November 26: "Breaking Chains to Make Change" (Advent 1)

THE WORD IN THE GOSPEL  READING   Luke 1:46-55

Mary said, “With all my heart I glorify the Lord! In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior, who has looked with favor on the low status of his servant.

Look! From now on, everyone will consider me highly favored: for the mighty one has done great things for me.

Holy is the name of the Lord, who shows mercy to everyone, from one generation to the next, to those who honor God.

God’s arm is strong, and has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations.

God has pulled the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.

God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

God has come to the aid of Israel, remembering the promise of mercy, the promise made to our ancestors, to Abraham and his children forever.”

MESSAGE

Here’s some well-known sayings about the Christmas season:

 “Bah, humbug!”

 “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry?”

 “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Ugh. Pretty bleak things to say, right?

Well, how about this one: “God bless us, everyone!”

As you may know, all these phrases come from the classic story by Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol.” Our theme for Advent and Christmas this year is based on this beloved story.

You know, I think that when most people recall the story, they think of Ebenezer Scrooge, the crabby, grouchy, bitter old man who wished for poor people to be put in prison or workhouses, and who said such ghastly things as, “Christmas is a poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!” and, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!”

That’s the image we have of Ebenezer Scrooge. We tend to forget or at least minimize the final scenes of the story, when old Scrooge is redeemed from his life of self-imposed misery and loneliness, and goes on to become a man who says, with complete joy and abandon, “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”

Yes, poor old Scrooge has become a symbol for someone who is miserly and cranky and critical, especially at this time of year. “Don’t be such a Scrooge!” we say to anyone who doesn’t seem to have the proper “Christmas spirit.”

Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” in 1843. Although his story is set in the context of a Victorian England Christmas, Dickens did not write it to be a theological or even religious tale. Rather, it’s a morality tale about poverty and social injustice. At that time in England, many activists and authors were churning out pamphlets and essays that denounced the excesses of the rich and the horrible situations of the poor. But Dickens believed the best way to reach a large section of the population with that message was to write a beautiful story set in the context of Christmas.

This was also a time when celebrations surrounding the Christmas season were beginning to take the shape that’s familiar to us. Victorian-era England was when some of our most beloved traditions became widespread. Family-centered celebrations, singing carols, giving elaborate gifts, sending Christmas cards – and yes, focusing more on benevolence and giving to those who are less fortunate – all trace their popularity to the early 1800s when Queen Victoria ruled Great Britain.

Charles Dickens took advantage of this new kind of Christmas celebration to write his tale of charity, good will, and redemption. And his story is one of the reasons why some of these traditions have become such an important part of our own celebrations.

In fact, the story “A Christmas Carol” has been so popular that it’s never been out of print. It has been adapted many times into movies, plays, and musical shows. I’ve seen several of them, and it’s hard to say which is my favorite. I think it’s a tie between the 1999 TV version that stars Patrick Stewart, and the 2009 animated film version by Disney. The movie starring Bill Murray, called “Scrooged” isn’t bad, either. I encourage you, sometime during the next four weeks, to watch one of the film or TV versions of the story, if you can.

Even though Dickens’ story is not a religious one, it is full of themes in which we can find faithful lessons about the Christian faith. So, each week during Advent, we’ll be looking at a different part of the story. Today, we’re going to talk about the first part, which sets the stage for the rest of the story. We’re going to talk about Jacob Marley.

It’s interesting that Jacob Marley is such an important character in the story, considering that he’s dead when the story begins. In fact, the whole story begins with these words:

 “Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

So why are we going to focus on a character who is dead to begin with?

We learn that Jacob Marley was an old friend and business partner of Ebenezer Scrooge and had been dead for 7 years. After spending Christmas Eve spreading his own gloomy version of “Bah, humbug” among his neighbors, Scrooge goes home to find Jacob Marley’s ghostly and ghastly face in the door knocker on his front door. Well, Scrooge being Scrooge, he pooh-poohs this vision and goes into the house to spend another lonely, cold night of surrounding himself with his “Bah, humbug” sentiments.

Later than night, locked in his bedroom, he hears a clanking sound coming up the stairs. “Humbug,” he says, refusing to believe his ears.

But then, the source of that sound comes right through the closed door and stands before him. It’s the ghost of Jacob Marley, wrapped with a long and heavy chain. After recovering from his shock, Scrooge says to the ghost, “Why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?”

Marley’s ghost says, “It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!”

Now here’s where Dickens’ story veers a bit from traditional Christian teaching. We do not believe that spirits are doomed to wander the earth after death, carrying heavy chains with such suffering. But still, there’s an important lesson in all this, so let’s continue with the story.

