Matthews United Methodist December 9, 2018 What Would Jesus Say to the Grinch? (Advent 2) Proverbs 4:20-23 (NRSV)

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1 Matthews United Methodist December 9, 2018 What Would Jesus Say to the Grinch? (Advent 2) Proverbs 4:20-23 (NRSV) My son, pay attention to what I say; turn your ear to my words. Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to one s whole body. Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. The Sermon If I ve learned anything in pastoral ministry over the years, it s that people are rarely neutral about the approach of Christmas. Some of us live at a North Pole of intense excitement, while others of us choose a South Pole of irritation. Usually, I am at the north end of the Christmas poles with the happy people. But there have been a few Advent seasons during which I have found myself at the South Pole, feeling strangely empty and exhausted by all the hoopla. The first couple of Christmases after my dad died were like that for me. And while I was fortunate enough to have excited children in my home to drag me back into the festivities, I felt the sadness that characterizes Advent for so many people. A season that is all about family can be a desperately lonely time for people who find themselves living in isolation, grieving the loss of a loved one, or trying to cope with family stress. And if Advent happens to come when we are in a spiritually barren place, the call to open up our hearts can intensify our experiences of doubt or alienation. Undoubtedly, some people are just not feeling it this Advent, due to temperament or circumstance or who knows what. Perhaps the season finds you at a South Pole of sadness or in a wilderness of spiritual alienation. If that s the case, it s important to remember that Advent is a season about Longing and Emptiness and Waiting. It is a season set aside to help us realize that we need to be set free from our current condition. Theodore Geisel, better known to millions of children and adults as Dr. Seuss, gave us the character of the Grinch, who since 1957, has become the patron saint of all the Party Poopers, Debbie Downers, and Eeyores who steal the joy out of everyone s Christmas. This morning, we re taking a closer look at what Jesus might say to the Grinch, and to all of us who struggle 1

2 with some aspects of the season. Dr. Seuss introduces us to the Green Man himself in the opening lines of this Christmas classic: The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season! Now please don t ask why. No one quite knows the reason. But, just because Dr. Seuss didn t give us the backstory shouldn t keep us from asking, Why? I think we should explore some possible explanations behind why anyone would hate Christmas so much. This is supposed to be a time of joy, of celebration, of singing and eating and opening presents. How can anyone hate that? And yet, we have the Grinch, the standard bearer for everyone who dislikes noise, spending money, and helping others against their will. Dr. Seuss doesn t tell us a lot about the Grinch. We know he lives in a cave just north of Whoville. We know he has a dog, the poor, long-suffering Max, who is forced to wear a reindeer antler and pull an overloaded sleigh. This guy doesn t like Christmas, or it seems, even his faithful dog who is on the receiving end of much of the Grinch s anger. No wonder he lived alone and didn t have any friends! For all we know, he sat by himself in his cold, damp cave day after day brooding and pacing and dreaming of ways to make life miserable for others. But why? How did the Grinch get to be the Grinch? With apologies to William Shakespeare, we might say that: Some people are born Grinchy, some achieve Grinchiness, and some have Grinchiness thrust upon them. So which was it? I think everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, so I don t believe he was born Grinchy. And why would anyone strive to become a Grinch? That doesn t seem like a worthy career goal to me. In other words, perhaps the Grinch became that way because of life s circumstances. Perhaps Grinchiness was thrust upon him. We also need to admit that the Grinch isn t unique in his downward spiral into holiday hatred. That can happen to any of us, can t it? Even the most jovial among us can quickly turn green with anger when we are pin balled around in checkout lines filled with impatient shoppers or stuck in mall traffic when we just needed a tie. Think you re incapable of becoming a Grinch? 2

3 Well, just spend an hour standing in the customer service line at Walmart between now and December 24 th. Be very careful, you might discover your Inner Grinch hiding inside of you! But I wonder if the Grinch s Seasonal Hatred Disorder has deeper roots? I wonder if, at some point in his life, the Grinch was actually happy about Christmas? It makes sense, doesn t it? I bet he participated in the decorating and the singing and cooking the roast beast, until one year he just snapped. Maybe it was receiving one too many fruitcakes from Aunt Marge, or hearing Christmas music the day after Halloween. Maybe the memory of a lost loved one became too much for him to bear. Perhaps it was the recognition that all the trimmings and trappings and materialism didn t add anything positive to Christmas. Whatever the reason, the Grinch was either exiled from Whoville, or chose to remove himself from the situation, hauling himself and Max up Mt. Crumpit to a cave in order to escape. Aren t there times during this season when you d like to escape, too? Escape the credit card bills, escape the contentious family gatherings, and escape the memories of people who are no longer here to share Christmas with you? Sometimes, it s easier to be alone than to suffer the challenges of being in community during this time of year. Let s just lock ourselves in a cave until Dec. 26 when the madness is over! But there s a problem with being alone: it gets really lonely, and isolation can do strange things to a Who like me or like You. I read a story recently about a whale nicknamed 52 Hertz. The story began in 1989 when a US Navy submarine picked up some strange e whale songs, but there was one big difference. The key notes of this song were at a frequency of 52 Hertz, while most whales communicate with sounds in a range between 15 and 20 hertz (BBC Earth, Chris Baraniuk, 15 April 2015). That means no other whale on earth can hear this whale s call, so he swims around the Pacific Ocean, calling out for love and companionship, but never gets a response. That s why scientists nicknamed 52 Hertz the loneliest whale in the world. 3

