The Gospel According to Scrooge (Reflections on the Nativity of Our Lord, 2023)

 

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.” (Luke 2:14)

“Bah, humbug!”

That phrase is almost as ubiquitous as “Merry Christmas.” It’s the grouchy epithet spewed out of the snarled lips of the greatest miser in literary history, Ebenezer Scrooge. With the singular exception of the story of Our Lord’s nativity, Charles Dickens’ ghostly yarn, A Christmas Carol, the story of the lonely, covetous, ill-tempered capitalist is probably my favorite Christmas story—and, possibly, one of  my favorite stories in all English literature.

I first encountered A Christmas Carol in junior high, and I guess I’ve seen every movie version of it ever made and quite a few stage adaptations. I played the role of Scrooge myself when I was in high school. I remembered I had about a half pound of greasepaint[i] on my face to create Scrooges hollows and frown lines, and my hair was sprayed white. Decades later I played the role again in a charity production for our Lutheran Social Ministry Organization Feast of Justice. By that time I didn’t need the greasepaint or the white spray.

Dickens wrote his Christmas novella in 1843just as England was experiencing something of a renaissance in the observance of Christmas. Hitherto, Christmas was just another Christian feast day observed in the Anglican Church like Epiphany and Pentecost. Its more festive aspects were mostly observed in rural communities; however, with the German influence of Prince Albert on Queen Victoria, it was becoming a “thing” with the more fashion-conscious Brits.

The juxtaposition of greed and poverty was a pretty big deal for Charles Dickens. As a child he experienced considerable hardship and degradation. When his father was chucked in prison for non-payment of debt, twelve-year-old Charles was forced to sell his library of books and go to work in a factory putting labels on bottles of shoe polish. It was a penurious and humiliating experience he never forgot. Even after experiencing some success as a writer, Dickens never lost his concern for the poor. Earlier in 1843 he toured Cornish tin mines and witnessed the deplorable condition of child laborers. He also was given a tour of The Ragged School, a virtual penitentiary masquerading as an educational institution for London’s street urchins.

His response was to write the classic tale of the selfish man who, through supernatural intervention, is forced to see the error of his ways and opens his heart to the less fortunate. As a novelist and magazine editor, Dickens would annually produce a Christmas story, but none of his subsequent works ever had the power over the public imagination as did A Christmas Carol. Dickens was not a particularly religious man, but the story of Scrooge’s conversion resonates deeply with the teachings of our faith.

Chiefly, the tale is about the possibilities of redemption and forgiveness. As Scrooge recognizes the depth of his own sin, he asks the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, “Are these the shadows of things that will be, or are they the shadows of things that may be only? Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if they be persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.”

What always strikes me about this scene of Scrooge’s self-realization is that he would not have come to it without intervention—just as we, without the promptings of the Holy Spirit, would not come back to our own need for repentance. I like to believe that God’s spirit had something to do with Dickens in inspiring him to write this tale. After A Christmas Carol was published charitable giving in Britain increased dramatically. Many attributed this to the book’s influence. Indeed, from that time to this, charity to the poor has become as much a Christmas tradition as mistletoe, colored lights, and candy canes.

But Christians know that the gospel story has always been more about poverty than opulence, and more about oppression than privilege. In Luke’s gospel it’s a distant and uncaring government which forces a man and his pregnant fiancé on a dangerous 70-mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The mother of our Lord and Savior is an unmarried, pregnant teenager. She will give birth in a barn—homeless and left outside. The birth of the Christ will be announced to a group of peasants. In Matthew’s gospel, the child and his parents will soon become refugees, forced to run from their native land and seek refuge in a foreign country.

Above all, we know that the Christmas story is about God coming to us. We are, as the song says, “in sin and error pining ‘til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.” Not the worth of our own estimation, but our worth in God’s eyes—in the eyes of the one who came to us so we could see his power, love, and majesty in a small, helpless baby.

May we, like dear old Scrooge, have our hearts continually moved by the homeless infant in the animal’s feeding trough. May we daily die to sin and rise to newness of life.

And may God bless us, every one!

---

[i] Yes, greasepaint. It was still used back then—a particularly nasty petroleum-based make-up designed over a century ago by Max Factor. It covered your skin like Sherwin Williams paint and took forever to wash off. Ah, the things I did for my art!