Then Scrooge says to the spirit, “You are fettered. Tell me why?”

The spirit replies, “I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”

Jacob Marley’s spirit goes on to explain that that ponderous chain represented his failure during his time on earth to realize his capacity and calling to do good and help others.

The spirit cries out, “Oh! Captive, bound, and double-ironed, not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness.  Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused!”

The spirit leads Ebenezer to the window, where he sees the air filled with ghosts like Jacob Marley, aimlessly and mournfully floating around, moaning with a dreadful sound and each dragging its own heavy chain. Ebenezer noticed one ghost “who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step.”

It was at that moment that Ebenezer realized the source of their spirits’ misery and the reason for their chains: the spirits wanted to reach out and help others, to alleviate suffering, but they had forever lost the power to do so.

As the spirit of Jacob Marley reminded Ebenezer, “Humankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.”

In death, Jacob Marley and all those other countless spirits, could not know peace because, in their lives, they had not fulfilled their purpose, they had not attended to their business of loving and caring for others.

Here again, Dickens deviates from traditional Christian teaching, because we do not believe that peace is something we earn through our good deeds or acts of mercy. We believe that peace, like grace and mercy and love, are gifts of God that are offered to us without condition.

So maybe we could re-interpret Marley’s words a bit. Instead of simply failing to attend to his business of caring for others, maybe we could say that he really failed to open himself to the grace of God that would have enabled him to love and serve and show mercy.

Maybe we could say that he created obstacles or barriers in his earthly life that prevented him from accepting and receiving the power God offered to be the kind of loving person he was created to be.

Maybe we could say that Marley lived his life according to an earthly economy that puts value on things like productivity, hard work, frugality – things that only added more links to the chains that he was destined to bear for eternity.

This is a season when we focus on peace. As the prophet Isaiah said, the child born will be called the “prince of peace.” And at that child’s birth, the angels proclaimed, “Peace on earth to all.”

But, as I shared with the children, there are two kinds of peace. There’s external peace, which is the absence of fighting and violence. But there’s also interior peace, and that comes when we live out our calling as people created to do whatever we can to relieve suffering, show mercy, and reveal God’s love to others.

We are called to do what we can to bring about both kinds of peace. We attend to our work of justice, healing, and reconciliation in order that the world may know peace. But we also need to attend to the peace of our spirits, by recognizing any attitudes, words, and practices that add another link to the chain that prevents us from knowing and following God’s ways in Jesus. Because following those ways is the only path to true inward peace.

As I said, the Christian faith does not teach that we are doomed to lug these chains around as a kind of punishment after we die. But I do believe that we are all weighed down by some kind of heavy chain in this life. We are all prevented from fulfilling our God-given mission, and from knowing the fullness of the peace that Jesus offers, because of the chains that we are forging, link by link. And we create these chains by allowing our beliefs and our actions to be guided by an earthly economy that teaches that some people are valuable while others are expendable, or that people are valuable only insomuch as they can contribute something of worth, or that the things that really matter are wealth, possessions, and respect.

In our gospel passage from Luke, we read Mary’s beautiful song of praise when she learns she will bear a son who will be the Prince of Peace. She says, “God has pulled the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” Mary is describing God’s economy, where people are not measured according to what they can produce or earn or contribute.

The story of Jesus’ birth breaks human convention and shatters our assumptions about what is good and right and valuable. As we prepare to celebrate that birth once again, we need to ask ourselves:

Are we living according to the world’s economy, or God’s economy? Are we, by our attitudes, beliefs, or actions, creating links in our chains that keep us from being fully open to God’s grace and power? Are things like pride, selfishness, consumerism, impatience, or obliviousness to the needs of others weighing us down and keeping us from being people who both reveal peace to others and know peace for ourselves?

In a few moments, you will be invited to come forward to receive a strand of ribbon chain. I’d like to ask you to put it somewhere prominent in your home – maybe on a Christmas tree if you have one. Like the chain carried by the spirit of Bob Marley, these chains represent those things we need to release – those false assumptions or destructive beliefs, those harmful and fear-based attitudes, those stereotypes that we fail to challenge, those unloving thoughts that direct our actions – all the things that weigh us down, that keep us from freely loving and serving others, and that prevent us from knowing, in our hearts, the peace of Jesus.

There are 24 links in each chain, one for each day of December until Christmas Eve. So starting on December 1, you are invited to cut one of these chain links each day and name to yourself, to someone else, or write on that piece of ribbon, something you want to release.