Christmas is a time which we all associate with family, friends, good feelings, food, wine, laughter, - for those who are religious, it is a time of reflection, celebration, affirmation, joy. They are all positive emotions, and for most of us, they put us in a more generous and better frame of mind, we are a little more open to others, a little more patient - we come a little closer in touch with what we are supposed to be about all year around, all our life..
Dreams are strange things. We can do things in dreams that we can’t do during our waking hours. Most of our dreams, we don’t remember. Some we do, and often they bring us messages we need. Musicians tell stories of memorising pieces of music in dreams, or composing in dreams. Our minds - amazing things that they are - keep on working. Dreams tell us things about ourselves that we aren’t always able to face otherwise. There are lots of logical explanations, but it is still miraculous what the mind can do, and how it can help us see ourselves.
I remember vividly one particular dream, early on in ministry, and after what seemed to be a particularly trying week. I dreamed I was laboriously climbing up a very steep mountain, grabbing on to small trees, tufts of grass, anything which provided a handhold - hand over hand climbing the mountain. At one point I stopped for a rest, and happened to look off to the side - and there, parallel to the course I was charting up the mountain, was a clear path - unimpeded by trees or rocks or grass.
For Scrooge, Christmas Eve could have been described as a nightmare. He certainly thought it was a series of pretty bizarre nightmares. Had the visitations stopped after Marley, or maybe the first of the three “spirits”, he might have been able to write the whole thing off as that particular piece of mouldy cheese he’d eaten earlier in the evening with his thin gruel - and nothing would have changed.
The last visitation is the one which really makes him sit up and take notice. This spirit is a phantom - none of the light of the first spirit of the past, or the generosity and joy, and yet clear criticism of the spirit of abundance. Here he is visited by a phantom which seems to suck light in, and cast nothing but gloom around. There is no conversation, only a relentless insistence that he continue this journey.
And so the phantom shows him a father walking slowly home from the graveyard; in the home by the fire, a small chair sits empty, with a small crutch beside it. Tim, Bob Cratchit’s son, has died. Scrooge begins to realise that the boy did not die because of something he might have done, but precisely because of the opposite - because of what he did not do, thinking that if he minded his business and the rest of the world minded theirs, he caused no harm.
The phantom shows him a man lying on a four-poster bed covered in a sheet, hears people derisively sneering over the body, stealing the very slippers off the body and discussing the waste of even giving the man a funeral. At the end, he finds himself in a graveyard, seeing his own name etched on a gravestone. In a most powerful way, he is faced with the end of his life, and how feeble and inadequate that life was.
But hear the words, as he falls to his knees in front of the spirit - his soul finally broken open, and his vision clear to look at himself.
“I am not the man I once was” he says, “I will not be the man I might have been, had it not been for this. Why show me this if I am past all hope?” “Assure me that I may yet change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life.”
Now - as I said - it may be that Scrooge was dreaming. Today we would say his subconscious finally opened up. Maybe - but maybe not - who knows for sure?
Dreams have figured strongly in the story of Jesus birth. Mary had a dream that an angel visited her to announce her pregnancy. Joseph had a dream, just as he was about to separate himself from Mary - an angel again announcing that her child must be born, and be named Jesus - because he will save his people. In today’s Scripture, Joseph again has a dream - that he, Mary and Jesus are in danger. Each of these visitations begins with “Do not fear.” Life is about to turn upside down, but don’t be afraid. Life will be dangerous, but don’t be afraid. God is here, God is with you. Don’t be afraid.
About fifteen years ago, in my very first parish, a group of us went to the town of Creemore, Ontario, to the “Journey of Love” - which is a recreated walk of the road to Bethlehem, complete with props and actors. The first time I went, the journey ended at the manger. The second time, one walked on around a corner, further from the manger. There stood a cross, and a Roman soldier.
Both life, and faith, are a journey. Scrooge was taken - however we care to explain his experience - on a journey in which his life literally passed before his eyes. He was shown his life as it had been, as it was, and finally what it would be in the end.
The story of Scrooge is a story of past, present, and possible futures. What would have happened if he had not made change? The first possibility - a despised man finally dead, and people celebrating. Scrooge himself, when he awakens in his own room and realises it is Christmas Day, and he hasn’t missed it, exclaims “I will live in the Past, Present and Future! The Spirits of all three shall strive within me!”
The church year is also designed as a journey, with Past, Present and Future. I don’t think we can say it enough - that Christmas would be nothing without Easter. Christmas and Easter take their meaning from each other - they are, to some extent, the bookends. Without the birth, there would be no Easter. If there were no Easter, there would be no Christmas.
We commit ourselves to Past, Present and Future every time we say the memorial acclamation at the communion service:
Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
Christmas past - the historical birth of a small baby in a backwater town; Christmas present - the celebration of that birth, Jesus reborn within us each Christmas; Christmas yet to come - that Jesus will continue to be reborn, and continue to come into the world.
That was, I believe, the message in Dickens great drama - in those words of Scrooge “I will live in the Past, Present and Future. I will keep Christmas in my heart!”
Past, Present, and Future.
What we were once - what we are today - what we may yet be.
Christmas Past, Christmas Present, Christmas yet to come.
Christmas in all of life, and the story is unfinished...................................................
Sources:
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
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