We have reached the season where it seems like everyone is telling us, “It’s the most
wonderful time of the year,” as if that is an unconditional statement. For many of us it is as we can hardly wait to play our holiday music, decorate our tree, and deck out our houses in so many lights it would make Rusty Griswold jealous. Yet for others we find ourselves either not in the holiday spirit or absolutely dreading the holiday season.
Regardless, this time of year is one that plays hard on our feelings of nostalgia whether
good or bad, so it is deep into our Methodist history that I am plunging for this month’s note. Hopefully not for just nostalgia’s sake but also for our own. I want us to reflect on the same question that was often asked at Methodist Class meetings, “How is it with your soul?” In what kind of spiritual space do you find yourself during this Advent season? Do you find yourself feeling like Ebenezer Scrooge this year? Or do you find yourself feeling like Ebenezer Scrooge this year?
While I am known to occasionally stutter, I did not stutter in writing this reflection.
Ebenezer Scrooge gets a bad rap and is a reminder to us to not remember ourselves or others prior to God’s grace getting a hold of us or them. We are to remember others and ourselves how we are AFTER God’s grace gets a hold of us.
Every year when we get past Thanksgiving, I pick up Charles Dickens’, A Christmas Carol, and I read it again. It is a perfect fit to a season filled with nostalgia, and it is a great story about worshiping false idols, about God’s unmerited and unconditional grace being extended, and the results that happen when we say yes to this gift that is freely given to us. It is from this book that I have devised a tool to help us determine how it is with our souls. I call it the Scrooge-O-Meter, and it works like this. I am going to quote two descriptions of Scrooge that are found in Dickens’ tale, and I want you to do a self-assessment and see which one more closely describes where you find yourself.
At the beginning of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is described as:
Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous
old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out
generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within
him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened
his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating
voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He
carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the
dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could
warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no
falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to
entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and
snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one
respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My
dear Scrooge, how are you? when will you come to see me?” No beggars
implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no
man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place,
of Scrooge. Even the blindmen’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw
him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then
would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye,
dark master!”
But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. 1
At the end of the book, Scrooge is described as:
Scrooge…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 in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he
thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins as have the
malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough
for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total
Abstinence Principle ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew
how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.2
1 Dickens, Charles. 2011. A Christmas Carol. Top Five Books LLC.
2 Ibid.
Where do we find ourselves on the Scrooge-O-Meter? Are we cold and hardened by the
circumstances we face? By the ongoing conflict in the world and in our society? By living
through the painful discernment process as our beloved denomination is ripped apart? By our bank accounts falling short of our current expenses? By facing our first holiday season without a cherished loved one by our side?
Or do we find our hearts filled to overflowing with Christmas cheer? Does just the sights, sounds, and smells of the season cause us glee? Is this our first Christmas with a new partner, child, or grandchild? Do the traditions we observe at Cokesbury around Advent and Christmas make us genuinely excited to get up and come to worship every week?
The truth is we might not find ourselves at either extreme. We may say we find ourselves
somewhere firmly in the middle, and this is a very Methodist thing for us to say. Methodists after all are traditionally a people of the middle way.
In the book, God’s grace takes the form of four ghosts that come to visit Scrooge to have
him reflect on his current spiritual state, and they help him realize that the path he is on only leads to misery. Over the course of his visits, Scrooge has a change of heart and mind. In other words, he repents, and then he finds himself full of Christmas joy!
Have we figured out where we are on the Scrooge-O-Meter? How is it with our souls?
Are we happy with where we are, or do we feel like we might need to be visited by a couple of ghosts? Are there things in our lives that we need to let go? Are there relationships we need to repair? Do we need to seek out counseling to help us come to terms with some of our ghosts? Finally, when is the last time we invited the ultimate ghost, the Holy Ghost, to come into our hearts and have her way with us?
Regardless of where we find ourselves this morning, my prayer for each of us is this: I pray that by the time we make it to December 24th, that we find it within ourselves to be able to proclaim and hear with newfound joy, the good news. The same good news that the angel and heavenly hosts proclaimed to a field full of shepherds and sheep 2000 years ago. “Don’t be afraid! Look! I bring good news to you— wonderful, joyous news for all people. Your savior is born today in David’s city. He is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:8-11). Amen!
Grace & Peace,
Pastor Bryan