“Bah Humbug, who
needs Hope?”
Bah,
Humbug, who needs hope? In Charles
Dicken’s a Christmas Carol, the main character Scrooge seems to have hope in
nothing but money. Bah humbug, who needs
anything but money? Dickens is writing
this novel in a time of great disparity between the wealthy and the poor. For the poor, there is very little hope in
the world, there are debtor prisons and labor houses, For so many, the only hope came from the
generosity of others. And so Dickens
writes this classic tale of a man that is so heartless, so hardened, so
selfish, so greedy to illustrate that perhaps, just perhaps, hope is at work in
the world and can transformed even the coldest hearts. Dickens had hope. He had hope for a better future, he had hope
that people would awaken to generosity, he had hope that the message and
meaning of Christmas can and will transform this world.
Seven
years after Scrooges’ partner Jacob Marley has died, Scrooge is hard at work on
Christmas Eve and is visited by his nephew, Fred, inviting him to
Christmas. : “[Christmas is] a kind, forgiving,
charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the
year, when [people] seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely,
and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to
the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And
therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my
pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God
bless it!” Scrooge will have nothing to do with his only
living relative and the famous line, bah humbug is his response. His
next set of visitors are men seeking a generous donation to feed the poor and
hungry. Scrooge refuses to donate
anything and proclaims it would be better for those to be dead as to help the
issue of over population. What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying
bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour
richer?” Out of
his abundance, he refuses to give to the poor, wishing them dead. He is a true illustration of selfish
greed.
Leaving
work, and returning to his home alone, when others are gathered together with
family and parties, he is encountered by his former partner Marley. The ghost of Marley is covered in chains and
warns Scrooge that this too will be his fate.
He has been chained for all eternity of the sins he committed in
life. He second warning is that Scrooge
will be visited by three ghosts to expose to him the hardness of his life and
how his choices have a great impact on those around him.
At one o'clock,
Scrooge is visited by the candle-like Ghost of Christmas Past, who takes him back in time to his early life. They visit
Scrooge's boarding
school where Scrooge remembers how his friends all returned
home for Christmas but his family did not send for him. One begins to understand why he has become so
hardened towards the Christmas season.
The ghost then shows him another year where his sister Fanie, comes
to bring him home. This is the first
glimpse to a moment of happiness, perhaps he was not always a mean, selfish,
and cold person. He is shown a few more
happy memories, and one begins to wonder what happened to him that made him so
miserable. The ghost of Christmas past
shows us a young man with the potential for a happy and successful future. Until, until he and his fiancé Belle come to
their separation. She sees that he is
more concerned and occupied with his career, with money than for her. So she leaves him. What was once a life filled with endless
possibilities seems to have established itself as one focused not on family,
not on relationships, but merely on money.
Living with God or
living without God. Living with hope and
living without hope. Others all around
him have less than he does, but they are happy, yes, they have worries and concerns
and fears but they have not given up on the world.
Each of us can visit
our past, we can look backwards in our own lives and reflect on the events that
have impacted us and molded us into the person we currently are. Some of us can look back and see how we
leaned heavily into God’s arms during hard and trying times, others can still
feel the pain of a broken heart or the grief of loss over someone or
something. Some turn away from God
because of the hardships of life, while others anchor themselves into the hope
that God promises and grow stronger through tragedy. How will we be inspired to share
hope in the midst of the world’s heartbreak?
In this first Sunday
of Advent, we hope. We too hope for a
better future. We join the long chain of
the human story, of people waiting and hoping.
The prophet Isaiah speaks of a future time, he speaks of a time of peace,
shedding hope upon the people that there will be a better future, that indeed
there will even be a future. There will
be a time when wars cease and swords will be turned into plowshares and the way
to get there is to walk in the light of the Lord. We still wait for that day, they day when
wars will cease and God continues to call us to walk in the light as we journey
together into that future day.
As we wait for the
day, God calls his people to stay awake, as we live into God’s hope for this
world, we must stay awake. Scrooge could
not stay awake, both literally and figuratively. He knew the spirit was coming but still he
feel asleep, and had he stayed awake in his own life to the Hope of God in his
own life, he never would have become such a cold hearted person. But sleep he did, and sleep we often do too.
Come, all you who are haunted by
past disappointments and scattered dreams.
Come, you who feel burdened by
the patterns set up early in life.
Come, you who yearn to start
anew.
We often set aside New
Years as the time when we name our resolutions, the ways in which we seek to
change our lives for the better, but Christmas is the time to let our faith be
born within us once again, to remind us of God’s presence in our life, not just
in the past, not just on the pages of scripture, but alive within each of
us. We light one candle because we
understand the human journey, that this is not an instant gratification moment
of life, this is a process, a journey of time.
One candle burning bright, chasing away the darkness. One candle cannot chase away our past, but it
can shed light on our hurts and allow us to either find the path of God’s love
if we feel we are lost, or the light can help us remain on the path when we are
tempted to stray in another direction.
God’s
hope for us is that in this journey, we will receive the Christ child into our
lives, into our hearts and that, just like Scrooge, we will find moments of
transformation and redemption as we engage this world. Where are our fears, our places where we too
hold too tightly, where we depend upon ourselves instead of on God’s
abundance?
In
so many ways, life is so different than in the times of Dickens, but in so many
ways it is still the same. There are
still hungry people, there are still families seeking places to live, there are
still many who rely on the generosity of others for their very survival. In and through the church, God has called
people to be agents of love to make a significant difference in the world
around us. We are called to be those
that listen and hear what others are hoping for. What are the hopes and fears that surround us
and how can we be that place of God’s hope as the Christ child is born once
again in this world reminding us of God’s presence in each and every life?
Dickens
had hope for a better future and he illustrates this through the redemption of
Scrooge. Let us too be agents of hope
for a better future, and let it begin with us.
Amen.
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