Sermon - 11 December 2011
go4tli
Sunday. So let me pose his most open-ended discussion question to the
group, since I'm interested in your answers:
* Who's your favorite Christmas villain?
For me, personally, it's Jack Skellington ("The Nightmare Before
Christmas"). Okay, he's not a villain *as such*, but he's
sympathizable to me. He's simply *incompetent*, and in the throes of
his passion, simply *unaware* of the damage his incompetence is
doing. And after he's done, he realizes he made a big mistake, but he
*learns* from it.
And, I admit, there's a part of me that enjoys the atmosphere of the
story -- it's a nice antidote to the saccharine sweetness of so many
holiday tales.
Other Christmas villains... well, we'd like to think we're not as
nasty as Ebenezer Scrooge or the Grinch, wouldn't we? We don't want
to think that they're sympathizable. Hopefully, we're self-aware
enough to understand our own cruelty before it sinks to *those*
depths.
And there, I think, is the germ of an idea that reveals why *else*
Christmas villains are so popular, especially Scrooge. Yes, as Fred
pointed out, they *change*; unlike Herod, they grow to love Christmas
in spite of themselves. And we love that. But it seems to me that
there's something a little more subtle than that, and it lies in the
question of whether or not they're sympathetic characters.
See, the spirits don't reveal any great mysteries to Scrooge -- none
of the deep secrets of life or the Universe. The only unusual thing
about his learning is that it was delivered supernaturally. What's
important is *what* he learned -- because the moral of "A Christmas
Carol" is much deeper than "Don't be grumpy during the holidays".
It's about how we determine what's good and what's evil.
That understanding is too often glossed over; the scene where things
start to turn dark -- when Christmas Present parts his robes to reveal
the sickly children clinging to him underneath, Ignorance and Want --
is often omitted entirely. Because it's uncomfortable. We start to
realize at that moment that evil doesn't come from grumpiness; evil
comes from our own unwillingness to imagine other people's plight.
Grumpiness is a mere *symptom* of that insidious, self-imposed
alienation.
The moral of Dickens isn't a warning against grumpiness; it's a
warning against apathy, against the deliberate hardening of our hearts
against other people. It only takes the smallest effort to imagine
what others might -- or must -- be going through, how we've hurt them,
and so on. And that little bit of imagination, to the Christian, is
*everything*. Jesus Himself thought the concept important enough to
squeeze in as a cheat when someone asked Him to name the single most
important commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew
22:34-40). And before we can love our neighbor, we must imagine his
plight, and try to know what it is like to be in his place.
Consider the deepest torment that Dickens could conjure: Walking among
people, understanding their problems, but being powerless to help them
in any way. If you can understand why this is a tortuous concept for
a Christian to contemplate -- or, if not, why it *should be* tortuous
for a Christian to contemplate -- then perhaps you can also understand
why I continue to resist those who repeat over and over that I am
powerless to change things, helpless to prevent or even forestall the
juggernaut of evil's increasing influence on society.
Dickens rescues Christmas from self-righteousness, from self-
indulgence, from self-defeatedness, and even from bombastic religious
ceremony and porcelain baby Jesuses with the reminder that we are not
islands unto ourselves, constrained to love only those we find
deserving or convenient. He brings us this message with ghosts
because it is a message we *ought* to find haunting.
(If I were asked again for my favorite Christmas villain, though, I'd
have to go with Rudolph's dad in the old Claymation special. He ends
up forcing his son to face deciding between conformity and exile.
Harsh -- especially from a family member. <g>)