A Christmas Carol Revisited

Sermon: Rick Rossing

Text: Matthew 25:31-46; Luke 16:19-31

related text, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, can be found on Project Gutenberg

Communion: Tom Yoakum

What do you know about Ebenezer Scrooge?

 He's a character in the novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, published December 1843, 180 years ago this month. It's been translated into 39 languages, and there are at last count, 135 adaptations of it on stage, screen, and radio.

Here is what you need to know:

 Jacob Marley was dead. He died on Christmas Eve seven years before our story has even begun. He died alone. He had only one friend in the world, and that friend was one Ebenezer Scrooge.

Mind you, when I say he was Marley’s friend, I only mean that they were business partners. Their firm was named Scrooge and Marley, even now seven years after Marley’s death.

Scrooge had never bothered to paint out Marley’s name on the sign.

Dickens describes Scrooge this way:

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.

If time allowed, I should have liked to read the whole novella, but the average length of audiobooks of the text are over three hours long. Instead, I'll have to limit myself to a few crucial examples, and summarize the rest.

And so, on this day, Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. His employee, Bob Cratchit, attempted to keep his hands warm over the candle, because Scrooge wouldn’t let him add another coal to the stove.

“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”

After an unsuccessful attempt to invite Scrooge to Christmas dinner, his nephew, Fred, leaves, just as two gentlemen enter the counting house.

“Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,” said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?”

“Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,” Scrooge replied. “He died seven years ago, this very night.”

“We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,” said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.

It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word “liberality,” Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”

 “Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.

 “Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

 “And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”

 “They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”

 “The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.

 “Both very busy, sir.”

 “Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”

 “Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”

 “Nothing!” Scrooge replied.

 “You wish to be anonymous?”

 “I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”

 “Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”

 “If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides—excuse me—I don’t know that.”

 “But you might know it,” observed the gentleman.

 “It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. It’s not my business.

 At the end of the work day, after complaining that his clerk will want to have Christmas day off, he returns home, and weird things begin to happen. His door knocker appears to him as the face of his dead partner, Jacob Marley. As he climbs the steps to his bedchamber, he thinks he sees a hearse drawn by horses going before him. A bell rings, and the ghost of Marley appears as a ghost, bound in heavy chains and cash boxes. Scrooge asks him why:

 “I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “Your chain was was full and heavy as this seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since.”

 “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob.”

 “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.”

Jacob warns Scrooge that he has only one chance to save himself, and that he is to be visited by three Spirits over the course of the next three evenings.

You might think of this story as a retelling of the rich man and Lazarus, Except that Jacob gets his wish to warn his only friend against the fate awaiting him, unless he heeds the lesson of the three spirits who will be visiting him over the next three nights:

The Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge shadows of his childhood: the people he loved in his youth, and the happiness that had once been a part of his life. But his beloved sister died, and fear of poverty made him clamor for wealth above all other pursuits. His ambition drove away his childhood sweetheart. Scrooge gets a glimpse of how his life might have turned out had he only valued people over possessions.

On the next night, he is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present, who shows him what that very Christmas would be like for those people around him: His Clerk, Bob Cratchit, and his family, living in poverty; His nephew, Fred, and bride, entertaining family and playing parlour games.

Bob’s youngest son, Tiny Tim, is crippled, and sickly, but has a kind heart. Scrooge asks the Spirit about the child:

“I see a vacant seat,” replied the Ghost, “in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.”

“No, no,” said Scrooge. “Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared.”

“If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, he will not see another Christmas… but what then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.

“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child.”

As his time with the Spirit comes to an end, Scrooge notices something hiding beneath the spirit’s robe. It turns out that they are two emaciated children, a boy and girl.

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.

“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”

As Scrooge winces at his own words being thrown at him, the clock strikes twelve. The Spirit leaves Scrooge alone with a frightening figure moving toward him in the mist. This, of course, is the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. The spirit never speaks, only points, and Ebenezer, who knows well enough by now what he's supposed to do, goes where he's told.

All he can see is that someone has died, and no one seems distraught by the death. If anything, some express joy and hope at his passing. Frustrated with this, Ebenezer asks to see tenderness associated with death, and is taken to the Cratchit's house, where indeed, the family is mourning the loss of Tiny Tim. Scrooge can bear it no more, and asks to see who the first dead man had been. The spirit takes him to a gravestone, which bears the name of Ebenezer Scrooge.

He wakes, back home in his bedchamber, overjoyed that he hasn’t died, and immediately begins making amends, to Bob Cratchit, to the charity workers, and even to his nephew. He promises to help care for the Cratchit family, and indeed, from that day forward, he is a changed man.

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew. And ever aftwerwards, it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!

Matthew 25:40 “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

 And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!