Hail, Mary (Reflections on Advent 4, Year B 2023)

 

"The Annunciation" Koninck (Swedish 1655)

The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” (Luke 1:30)

“Hail, Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.” Any Roman Catholic (or former Roman Catholic) will be familiar with these words. They’re the first words of the “Hail Mary” prayer, that oft-repeated orison which forms the bulk of the Catholic Rosary. Praying to Jesus’ mom is an integral part of Catholic spirituality. A former parish administrator—a good Catholic lady who went to mass every morning before coming to work at the Lutheran church—once said to me, “I don’t understand why you people don’t pray to Our Lady. She will help you.” The theological answer to that questions (as every good Lutheran should know) is not that venerating Mary is idolatry. Indeed, our confessions teach that the lives of the saints are always to be held up as examples of righteousness. We don’t pray to the saints because Luther figured the doctrine of intercession of saints was unnecessary. God, in God’s boundless love and grace, values each of us sinners just as much as God values the most pious and heroic of the departed. In other words, we each have a direct line to the Almighty, and no intermediaries are necessary.

(Of course, if you want to pray to Mary, it certainly can’t hurt.)

Doctrine aside, Luther was always very touched by the story in our gospel for Advent 4 (Luke 1: 26-38), and wrote very tenderly of Mary. In fact, he even criticized the angel for accosting the young girl with a salutation that sounded like the wording on a draft notice. He felt it was no wonder Mary should be spooked when the serif greeted her with “Hail” or “Greetings.” Being a dad himself, and having great respect for the mysteries and dangers of childbirth, Luther had wished Gabriel had taken a softer and gentler approach with this young lass who was, we assume, just barely starting her teen years.

Christian art has always tried to make the birth of our Lord look pretty. Our Christmas cards depict a glowing Mary beaming over the manger with a radiance which makes her look like she’s just had a spa treatment—instead of having just survived the messy, sweaty, bloody, and excruciatingly painful ordeal of childbirth. There’s no question about Mary being “much perplexed” (v.29) and probably utterly terrified by the prospect of having a baby. Back in my middle school teaching days it was painfully common for me to see thirteen or fourteen-year-old girls get pregnant. I used to go into emotional convulsions thinking about the awesome responsibility of a child having a child. The physical dangers of childbirth notwithstanding, I couldn’t imagine the terror these kids must’ve felt knowing their whole futures were about to be irrevocably altered. Mary must’ve felt the same way.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the twelfth century abbot and Doctor of the Church, wrote that three miracles were present in the Annunciation of Our Lord: 1) that God would condescend to become human, 2) that a virgin would conceive, and 3) that Mary actually agreed to do this. Luther believed the third miracle was the greatest of all. He reasoned that “nothing will be impossible with God,” but a thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl agreeing to undergo pregnancy, risk losing her fiancé, and possibly being stoned to death of adultery or, at the very least, shunned from society was a pretty mind-blowing thing indeed.

So why did Mary agree? What sealed the deal? Gabriel certainly talked up how cool it would be to have this particular baby. Mary would be the mom of the Son of the Most High and the Messiah who would reign on David’s throne forever. That would be pretty sweet. He also assured her she wouldn’t even have to have sex in order to conceive. I imagine that issue was probably weighing heavily on her young mind.

But the grabber was the news that her older cousin Elizabeth was also having a miraculous baby. The only thing scarier than having to face an unknown event is having to face it alone. When Mary learned that a relative, another woman with whom she was comfortable, was going to experience the same thing, she found the courage to say “yes.”  I love that later on in Luke’s gospel (vv.39-56) Mary went to see her cousin and stayed with her until Elizabeth’s baby, John the Baptist, was born. There must’ve been something very special that bonded these two women—neither of whom was supposed to be pregnant. There was the whole astounding mystery and miracle of childbirth which none of my gender will ever understand.

When my wife was expecting, she shared a room in the hospital maternity ward with a lady named Hannah. Both women were having their first child, and they bonded immediately. Even though Marilyn is a Catholic and Hannah is Jewish, the expectant moms found they had much in common. Hannah gave birth to a little girl eleven hours before my stepdaughter was born, but both women cheered and encouraged each other through the experience. They have each been through myriad changes in the years since they met, (Hannah lives much of the year in Florida) but from the day of their daughters’ births to today, they remain the best of friends.

Nothing glues us together like a shared experience. That’s the point of the Incarnation. Jesus has come to share our experience so we will know and believe that God understands our pain and fear, that our temptations and sins will be conquered, and that we are never alone. Emmanuel. God is with us, and there is no place we will go in this life where Jesus hasn’t already been.

