditions of the poor upon whose backs the wealthy built their lives. Author David Thompson, writes that in the bustling heartland of the Industrial Revolution, Dickens witnessed two different Englands—the England of the rich and the England of the poor. It broke his heart. And this, in a country where forty percent of the population went to church.
There are astonishing similarities between the realities of mid-19th century England and early 21st century America (and many places in the world): social divisions, the vulnerability of women, children, and the urban poor, the effects of toxic masculinity, environmental problems to which the poor are most vulnerable, a dysfunctional political and economic system, and the complicity of organized religion.
While Dickens saw enormous problems with Christianity, he wasn’t interested in throwing it out as some of his contemporaries were. Instead, he wanted to leverage the power it could exert for the good of humanity. He wanted to re-invent Christianity, to shift it from dogma and institution toward experience and transformation. On December 19, 1843 Dickens published his novella, A Christmas Carol. Through the tale of the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge, Dickens leveraged the meaning of Christmas to re-invent Christianity and subvert the forces that held millions in the grip of poverty and extreme vulnerability.
Dickens told a story. A fictional story. About a man, Ebenezer Scrooge—the most cantankerous, cruel, inhumane, miserly, narcissistic, tyrannical man he could imagine. A tale about the man’s utter transformation. An old man who, after a night of dream-like visions that showed him the past, present, and future, awoke—despite his fears—alive, and given a second chance at life. In Scrooge’s own words, he had become a child again, starting all over, with all the wonder of tasting, as if for the first time, the pleasure of being alive. On Christmas morn he awakens and hollers: “Whoop! Hallo there! Hoop! A Merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world….I don’t even know what day it is. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby.”
These last four weeks, all through Advent, we’ve explored Dickens’ story and what it might mean for our lives and for our world. Each Sunday I’ve summarized what I call the Gospel According to Charles Dickens: if Ebenezer Scrooge can change, every one of us can change; no person and no situation is ever without hope.
This morning, I sent an email to a friend in the hospital. He hardly knows what day it is. His family’s life has been turned upside down in the span of a week. Diagnosed with a brain tumor last week, his wife had emergency surgery. They are, of course, full of big, hard questions.
Just after 9am, I wrote: “I'm working on my sermon for tonight, reflecting on Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I am also thinking of you two. The Advent theme is my prayer for you: If Scrooge can change, then no person and no situation is ever without hope. The Christ of Christmas is with you.”
The note, while thoughtful and sincere, might have sounded hollow to a person in his situation, maybe too pious.
Twenty minutes later, he wrote back: “If only Scrooge were not a fictional character.” You can feel the angst in that, can’t you? It’s like someone saying, “If only Christmas was about something real, it might give me hope.” But then my friend, a scientist, wrote: “That said, I’ve been thinking a lot these days about all the biblical stories and how much some people seem to struggle over whether or not they’re true. To me, a story doesn’t have to be true for it to be powerful; it can reveal universal truths. Obviously Jesus knew this or he wouldn’t have used so many parables. I guess my point is, whether or not the Christmas story is really true and really happened in any way, shape, or form as it is depicted in the Bible, there are still truths revealed that are powerful.”
In reply I wrote, “J.R.R. Tolkien, the great mythologist, once said, 'fiction can be more true than fact.’ And Neil Gaiman, the contemporary writer of tall tales put it this way: ‘If someone says: “We have investigated things—there was no Snow White,” I'm not going to say: “Oh no, the story is now empty and meaningless.” No, I know Snow White teaches us that we can keep fighting. Snow White teaches that even when those who are supposed to love you put you in an intolerable situation, you can run away, you can make friends, you can cope. . . . and that even when all is at its darkest, you can find a way out of trouble.’
“Fact,” I told my friend, “is often a soft surrogate for the hard, and good, truths fiction can tell.” This is why we love novels.
3.
It might trouble some of you to hear a preacher of the gospel say it doesn’t matter much whether or not the story of the original Christmas happened the way the Bible tells it. It certainly could have, but it doesn’t have to. And I think this is good news to so many today who find themselves tripped up by Christian claims to the historical accuracy of the Bible. The truth is: Christmas isn’t about the veneration of a historical moment in time; Christmas is about the emancipation of our lives here and now. It tells us the deeper, wider truth that something new, something divine, something that’s never been before is always pushing to be born in and through our lives, in and for the world.
This is why Christmas focuses on a pregnant woman and baby, the universal sign that life always finds a way to move into the world, to be born in and through us, even at our darkest, more hopeless moments.
There is a power at work in us, the power of life, the power of beauty, goodness, and love. That power is the Christ of Christmas. We can all have a second chance, a third chance, a hundredth chance. None of us are ever stuck, nor is the earth itself.
Something new, something divine, something that’s never been before is always pushing to be born in and through our lives, in and for the world.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new glorious morn
Fall on your knees
O hear the angels' voices
O night divine
O night when Christ was born
O night when hope comes again, pushing, pushing, pushing to be born.
[soloist sings O Holy Night]