4 That s also what happens when we isolate ourselves: we start to communicate in ways that don t register with others. After spending years and years on his own, perhaps the Grinch forgot what Christmas was really about, and convinced himself that it was OK to hate Christmas. He came to believe that stopping Christmas by stealing things from the Whos was actually a good plan. Without a community around to love him, nurture him, and hold him accountable, the Grinch lost his bearings. I don t believe the Grinch was born with a heart that was two sizes too small. Without a community around him, I believe his heart shrunk: a classic case of Use it or lose it. When that happened, something very dangerous occurred. Over time, the Grinch s twisted mind came to believe that there was an Us and a Them at Christmas. The Us was the Grinch, and the Them was all of the Whos living in the valley below. Once you start looking at the world in such black and white terms or should I say green and white terms? you can justify all sorts of nastiness, including trying to steal Christmas. The Germans have a great word for this. It s Schadenfreude, and according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it means Pleasure derived from another person's misfortune. There s a lot of Schadenfreude going on in our world right now, as people revel in the failure and misfortune of others. Is that the kind of joy we should be proclaiming this season? The Grinch believed that misery loves company, so by stealing the Whos Christmas he was trying to create some company to share his misery. If the Grinch Ain t Happy, Ain t Nobody Happy! probably sounded like a good substitute for Merry Christmas! Christmas became collateral damage for the Grinch s anger, and he ended up hating everything about Christmas and those who celebrate it. And in all honesty, there are parts of Christmas that can easily become irritating and easy to dislike. In some ways, I don t blame the Grinch. One of the things the Grinch hates about Christmas is the noise. For tomorrow he knew all the Who girls and boys would wake bright and early. They d rush for their toys! And then! Oh the noise! Noise! Noise! 4

5 That s the one thing he hated most about Christmas morning: all of the beeping and whistling, the sirens and horns! All of those toys making Noise! Noise! Noise! AMEN? When our ears are filled with the noisiness of the season, and it can sap the joy out of the merriest of Whos. But somewhere, buried beneath the noise is a still, small voice, saying, Don t be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. You will conceive a son, and you will name him Jesus. Beneath the honking of car horns and the jingle of cash registers, there s an angel choir singing, Glory to God in the highest Heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors! Beneath our own grumbling about Christmas materialism is a voice calling out, Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight. If that s the message you re listening for this season, then the best place to hear it is right here, in the midst of this community. Oh, you can hear it out there, but it sounds more like a slick commercial than a proclamation of Good News. There s a terrible irony in attempting to reclaim the meaning of the season by waging War on Christmas. There s only a war if we let ourselves be drawn into battle. The Grinch tried to declare war on Christmas, but the Whos didn t take the bait. They simply proclaimed their own good news that had nothing to do with decorations and presents; candy and toys. It was the reality that God s love is shed abroad in in their hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Good News is that no one not even the most evil Grinch is beyond God s power to reconcile and redeem. God s love is what restored the Grinch s heart to its original size. I do feel sorry for the Grinch. Maybe his head wasn t screwed on just right. Maybe is shoes were too tight. Or maybe, in his desire to achieve Schadenfreude, to see those unlike him suffer, he convinced himself that when it comes to Christmas, there are winners and there are losers, and it s ALWAYS better to be a winner even if you re all alone!. Jesus might ask the Grinch if he forgot to guard his heart, as Proverbs recommends, but instead, let it be contaminated by things that detract from the joy. It s easy for us to write him off, but remember: there s a Grinch hiding in each of us. You and I are susceptible to losing our 5

6 moorings during this season, too. It s easy to get caught up in the symphony of sounds and tune out the voices of the angels who come to speak good news to us. And Jesus would say to us and the Grinch that there IS good news! Christmas is coming. Christ will be born again in our hearts and in our world. Joy will spread and Love will abound. It would be a terrible thing if we missed all of that because we were too busy decorating and buying and wrapping; if we missed it because we were too busy grumbling about this and that and the other. The final act of the Grinch s redemption is his reconciliation with the people of Whoville. At the beginning of the story he is physically separate from them; he at the top of Mount Crumpit, they in the valley far below. Now, the physical distance is closed, and he is welcomed at the table, where he, himself, carves the roast beast. The Grinch is a story that begins in alienation and separation, ends in fellowship and reconciliation. And believe it or not, that is our story, too. And yes, I think we are meant to see ourselves as the green, selfish, slightly broken Grinch. We are meant to commiserate with his plot to destroy that which aggravates him most deeply. Ultimately, we are meant to see ourselves as the ones who are changed by the deep and abiding love of God expressed in the Christ-child, whose birth we celebrate, and whose return we await. Jesus IS the promise of forgiveness and reconciliation with God, no matter how deep that sin runs, or how high, or how wide. In the character of the Grinch and in his transformation, we find the message of salvation and redemption that is the core of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Grinch almost missed it all, didn t he? But we don t need to, because there is Hope, for the Grinch AND for us. For all the reasons we may find to dislike Christmas, or those who don t celebrate Christmas our way, HOPE is coming. And when there is hope, even hearts that are depressed, sad, lonely, and bitter even hearts that have shrunk two sizes too small have reason to believe and celebrate. Thanks be to God. Amen. 6