Rev. Kendyl Gibbons All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church December 22, 2013 Of Miracles

Transcription

1 Rev. Kendyl Gibbons All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church December 22, 2013 Of Miracles 1

2 Christmas, in the early part of the second millennium in the United States of America, is given a heavy responsibility. This one day is asked to contain almost all the enchantment that remains in our disenchanted culture. And the Christmas stories that we tell draw little if anything from the original Mary and Joseph and the baby in the manger images. Instead, they cluster around miracles, and Christmas becomes the day of miracles; the day when we are willing to entertain possibilities that we would deny on any other day. Consider the classics a little girl is give the gift of belief in magic appropriate to her age which had been denied her (Unitarian and Humanist parents, take note!) by her rational and somewhat cynical mother; the mother s own faith in the possibility of love and generosity is restored by an encounter with an unconventional department store Santa who claims to actually be Kris Kringle, in Miracle on 34 th Street. George Bailey s mounting sense of frustration, failure and insignificance in his quiet and duty-filled life is transformed by the opportunity to observe the world as if he had never lived in It s a Wonderful Life. The creature who hates the whole Christmas season with a passionate frenzy is transformed by the undiminished singing of those whose Christmas he thinks he has stolen in the story of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. No doubt you can think of others among your own favorites. And then, of course, there is what might be thought of as the original of the whole genre, Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. 2

3 The story of Ebenezer Scrooge s visitation by the spirits of Christmas is not at all religious in the traditional sense. One might have expected the first stop of the Ghost of Christmas Past to be in Bethlehem, for instance, but this is Scrooge s story, and it is out of his own experience that his transformation is wrought. And so although there are no angelic choirs or virgins or new-born kings, I want to suggest that the story of Scrooge and all its subsequent variations are actually profoundly religious. They have to do with the nature of our own human spirituality, and the existence of a kind of experience which we will accept only on this one day of the year. In re-reading A Christmas Carol recently, I was struck with the durability of Dickens psychological insight into the process of Scrooge s transformation. On the one hand, from the outside, it appears miraculous; unanticipated and unaccountable. On the other hand, we, who have shared with Scrooge the inner journey on which he has been conducted, can understand perfectly the working of the forces which extract from him the pleading promise, I will not be the man I was! That which moves us not to be the people we were, but to enlarge our sympathies, deepen our gratitude for what we have, expand our connectedness and commitment, and rejoice in the human community as it nurtures us, is at the heart of Christmas. This is what they all discover, Scrooge and George Bailey, and the Grinch, and Macy s department 3

4 store; that we are more connected and less alone than we think; that joy is always there for the taking if we only have eyes to see. But each time it is a miracle, and Christmas is the day for miracles, the day for opening eyes and recognizing the joy and connectedness that we have worked so long to avoid, and in our bitterness denied. Before we come to the discussion of what actually constitutes a miracle, I want to look a little more closely at Scrooge s experience, as Dickens has presented it to us. I would call what happens to Scrooge a kind of spiritual healing. When we first meet him, there is something terribly wrong with his soul. As Dr. Seuss puts it in describing the Grinch, his heart is two sizes too small. There is something crucial to wholeness in a human being which is lacking in Scrooge, and somehow the transformation which he undergoes unkinks what is twisted in him, and frees him to realize his true nature. Now one could argue at length, and people do, about the distinction, if there is one, between being psychologically sick and spiritually sick. But we are given to understand, with a brilliant artistic subtlety, that Scrooge s way of life is not the result of painful inner compulsion, but rather an act of will, a deliberate attitude, in short, a choice. If a distinction between the psychological and the spiritual does exist, it is in this shadowy line between what we feel internally compelled to do, whether we like it or not, and what we freely choose out of the options we know are available. Scrooge has chosen his smallness of soul; therefore, as Marley will tell him, he is to held accountable for it, and his transformation is not so 4