We are called in our lives in Christ to be imitators of our Savior. To be present for one another. We are called to share our experiences, to encourage, to help, to teach, and to love each other as Christ did for us. Perhaps we won’t all be heroes in the courageous sense, but we can all be neighbors. And may we all pray for each other as fellow sinners—now, and at the hour of our death.

A blessed Christmas to you, my friend.

Celebrate the Light (Reflections on Advent 3, Year B 2023)

 

 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. (John 1:7)

Isn’t that our job at Christmas? To testify to the light?

Can I tell you I freakin’ love Christmas lights? Some years ago, my wife and I had some evergreen trees planted in the space behind our house. One of them is a Norwegian spruce. It was about five or six feet tall when it first went in the ground. I thought it looked like a Christmas tree, so I strung about four or five hundred outdoor Christmas lights on it. It looked awesome. Unfortunately, as evergreen trees are wont to do, the sucker has now grown to a height of about ten feet and, with its proportionate circumference, illuminating it requires a feat of engineering of which I find myself sadly incapable.

So! This year I got the idea to have the trees by our back patio professionally illuminated. The front of our houses faces a cul de sac, but the backyard is visible to much of the neighborhood. For a mere $400 the Griffiths house could boast two gigantic Christmas trees—each blazing with thousands of colored lights—testifying to Jesus the Light of the World. But, prudence winning out over enthusiasm, the Bride and I decided it was too frivolous an expenditure. We settled on spending $12 at Walmart and lighting a row of boxwoods beneath our front window.

Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere comes at the winter solstice—the time when our half of the planet is tipped the furthest from the sun, the days are the shortest, and the nights are longest. Since Jesus didn’t have a birth certificate, we don’t really know when his actual birthday was. Subsequently, our early Christian ancestors appropriated some pagan solstice festivals. One of these was Sol Invictus, or the feast of the Unconquered Sun. This involved a lot of bonfire and candle lighting on or around December 25^th. Our ancestors liked this festival because we considered Jesus to be the Sun of Righteousness who was unconquered by death on the cross. Another Roman solstice festival was Saturnalia. This shindig resonated with our ancestors in that it called for masters to serve slaves (Jesus said the first will be last, remember?), and promoted feasting, merry-making, and general silliness. These customs carried on as Christmas customs well into the Middle Ages and are still practiced—however unofficially—today. We Christians still light the candles on the Advent wreath, put lights on our homes, and defy the darkness with joy.

In the gospel lesson appointed for Advent 3, Year B (John 1:6-8, 19-28) we’re told that John the Baptist came to testify to the light. Jesus, the light of the world, shines on us to illuminate our unworthiness, call us back to his love, and to light our way in the darkness so we can go forward without fear. I really dig how John the Baptist, in the Gospel of John, has such a sense of humility about his relationship to Jesus. He is incredibly self-effacing in this reading, claiming he isn’t even worthy enough to do the slave’s job of taking off the master’s sandals. By shining a light on his unworthiness, he highlights the supreme worthiness of Jesus. We’re all, in our own way, a bunch of unworthy screw-ups. Yet Jesus came to be with us, to teach us, to heal us, to suffer with us, and to rise for us. Jesus sees us as worthy, and that’s reason enough for a party.

Now the priests and the Levites in our reading could use a little enlightening. They seem to have been dwelling in the darkness of closed minds. They had their list of who should be preaching and baptizing, and they couldn’t reconcile anyone outside their parameters as having a word of divine wisdom. John even told them that the Messiah is standing among them, yet they do not know him. I think their darkness came from an unwillingness to see possibilities.

It's pretty easy to slip into that kind of darkness in our world. We see so much violence and feel so much loss. It’s easy to despair, and despair is the brother of apathy. When we feel there is nothing we can do, we simply stop caring. When we stop caring, we stop being human. We need to believe in the light.

A few weeks ago I was asked to participate in a service at one of our local funeral homes. This was a Christmas tree lighting ceremony for families who had lost loved ones during the past year and were facing the first Christmas in which a chair would be vacant at their feast. I could certainly understand their feelings. I lost my dad many years ago on the 12^th of December. I had planned to get my Christmas tree that week, but I had to wonder if it was at all right to celebrate when the family patriarch—the guy who was the epoxy that held our family together at Christmas—was so recently deceased. My mom had lost her partner of thirty-five years and, suffering from severe COPD, was left without her primary care-giver. My siblings had lost their dad. Would celebrating be in bad taste?

