Bah Humbug! Making Change (Sunday, November 27th, 2016)

Bible Reference(s): Isaiah 9:6-7 / Luke 1:46-47 and 52-55

Sermon by Rev. Terri Thorn

During the Monday morning Bible study there are three things that are almost always guaranteed to happen. There will be fresh coffee available, people will typically sit in or near the same seat each week...and usually as we are reading the assigned psalm, someone will remark, "Hey, these words are from a song we sang in choir."

It is one of the beautiful things about many of the hymns and anthems sung in worship...they are basically scripture set to music. In fact, I'm confident that many of you were probably humming a little Handel's Messiah as I read the passage from Isaiah this morning. In case you're wondering, I was definitely singing it in my head...I mean, it's almost impossible to read those verses without punctuating them like a grand choral performance.

And...for as much as music helps us remember...stories help us understand. This time of the year we get many of both...songs and stories that remind us of the Reason for the Season. Of course, some do a much better job than others -- but I think most people would agree that the Dickens' classic, A Christmas Carol, or as some of us call it, the Scrooge story, is one of the best to cause us to consider the true meaning of Christmas. It challenges us to examine our own lives...and priorities...in order to open ourselves to the peace, hope, love and joy that came to earth as tiny baby who was and is God with us.

Now, let me just say, if you haven't read the Scrooge story in awhile, the text is available several places online. We've linked one source to our new website under "worship resources". Or if you prefer the movie version, you're also in luck because some good folks in church family are planning a Movie Night in December where everyone is invited to come and watch the Disney version.

In the meantime, for those who may need a little refresher, the main character of the story is Ebenezer Scrooge - a sad, lonely old man, who is cold, stingy, inflexible and insensitive toward everyone. He is even more grumpy and bitter at Christmastime each year. Mr. Scrooge's only priority in life is his business...work, eat, sleep, repeat...with a single objective - to accumulate more wealth.

One Christmas eve Ebenezer is visited by three spirits...the spirit of Christmas past, the spirit of Christmas present, and the spirit of Christmas future...an experience that eventually changes his life. Before all this happens though, Scrooge has an encounter with the ghost of his dead business partner, Jacob Marley. Mr. Marley shows up, laden with chains he that we was forced to carry around for eternity...chains representing the things he had thought were most important throughout his life...heavy, burdensome chains that he admits he created and placed upon himself.

The intention of his visit to tell Scrooge that they had gotten it all wrong. He wanted to warn Scrooge about the error of his ways. You see, in the afterlife, Marley had come to realize that both he and Scrooge had mistakenly bought into the world's economy rather than God's. They believed that the only measure of success and purpose was the accumulation of one's wealth. In their zero-sum accounting world, everything was quantifiable, and since more for you meant less for me, greed and miserly stinginess ruled their transactions. And everything in life -- even relationships - were merely transactions for Scrooge and Marley.

Marley, however, was dead. His fate was sealed. He suffered the eternal consequence of having lived his entire life by these false truths...yet he knew it wasn't too late for things to be different for Scrooge. Marley would never experience joy or peace but there was still a chance for Scrooge. Marley understood that his business partner, who was only dead in spirit, could have life again. He could experience the meaning of Christmas year-round...if he would open himself to a new understanding of what is really important in life.

That's why one of the most powerful lines in the entire story is when Marley replies to Scrooge's comment that he, Jacob, had always been a good man of business. He answers, "Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business."

In a sense, Marley reveals the same earth-shattering message that Mary proclaims in her song. The welfare of humankind is God's business and therefore should be ours. Mary declares that the world's truth is not God's truth. In fact, God's truth, which was about to be revealed in the baby Mary was carrying, is not only NOT compatible with the world's truth...it is a truth that disrupts the status quo, inverts prevailing power structures, and turns the world on its end.

Now, by truth we don't necessarily mean a single factual item, a rule, or a specific doctrine. When we speak of God's truth, it means God's way...the life God desires for his people. The way things are supposed to be in God's kingdom...if you will. God's truth is that which Jesus embodies, demonstrates and offers.

God's truth is loving...and welcoming...and forgiving...and gracious. God's truth is that people matter more than possessions. And, powerless people, whom Mary calls lowly, have a particular importance to God. God's truth is one of faithfulness, justice, and compassion - especially for those whose voice is not heard...those who are outcast...those who oppressed...the poor, the hungry, the stranger...those who do not rank on the world's economic scale....those who are broken and have no community. God's truth of salvation instills hope, calls for love, offers joy, and brings peace to all who seek it.

Marley knew that the only way to experience true peace in this realm...or the next...is to reorder our lives to live by God's economy...in God's kingdom...with God's priorities...and not the world's.

What an important message at this time of the year...when nearly everything about the season draws us into the false truths of the world...destroying our inner peace in the process. Things like this whole Black Friday experience...somebody, somewhere trying to convince us that stampede shopping is a necessary part of the holiday season. Or the false belief that a measure of our love for someone is somehow contained in the cost of the wrapped gift we give them on Christmas Day. Or the worldly belief that the house drawing the highest wattage in Christmas lighting decor is somehow a better expression of Christmas spirit than the one with the simple wreath on the door. Not to mention the stress of finding the just right gifts, baking the just right cookies, and decorating the just right tree. The pressure to attend holiday functions and parties and school events.

You get the idea. It doesn't take long until we're feeling a bit like Scrooge ourselves. The joy of Christmas gets lost in our busyness and stress robs us of our peace.