5 much a reintegration of his perceptions as it is a redirection of his will. It is worth a careful examination of what happens to Scrooge, because this model of spiritual healing is available to us all, and all of us are in need of it. Scrooge s experience is not terribly different from what happens to George Bailey in It s a Wonderful Life, even though their spiritual illnesses are apparently very different. Where Scrooge is selfish and greedy, George is open, honest, and willing to shoulder more than his share of the world s burden. But brought up short finally by his finitude his inability to be responsible for everything, to protect his family from the swings of fortune, and his inability to realize the large, adventurous dreams he ahs always had for his life, he too is spiritually sick, bitterly disappointed in himself and his life, ready to throw it away. There is probably more of George than of Ebenezer in most of us, but each of the stories is for us, too. The first episode of this healing process is what we might think of as the diagnosis. It is a brutal truth telling about the reality of our lives, often by someone who does not realize the devastation of what they do to us. In Scrooge s case, this is his encounter with Marley s ghost. I wear the chain I forged in life, he tells Scrooge, and yours was a long and heavy as this seven Christmases ago. Scrooge tries to defend his right to live as he chooses, by Marley will have none of it. Mankind was my business, he says, the common welfare was my business; charity, 5

6 mercy, forbearance and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business. Scrooge has only one opportunity to be saved from the path he is treading, and that is to give himself into the hands of the spirits who are scheduled to visit him that night. It is the experience of catching sight of our inner selves in a mirror held up sometimes by those who know us best, and not liking what we see, that often starts us out on the adventure of spiritual transformation. Scrooge s first visitor is the Ghost of Christmas Past. Not, it soon becomes clear, of past Christmases in general, but of Scrooge s own past, and he leads Scrooge through two steps in the healing process. First, they observe the lonely child, abandoned at school while all the other students have gone home for the holiday, solacing himself in the library s world of fiction. We are never told what is wrong in young Ebenezer s family, that they do not want him or cannot have him with them, and this is a stroke of genius on Dickens part, for we do not get involved in trying to decide to what extent his parents are to blame, or could not help it. We have only the child s experience of bewildering rejection and solitude; the deep and permanent scar that will never be erased. For the first step in spiritual healing, once we have been metaphorically kicked into the process, is owning our woundedness, being willing to accept and mourn for the hurts which have shaped us. As long as we are repressing those painful memories, refusing to let them be part of us, or trying to live the story over and over again, to 6

7 see if it comes out differently this time, we are truly chained to the past. We can be free only when we have made peace with the scars of our past. The Ghost of Christmas Past also brings Scrooge to an acknowledgment of his own cruelty. Reliving his fiancee s sorrowful breaking of their engagement, he comes to realize that what he thought was her responsibility actually had lain within his power to change, if he had chosen to make his feelings as important as his career. We see the first hint of the breakdown of his walls as he mutters off-handedly to the spirit, No, nothing s the matter. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now. That s all. This, too, is an essential part of any spiritual healing, for it is never just the forces of the world around us that have made us what we are, but also our own responses to that world; the duties we have done or shirked; the help that we have given or withheld; the cruelty that we have exercised or restrained. Even George Bailey, good and dutiful though he is, loses his temper with this wife and family, insults his daughter s teacher, and slaps his foolish uncle, and his own inner crisis grows. And I think it is in part the experience of having something heartily to repent of that makes the alchemy of his transformative adventure work. So the Ghost of Christmas Past, having caused Scrooge to embrace his scars and to repent of his unkindness, departs, and leaves him to the ministrations of the Ghost of Christmas Present. This jovial being conducts Scrooge to the place where he has ever been invited and 7

