"Do You Believe in Me or Not?" (Jacob Marley in "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens)

One of the most impactful non-scriptural Christmas classics is surely"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens.  Each year thousands relive this timeless story and recommit to honor Christmas, to honor Christ, more devotedly throughout the new year.  Many place themselves in the position of Ebenezer Scrooge and realize the places in which they are falling short of the lofty standard disciples of the Savior are held to.  In their own way each reader finds themselves repeating Scrooge's promise to allow the spirit of Christmas to live in their hearts throughout the year.

At the beginning of this story Scrooge's deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, appears to Scrooge and tells him of the three spirits which will visit him over the course of that night.  After speaking with Scrooge for a time Marley questions "You do not believe in me, do you?" Scrooge's response is that he does not and he claims Marley could merely be an hallucination caused by a "bit of bad beef or an undercooked potato." In spite of the evidence attesting to Marley's reality and Scrooge's obvious unease he stubbornly insists that this scene before him is nothing more than a defect of his own senses. He even goes so far as to mock Marley by responding that he "is more of gravy than of grave."  At this Marley leaps to his feet and shouts in frustration "Man of the worldly mind!  Do you believe in me or not?"

During this Christmas season that question has lingered in my mind.  I have imagined our Savior asking me exactly what Marley inquired of Scrooge: "Man of the worldly mind!  Do you believe in me or not?" Another beautiful Christmas season is quickly drawing to its close. In a matter of a few brief hours the laughter and light of another Christmas day will fade into our memories and this most recent of opportunities for rededication will have passed. If any of us have refused to step off the bustling streets of crowded Bethlehem town that we may kneel in worship in a cattle stall then we will be left to lament that we did not join in proclaiming "Glory to God in the highest."

Too many of us will quickly forget what we have felt once the tree is removed and the Christ-centered music is again drowned out by the music of the world.  Even more tragically, too many of us could not or would not see Christ as the meaning behind it all over this past month.  Christmas could be viewed as a lifeline thrown each year to those drifting out to sea as they drown in the tide of worldliness quickly engulfing them.  Too many, however, see the buoy in front of them for these four short weeks but refuse to grasp it as they are preoccupied speculating on what exciting new beach toys will be waiting for them on shore.  Or worrying over whether the rescue boat will have a plate of perfectly arranged and decorated sugar cookies shaped like snowmen waiting for them when they are pulled aboard.  Or, perhaps worst of all, they never even notice the buoy as they float on their backs, blissfully enjoying the sun on their face as they drift towards a whirlpool of spiritual ruin.  To portray this as the ghost of Christmas present did to Scrooge, year after year too many allow ignorance and want to seep into a profoundly sacred but fleeting season, "and together [those two] spell 'doom.'"  As we near the end of another Christmas season I imagine the Savior urgently looking at those who continue to refuse to allow his birth, life and sacrifice to change or heal them and exclaiming "Do you believe in me or not?"  

At the conclusion of A Christmas Carol the third and final spirit shows Scrooge the scenes of his own death.  As Scrooge sees nothing but indifference or even outright relief by others in response to his passing he refuses to believe the deceased man is himself.  He protests repeatedly that it must be some other person.  When he sees some of London's least respectable persons bartering over his possessions he reasons that they must have found close replicas, this man must have had personal effects bearing an uncanny similarity to Scrooge's belongings but surely they could not be his things.  Finally this ghost of Christmas yet to come takes Scrooge to a graveyard and motions for him to clear the snow covering the name on one of the headstones.  Sensing what he will find waiting for him beneath the snow Scrooge asks if what he has been shown "are the shadows of things which will be or of those things which might be if they remain unchanged by the future?"  No response is given.  Finally Scrooge kneels down, wipes the snow from the top of the headstone with a trembling hand and finds the name "Ebenezer Scrooge" looking ominously back at him.  At this Scrooge breaks down in emotion and pleads "tell me that I may sponge away the writing on this stone."  

Brothers and sisters, that "spong[ing] away" is precisely why we celebrate Christmas.  To Ebenezer Scrooge, to you, to me and to each and every man, woman and child the Babe of Bethlehem responds "Yes.  Through me, through your faith in my sacrifice, you may sponge away the writing on that stone and the stain of all other transgressions or injustices."  Perhaps he would gently remind us he was born for the ultimate reason of making such a blessing possible.  The truth is that we do not now nor will we ever deserve the baby in our nativities.  We will never merit his gift.  We will never be able to recompense his death.  We will never deserve Christmas.  To adapt another sober warning given to Scrooge, we truly are "Less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child."  Yet, the miracle of Christmas, which far surpasses any star in the heavens or night without darkness, is that the life, the sacrifice and the baby were given in love by a Father who "comendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

I express my immense gratitude for Christmas. Not for the gatherings, gifts or festivities, as pleasant as those may be.  No, I am grateful and give my witness of the gift, the one who promised to "gather [us] as a hen gathereth her chickens" long before Christmas parties or feasts were thought of.  Scrooge's nephew had it right when he said "I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round…as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.  And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"   And so say I, as I give my witness of a Savior who stands as constantly and unfalteringly as the star marking the path to his cradle.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.