The Ghost of Christmas Past Rev. Tracey Davenport
Luke 3:1-16 December 9, 2007
Today we are visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. When I think of Christmases past, I remember an accidental tradition with which I grew up. Wherever we lived, we always had a fireplace, and since we lived in mostly warmer climates it remained unused expect for Christmas Day. No matter how warm it might be outside on that day, my father always awoke at 5am to light a fire in the fireplace. I guess he was hoping to add that cozy, fireside atmosphere to our present-opening and breakfast eating. Unfortunately, the atmosphere he created was one of yelling, grouchiness, and ungratefulness for his efforts. Every year, he forgot to open the flue. What resulted was a smoke-filled living room and smoke detectors going off, arousing all in the house. As the years went by, it got to be a joke, because he always forgot.
I couldn’t wait to celebrate my first Christmas after Jack and I were married. We had a little apartment in Dallas, TX. We had a small Christmas tree, with colored lights. We had a fireplace. Jack arose early to light a fire, the first one in that fireplace, as we had just moved in a month earlier. I remained asleep in bed until I awoke to the familiar Christmas sound of a smoke alarm. Jack had forgotten to open the flue. This I surmised was a cycle from which I could never break free.
John the Baptist appears confronting God’s people with the cycle from which they had not been able to break free. “You brood of vipers!” he calls them. We don’t see many Christmas cards with “You brood of vipers” on the front. “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree that does not bear fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” This is not the most popular of Christmas messages. Repent. Change your mind. Turn around and go the other direction. That is John’s message. It confronts those who will hear with all the mistakes, all the regrets, all the disappointments, all the sins of the past.
Israel had been unfaithful to God time and time again throughout their history. They had worshiped other gods. They had failed to keep the commandments. Leaders had become corrupt, taking bribes, losing any sense of justice and righteousness. They did not defend the widow, the orphan, or the stranger in their midst. Then the unthinkable happened. God allowed the northern tribes of Israel to be captured by the Assyrians. God allowed the southern tribes of Judah to be overtaken by the Babylonians. Jerusalem was destroyed temple and all, and God’s people were taken into exile in Babylon. There in a foreign land they wept and longed for Zion.
Charles Dickens describes Ebenezer Scrooge as a “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.” Dickens goes on: “Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, ‘My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?’ No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman once in his life at all inquired the way to such and such a place of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him, and when they saw him coming would tug their owners into doorways and up courts.” “No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he.”
Scrooge became this way over years and through experiences past. Scrooge learns through his dead former partner Marley, that his past is a heavy chain around him, of his own making. The Ghost of Christmas Past is sent to Ebenezer Scrooge, for his own welfare it claims, to confront him with his past: all the mistakes, all the regrets, all the disappointments, all the sins.
As the Ghost of Christmas Past escorts him, Scrooge sees himself as a solitary child in school, neglected by his friends. He sobs at the sight. He sees himself, a boy whose only friends are characters in books, and he cries, “Poor boy,” wishing he had given something to the poor boy singing Christmas carols at his door last night. He sees his sister, who loved and cared for him as a boy, yet was never appreciated by him. He had turned her son, his own nephew, away that very day. He sees his agitation at the merriment of his boss one Christmas in his young adulthood. He regrets that he has not made this season more joyful for his own clerk, Bob Cratchit. He sees Belle, a beautiful young woman, who loved him, and who he rejected for the lure of wealth.
Scrooge can take no more from the Ghost of Christmas Past. “Remove me from this place,” Scrooge asks in a broken voice. The Ghost replies, “I told you these are shadows of things that have been. They are what they are. Do not blame me.” “Remove me,” Scrooge shouts back. “I cannot bear it.”
Our past is our problem too. We like Scrooge may break no law and be quite safe from prison. But we, like Scrooge, can be miserable human beings, all wrapped up in ourselves and enjoying making others miserable. We all have chapters in our lives we had rather forget. We all have not lived up to our potential. There are decisions we regret and missed opportunities that in hindsight, we grieve we missed. There are Christmases past when we shut out someone who should have been included and we cheated them out of our love and company. There are Christmases past where we may have been the one shut out. There are those in need from whom we have withheld the blessings God has given us to share. There are times I have behaved badly, and knew it, but did it anyway. I have not been worthy of my calling as a minister of the gospel. There are years past when God was shut out of our lives. When we are confronted with all these things, and aware of the damage done, we too like Scrooge cry out, “I cannot bear it! Show me no more!” We too like the crowds listening to John the Baptist ask, “What shall we do?” Is all lost? Do we give up and spiral down into depression and despair like the young man who took eight lives and then his own in Omaha this week? Do we quit trying?
Amidst tears falling and hearts breaking come the words of the Lord through the prophet Isaiah, “Comfort, O comfort my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Prepare the way of the Lord. Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain made low.” “I will redeem the past,” says the Lord. “I will make it right. I will make a way for you to come back home smooth and straight.”
We sing songs during advent as a people who have realized our past is a chain around us and need the salvation God offers. O come, O come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel. From our fears and sins release us; let us find our rest in Thee. God rest ye merry gentlemen let nothing you dismay. Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day to save us all from Satan’s power when we had gone astray. O tidings of comfort and joy. We need Christmas because of our past. Christmas doesn’t come because we worked ourselves up to it, or because we deserve such a favor. God came to us in Jesus Christ because we needed it, because we are a sinful lot, a brood of vipers. Jesus came because we needed help. The message of Christmas is that our past can be redeemed. We can change. We can be transformed. We don’t have to stay in chains of addiction, bitterness, sin, shame, or despair. We don’t have to keep repeating our mistakes.
Do you remember how the story of Ebenezer Scrooge ends? He is converted. He becomes a new man. The man who violated Christmas the worst becomes the man who keeps it the best. My favorite Christmas story has always been How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It is because the worst offender, after experiencing the love and joy the Who’s in Whoville experience at Christmas, becomes the chief celebrant. “And he, he himself, the Grinch carved the roast beast.”
These supposedly secular stories proclaim the good news of the gospel that began with Christmas. If Scrooge and the Grinch can be changed, then so can we. We are never too old, too young, too cold, or too far gone to confront our past and be free of it. God makes the way to be free, to come home, to redeem anything that is wrong, broken, and disappointing.
Maybe it’s a marriage that has grown cold, or other strained family relationship. Maybe its bad choices or harsh words said in haste. Maybe it is a sense of entitlement or a lack of compassion. Maybe it’s a heart, like the Grinch, that is two sizes two small. Whatever it is that needs to change, to repent, or to be made right, take comfort. We will see God’s salvation: a tiny baby born and laid in a manger. This baby’s words will teach. His hands will heal. His life will be an example. This baby’s sweet little head will one day wear a crown of thorns. This baby’s blood will be shed for us. This baby will redeem the past and make us holy. This is the good news of the Ghost of Christmas Past. The past does not have to be the future. Praise God!