8 consistently refused to go, to his good-natured nephew s house for Christmas dinner and fellowship. And Scrooge, despite his protestations of humbug, is caught up into the warmth of the festivities, almost as if he were a genuine participant rather than a ghostly observer. The silly games, the pretty women, the affectionate railleries, the good smell of the food, and the family s determination to wish him well and toast him in his absence, even as they also laugh his pretentious greed to scorn, awaken in Scrooge a hunger that he had not previously known he felt; the fundamental hunger that is in all of us to be part of a human community. For spiritual healing cannot be effected in isolation; to be human and to be whole, to be wholly human, is to be known and loved by others, to be accepted into the circle of friendship and care, and to acknowledge our need for that connection, wherever it is found. Until we are prepared to admit that it is not possible to give our lives meaning in isolation, we cannot be healed, and nor could Scrooge. But it is not just the available warmth of his own family that the Ghost of Christmas Present shows to Scrooge. They are also invisible witnesses to the Cratchitt s modest but much enjoyed Christmas celebration, and here Scrooge is brought to realize not just his need of others, but others need of him. So much of the cheerfully embraced suffering of this poverty-stricken family lies within his power to ease, and so Scrooge discovers not only the sins for which he must repent, but also the resources that he has to make life better for others. George Bailey, too, is given to understand how many unique gifts have been in his power to bestow by 8

9 seeing the shape his community might have taken had it not been for his influence. Our spiritual healing has to include a revived sense of power, a conviction that we have unique and needed gifts to bring to the larger community of which we are a part. Finally, Scrooge is left to encounter the silent and ominous Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, and through him a vision of that inevitable future event, his own death. With growing uneasiness, Scrooge sees the relief, joy, indifference, and greed which surround his demise, in contrast to the tender grief inspired by they death of poor, weak, and powerless Tiny Tim. Is his legacy to be nothing but the mean satisfaction of stolen bed curtains and a neglected grave in an untidy cemetery? Ultimately, it is the knowledge of our own mortality that moves us to confront the nature of our present living. Some day our lives will be over, and for good or ill what we have done will stand as the sum of our existence. What do we want our lives to have amounted to, when they are over? What will be their final meaning, if we pursue our present course? It is the knowledge that we must die that gives urgency to the issue of our spiritual health; not for the sake of what becomes of us afterwards, but for the sake of what becomes of us between now and then. The other two spirits might have left Scrooge thoughtful; the vision of his own mortality leaves him desperate; eager to put his new knowledge and intentions into practice, lest there not be time enough to see it all worked out. 9

10 And so Scrooge is transformed. He buys the Cratchitts the biggest turkey in town, pledges an enormous sum to charity, and dines at his nephew s house. Little enough, it would seem; any or all of which any normal person might have done anyway. And the Grinch takes the presents back to Who-ville, and stays to carve the roast beast; and Kris Kringle is saved from the insane asylum and the little girl gets her Christmas wish for a home and a family; and George Bailey runs from the icy bridge and the swirling river to his home and family, precious after all, to be saved from prison and disgrace by the community for whom he has sacrificed so much over the years. They might have happened anyway, any of these events. It doesn t require angels or saviors. Miracle is a word for what happens in the human heart, when it is opened and transformed, not for a special category of things that happen in the world. Anything can be a miracle, any event at all, if it brings about a transformation in love. A for sale sign in front of a house; a child s crumpled flower; a hymn to Christmas; a bad dream. Even the birth of a baby, inconveniently, in a stable any event is a miracle that bears witness to the possibility of a healing change and a new opportunity to bring generosity and connectedness into the world. And it certainly doesn t have to be Christmas. The possibility of transformation is with us every moment of every day of the year. And yet we hardly believe it. We are encased in the rational, caught up in the profitable, confined by the practical except at Christmas, when we open a 10

11 crack for the light of enchantment, and tell the stories of miracles, without having to attach a disclaimer of disbelief. Do I believe? Oh, I believe in miracles, all the time and everywhere, the moments that wait for our eyes to open and see the joy, the opportunity for love, the connectedness that binds us together, one human family in the earth s embrace. I believe in Scrooge, and the Ghost of Christmas Past, and Tiny Tim. I believe in Kris Kringle, and Clarence Oddbody, angel second class, and Little Cindy Lou Who, and even the baby in the manger in Bethlehem bringers of enchantment, messengers of hope for the miraculous, transforming power of love. Maybe always and everywhere is too hard. Maybe we have to start with just one day, opening a crack, expecting miracles, but only then. If that s all I can get, just one day, I ll take it it s a start. But how eagerly I wait for that day! 11