Choose Joy
Advent is a season of anticipation. We look forward to the coming of Christmas. We anticipate the end of our calendar year. It is a time where traditions come a live and we sing our favorite carols. This is a season that brings joy to many a heart and renewed thrills of hope. This week we continue in our advent series with the popular word sign and phrase, “Choose Joy.” In line with comments such as, “Be positive!” and “Smile More!”, “Choose Joy” underscores the popular feeling that you can simply wish to be happy, and it will be so. It is almost as if we are able to experience blissful happiness with blinders on! This morning we are going to talk about a popular Christmas character that shows us a different path to joy. We will see that joy is not merely a mindset, nor is it the result of intentional ignorance. Rather, Ebenezer Scrouge and John the Baptist show us that joy is found when we are in right relationship with God, ourselves, and one another.
Ebenezer Scrooge is the protagonist of Charles Dickens’ 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol. At the beginning of this story, Scrooge is depicted as a cold-hearted miser who despises Christmas. Charles Dickens describes Scrooge as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint... secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster." He is fittingly named Scrooge as this is a byword for stinginess and misanthropy. Dickens notes early in the story that "The cold within him [Scrooge] froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice." His heart was as cold as a winter’s night. Despite his sour personality, Scrooge is wealthy and known among the merchants of the Royal Exchange as a man of good credit. His personal success and business acumen are at least partly reliant on his refusal to pay his clerk, Bob Cratchit, a living wage, and his hounding of debtors. His detest for Christmas and others is made crystal clear as he sneers at the poor, turns his nose to charitable donation, and washes his hands of his nephew Fred’s dinner invitation. Scrooge’s “Bah! Humbug!” sums up his disdain for others and the season quite well.
The very night of these refusals, Scrooge is visited by his business partner Marley, who has been condemned to walk the world bound in chains forever as punishment for his greed and inhumanity. He tells Scrooge that he will be visited by three ghosts—The Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and of Christmas Yet to Come—if he does not mend his ways, Scrooge will wear even heavier chains. I imagine that the message shared by Marley, was one similar to the message John proclaimed in the desert. John exhorts a people fearful of the wrath to come, this people he associates with snakes fleeing for their own self-preservation, that none shall be preserved based upon their membership in a religious institution or their ethnic lineage. He exhorts these people in the same way that Marley tells Scrooge: they must repent and turn from the life that they had been living. The word in Greek we translate for repent is metanoia, which literally means to turn around. John and Marley tell us that repentance requires a change of mind, heart, and life.
While John says that every tree that does not bear good fruit is thrown into the fire, Scrooge experiences in real time his life past, present, and future. The Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge visions of his early life. These visions establish that Scrooge's unloving father placed him in a boarding school, where at Christmastime, he remained alone while his schoolmates returned home to their families. His happiest memory was when his sister Fan came to take him one Christmas. He eventually served as an apprentice under the generous Mr. Fezziwig at the warehouse. There he fell in love with a young woman named Belle and proposed marriage, but gradually his love for Belle was overwhelmed by his love for money. Belle realized this and, saddened by his greed, left him one Christmas, only to eventually marry another man. The Ghost of Christmas Present arrives next. It shows Scrooge that his greed and selfishness have hurt others in addition to himself. We meet Cratchit, his underpaid employee, who cannot afford to provide his desperately ill son Tiny Tim with medical treatment. The Spirit tells a horrified Scrooge that Tiny Tim will die within a year and reminds Scrooge of his own heartless words about the poor and destitute back in his face. Finally, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge where his greed and selfishness will lead: a lonely death, unpaid servants stealing his belongings, debtors relieved at his passing, and the Cratchit family devastated by the loss of Tiny Tim.
Scrooge begs the spirit for another chance, promising to change his ways. You can hear the crowds asking John the same question, “What should we do?” John’s instructions suggest that it is not enough simply to be sorry and to confess our short comings, but that repentance is to be lived out in the everyday practices of life, no matter one’s vocational calling. It is to signify a turn from ourselves toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And then, suddenly, Scrooge wakes up in his bed on Christmas Day. Not needing the same response the crowd did, Scrooge commits to being more generous and compassionate—he has received a second chance at life! He hurriedly accepts his nephew's invitation to Christmas dinner, provides for Cratchit and his family, and donates to the charity fund. Like John’s exhortation to the crowd, Scrooge’s experience transforms the way he lives and interacts with those around him. He and the crowd see themselves not as individuals, but as connected creatures in creation. In the end, Scrooge becomes known as the embodiment of the Christmas spirit and as a “second father” to Tiny Tim.
John speaks of separating the wheat from the chaff. While this has often been interpreted to mean including some and excluding others, the metaphor itself points to a different reality. Every grain of wheat has a husk, and farmers use wind to separate these husks, which are known as “chaff,” from the grain. The goal of this process is to save every grain, not to separate the good grain from the bad grain as is often presupposed.[1] This is a metaphor of cleansing and preservation, not division. What God’s purifying wind and fire remove are our collective “husks,” our anxiety, fear, fixations, self-righteousness, or greed that make us stingy, dishonest, or cold-hearted. The space between good and evil does not run between insiders and outsiders, but through the heart of each person. What John and Dickens proclaim is a gospel of restoration and liberation from the “husks” which are holding us back. The Sprit’s wind and fire come to sanctify, refine, restore, and empower us. When we seek God in all areas of our lives, we are longing for this purification which leads us to greener pastures.
If those who came to see John are like snakes following fire, so are we. If they cannot claim special privilege based on their heritage, neither can we. If they risk being separated from God’s vine, if they risk being pruned, so too do we. All of us have the capability to be saints and Scrooges. We are not simply called to choose joy, but to freely give and receive the love of God. We seek not only our own happiness, but, like Scrooge, learn to love our neighbors for their sake. Whereupon choosing joy is never just for ourselves but seeking the well-being of all those around us. Where one community’s greed or generosity, selfishness or charity, tender or cold hearts can lead to harmony or calamity. Blessed church, to choose joy means to seek the harmony John and Dickens envision. To choose joy means to means we make amends with people who are not at peace with. It means that we seek harmony in our homes, in our church, and in our local communities. To choose joy is to choose harmony in and amongst our relationships with each other and the world.
Yet, to choose joy is more than just reconciliation with the world, it is to be reconciled to God. John’s message is meant for those who wait with eager longing for a Savior, both then and now. All of us, whether we know it or not, are seeking reconciliation with our Creator. This message is for us who are waiting with eager expectation the coming of our Messiah this advent season. It is for those who feel hopeless, loveless, and without meaning. It is for those who have been looking for signs of Jesus and God during the pandemic. It is for those of us who have grown weary at the deep divides in our country. It is for those of us who have longed and labored for peace but have found none. It is for those who need to hear the good news of a Messiah that came for you and your salvation. To choose joy is to choose Jesus Christ. Our decision to live for Jesus and to worship our risen Lord is one we must make every day. We are invited to participate in active communion with God in the name of Jesus by the power of the Spirit. We are invited to take and experience the first fruits of reconciliation. Friends, the good news of the gospel has come. “Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”[2] The Kingdom of God has come near. Choose Joy. Choose Jesus.
[1] Elizabeth Myer, “Joy, Wind & Fire: Salt's Lectionary Commentary for Advent Week Three,” SALT Project (SALT Project, December 8, 2021), https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-advent-three.
[2] Matthew 7:7.
