Matthew 3
In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, he will clear threshing floor, gathering wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” ******************************************************************************
As Scrooge lay in the bed, the curtains were drawn back, and he saw a figure unlike anything his imagination could have produced - like a child, yet like an old man diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung down its back, was white as if with age yet the face had not a wrinkle, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. It wore a tunic of purest white, and round its waist was a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand. From its head shone a bright clear light, and it held a great cap under its arm.
“Are you the spirit whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Scrooge? "I am."
"Who, and what are you?" Scrooge demanded. "I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
"Long Past?" inquired Scrooge, presumably noting signs of age. "No. Your past."
Scrooge begged the spirit to put the cap over its very bright head.
"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "Would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow!"
“I am here" said the Ghost. “for your welfare, your reclamation.”
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And so begins a journey into the past, and we get a glimpse of what made Scrooge the man he had become. A small boy, sitting alone in a schoolroom, while all his classmates leave for Christmas at home. The small boy’s mother died giving birth to him, and the father rejected him. He is sent to a boarding school, and a little bit of this boy hardens up and closes away.
The scene changes. A little girl comes in. "I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" she says. "Home, for good. Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home's like Heaven! He spoke so gently to me one night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach to bring you. And you're never to come back here.”
The scene changes again. Scrooge is older now, a man in the prime of life. His face already wears the signs of greed and obsession. He is sitting with a fair young woman, in whose eyes there are tears.
"It matters little," she said, softly. "To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve."
"What Idol has displaced you?" he asks. "A golden one." responds the young woman.
"Have I ever sought release?" "In words? No. Never."
"In what, then?"
"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us," she asks; "would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!"
"Spirit!" says the watching, old Scrooge, in agony again, "show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me? No more, I don't wish to see it! Show me no more!"
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We have seen a small and lonely boy, cut off from family, left alone at Christmas - a child whose father blamed him for the death of his mother in childbirth. We learn that the girl is Scrooge’s younger sister, probably by a second marriage. Fan also died, giving birth to Fred, Scrooge’s nephew. There are hints of abuse, of violence in this child’s background. Here is a child who learns that response to pain is to shut himself off. His father blames him and isolates him; Scrooge blames his nephew Fred, and isolates himself even further. Then we see him as his engagement ends, becoming harder, and the idol of money becoming his first love, instead of her.
Let’s look back at what we’ve seen of Scrooge. Marley shows Scrooge his unwillingness even to be open to those around him. He works in a dark place, with little light other than one candle. He lives in a dark house, huddled away by himself. He keeps his spirit in the dark, blocking out everything. Christmas, with all its joy and good spirits, offends his darkness. He has been given a talent, but instead of using his talent for the common good, as Paul says, he uses it - but not even for himself. He just doesn’t know what else to do. In this encounter with the Spirit of Christmas Past, he cannot bear the light which emanates from the ghost, and wants it covered. “Would you put out the light I give with worldly hands”asks the ghost “especially since you are one of the people responsible for forcing me to wear it year in and year out.” At the end of this chapter, Scrooge grabs the hat and pushes it down over the Spirit, but even that cannot shut out the blinding light. The light causes him pain, because it shines into the darkest places of his soul. He does realise I think, that this spirit has come to help him bring his gifts into the light, but the effort of looking at himself is unbearable, and he goes back into the darkness.
It seems to me that there are several threads in this exerpt from the story.
First, there are the gifts Scrooge had at one time. As we look back, he was a sensitive child who cared deeply for his sister, who wanted desperately to be loved by his father, who had a gift of joy, love and intelligence. His father was a similar man, but when life brought grief, he blamed a child, and lost the ability to love well. Scrooge doesn’t even see the tiny seed that is planted here.
He is treated with love and care, treated justly and kindly by his employer; he finds a beautiful young woman, and they have plans for their future. He is able to employ his gifts and his intelligence - and he has the opportunity to use those “for the common good”, yet he doesn’t. Remember Marley’s ghost, wailing into the dark night in an agony of the soul “Mankind was my business, the common welfare was my business.” Scrooge just doesn’t see it.
Finally, there is the underlying theme of repentance. I have a poster, supposedly John the Baptist, shouting “Merry Christmas, you brood of vipers! Now repent!”
What does it mean to repent? Nowadays we seem to think repent means to say we are sorry for something and promise not to do it again. Well, perhaps that’s part of it - but not all! To repent literally means to turn our lives around, to go in a different direction altogether. To repent means to look at the crooked paths of our lives, shine the light of the Spirit into those dark corners, take out all the things we have hidden away there and nurse so carefully, and throw them out.
Marley wishes to repent - but in Dickens’ story, he missed his chance. He cries out in grief “At this time of the rolling year I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of my fellow beings with my eyes turned down, and never once lift them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which the light of that Star would have conducted me?”
The Ghost of Christmas Past forces Scrooge to let its light shine into the very darkest recesses of his own heart. Only by going back into his past, and the places where the road became crooked and bent, can he understand where he got away from the Spirit of Life.
What chains do we carry around from our past? What do we have in our hearts which needs to be illuminated, so that we can truly prepare for God’s love to enter? What do we push down? What has shaped us, in such a way that our gifts are mis-used, or not used at all?
While Advent is a time of waiting for the coming of Jesus, it is also one of the two times of the year when we are called to take time for introspection and reflection. Faith dies not just happen, as Scrooge is beginning to find out. Faith is important, but it takes work. To turn our lives around, to step out on a new road, can only happen if we understand ourselves.
There’s one other theme here, and the theme that keeps coming back - not only in Scrooge’s story, but the Christmas story, and in our story. God is reaching for each of us, wanting to make us whole people in every way. God will go to any length necessary to reach us, to help us, to show us what love is, and who we can be as children of love.
Sources:
1. Sermon from Advent 2 Year B
2. “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens
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