The Christians of Bethlehem seem to think so. This year Christian leaders in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank—Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Syrian, Coptic, and Lutheran—have all agreed that Christmas cannot be celebrated while so much violence and death is raging in Gaza. The Christmas crèche at Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem has been intentionally covered in rubble and debris as a sign that Jesus is in solidarity with all the children of Gaza who have been buried beneath the wreckage caused by Israeli bombardments.

BUT: for the grieving here in America, I say “Light the lights.” Yes, we are witnessing war, inflation, declining church attendance, horrific weather events, bickering politicians, street crime, and any number of discouraging and dysfunctional things that would make this the wrong time for a party. But we will celebrate the light of the World all the same. The secular world may use Christmas as a time to anesthetize themselves from the surrounding darkness, but Christians use this time to defy the darkness. For as long as Jesus Christ is in this world, there will be hope.

(By the way, I decided to get the tree that year. My dad would’ve wanted me to)

May God bless you with defiant joy this Advent Season!

PS - I encourage you to watch this video from our Lutheran brothers and sisters in Palestine. Click on Christmas Lutheran.

Clean Up! (Reflections on Advent 2, Year B 2023)

 

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. (Mark 1:4)

You’ve got to love John the Baptist, that wacky, bug-eating guy who always shows up in our gospel lesson on the Second Sunday in Advent (Mark 1:1-8 this year). Sometimes God uses crazy people to get our attention, and, as Jewish prophets go, John really isn’t much more bizzaro than Ezekiel or Jeremiah or Hosea. He’s out in the wilderness, a figure set apart, wearing his camel skins, a no-nonsense, call-‘em-as-I-see-‘em kind of guy. He might seem a little scary, but he’s come to rattle our collective cages and shake us out of our torpor.

If you’ll recall, John got himself in no small amount of trouble by criticizing Herod Antipas, the King and ruler of Galilee. It seems old Herod had married his brother Philip’s ex-wife, Herodias. To us, taking your brother’s cast-off missus doesn’t seem like too big a deal, but in the world of the text it was definitely a no-no. I might be a little more liberal in my views of divorce and remarriage, but I have to agree with John in one aspect: if the leader of the land breaks the law (and Herod did it pretty flagrantly), what does that say to the people he’s supposed to be governing? When corruption and indolence become the norm for leaders, doesn’t that give license to everyone else to slack off in their observance of God’s laws?

I’ll bet if John were with us today he’d really have his work cut out for him. Our American national leadership has shown so much partisanship and such a disgraceful lack of decency and civility that it almost makes one want to lose one’s lunch. We’ve been willing to elect the boorish and the unqualified. Both major parties have seen in recent years individuals with no government experience at all claim they can be the leader of the Free World. It’s enough to drive you to despair. Indeed, I’ve heard any number of folks claim they no longer even want to vote given the bad behavior of the people from whom they’d have to choose.

It’s very tempting to throw up our hands and say, “What can you do?” Yet John wasn’t one to give up. He was on a mission. The leaders can affect the people, but the people can also affect the leadership. If the people hunger for and demand righteousness, justice, and compassion, perhaps the leadership will respond. John calls the people, who cannot change their leadership, to change themselves in preparation for a new leadership they’ve never imagined.

The First Sunday of Advent is always a call to wake up, recognize the impermanence of things, and look forward to what God is doing. The Second Sunday in Advent is a call—from the voice of John the Baptist—to get our own act together. We can acknowledge the world is changing. We need to be ready to make a change in ourselves. It’s time for us to use the time of waiting and preparation to take a bath and wash off the things which hold us back from being God’s righteous people. It’s time to repent—to change our minds—and inventory the issues in our lives that keep us from being the people God created us to be. Time to wash off anger, resentment, past grudges, unfair judgment of others, and prejudice. It’s time to be a little more careful about what we say to each other. It’s time to recognize where and how we can be better friends, better neighbors, better parents, better partners, better Christians. We cannot demand more from the world unless we demand more from ourselves.

John tells us the one who is coming is powerful. The coming Messiah has the ability to set our hearts on fire. John wants us to wake from our sleep and clean up our lives just as we would clean up or homes for an expected visitor. He’s asking us to set our expectations higher, to be lights in the darkness, and be the people who believe and can proclaim with integrity the hope of the world.

Keep your light shining, and thanks for looking in on me this week.