Priorities always seem to get jumbled up at Christmastime. We know that in the big scheme of life these things aren't of great importance...yet in the moment they sure feel significant.

However, it is a reality that isn't unique to the Christmas season. We might experience the angst more acutely this time of the year, but our peace is disturbed anytime we buy into a definition of truth that is not God's.

Theologian Paul Tillich describes this imbalance in terms of ultimate concern. He says whatever is our ultimate concern becomes our god...thus displacing the true God. Jesus said something similar to his disciples: For where your treasure is, there will you heart be also.

Scrooge's ultimate concern was money. In fact, so much so that his life is a caricature of what Jesus meant when he said one cannot have two masters, we cannot serve both God and mammon. In other words, God will not be our ultimate concern while wealth and possessions are, and as a result, our lives will eventually look like Scrooge's...devoid of love and compassion...cold and heartless...lacking happiness or contentment.

Now quite honestly, it is unlikely that any of us are true Scrooges. For one thing, we wouldn't be in church if we were. However, we all have things in our lives that have the potential to make us miserable. Ironically, these things are not always bad things...in fact many of them are good and well-intending. In fact, Scrooge's wealth wasn't a bad thing...wealth in and of itself is not inherently bad...however, when it became his ultimate concern, it took the place of God in his life. So yes, many good things can become an ultimate concern at one time or another...good things like our children's happiness...or helping family member...being the church...growing the church...even seeking justice in the world. All good things...all godly things...but when the outcome of our effort becomes more important than the God who calls us to them, our experience of peace will diminish and our lives are prone to the same kind of bitterness and resentment that we see in Scrooge. Likewise when we are focused on less holy things...such as gaining earthly power, being in control, needing to be right or to feel esteemed and validated by others..we run the same risk of misery - usually more painfully and deeply because it spills over onto the people we love.

The more something, anything, other than God becomes our priority, the heavier the links in the chain that holds us to it. The more power something other than God's truth has over our heart and mind, the more life it sucks out of us and the less of God's peace we will ever know. It doesn't take long until we become jaded and Scrooge-like in our interactions with others...and the less we are able to truly rejoice and praise God.

Now, before we start to let guilt become our collective ultimate concern, let me just say this...we all fail at this ultimate concern thing...frequently. None of us has yet mastered the discipline of making God our one and only concern...to always and in all ways give God top billing. Still the more we seek God's truth for our lives...the more we seek his presence and trust his promise of mercy and grace...the better we get at it. Nonetheless...we will never get it completely right. Not on this side of heaven. We will have glimpses of the peace that passes all understanding, but we will have our days of unrest and angst as well. The goal of our faith journey is for the glimpses to grow into moments and for the moments to become extended periods of deep peace.

This is how salvation - the healing of our brokenness - seems to work. It is both a completed deal - by God's grace through our faith in Christ we are saved - but it is also an ongoing process of reordering our priorities and detaching ourselves from worldly ways..in order to become more like the image of Christ in us...to more fully experience his mercy, grace and peace.

Folks, Scrooge wasn't always hard-hearted. He wasn't always bitter. Making money wasn't always his ultimate concern. It was the result of choices he made at various cross-roads of life. We will learn more about that in the weeks ahead. Suffice to say that decisions made during difficult days drew Scrooge deeper into his own darkness...until he reached the point that he could not, or would not, see the light and love of Christ around him. There was no joy. There was no peace. There was no life.

When the bell tolled and the spirits of Christmas visited, Scrooge was given a second chance. Christmas past, present and future exposed the false truths that he held and the consequences of becoming chained to them. In that one night of ah-ha awareness Scrooge understood that life could be different.

In essence, in the coming together of past, present and future, Scrooge experienced his own kind of Advent. It is, after all, the season that messes with our time and space continuum - where past, present and future intersect...culminating on Christmas morning. Advent brings God's people together in the present to remember the past as a way of finding hope for the future. In doing so, open ourselves to the possibility that life can be different and to receive the gifts of Christmas that Jesus offers -- hope, love, joy and peace.

Friends the hope of Advent never changes...we trust that the kingdom of God will be as Mary described...as the prophets proclaimed...free of pain, free of suffering, free of violence, and war, and fear…and we eagerly look forward to the day that becomes the reality on earth. In the meantime, we also recognize that the world in which we live is broken, full of things that stand in total opposition to the love and grace of God. The challenge of a life of faith is to live in the world, but not of it. To choose kingdom living even when the kingdom is not yet fully here. It means we express hope despite the messages of hopelessness. We believe that light is shining even when things seem dark. We trust that healing has come to this broken world...and that the power inversion that Mary proclaims is already happening...one life...one decision...one choice...at a time. More importantly, we refuse to attach ourselves to anything less than God's grace...and to the Advent promise that God is coming and that God already is with us...still.

Friends, this is the promise that allows us to unlink ourselves for the many things that vie for top billing as our ultimate concern...both those that we place there and those that other people place on us. Grace is the promise that empowers us to break free of the chains of the tempting false truths the world offers, to unleash ourselves from expectations - ours and others. It is the promise that transforms us into the people we are created to be...people who have hope, who receive and share God's love, joyful people who, even in the midst of the world's troubles, experience God's peace. God's amazing grace among us is the miracle of Christmas...may it be in each of us for the sake of the world. God bless us Every One.