Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, + Amen.
In Jesus’s earthly ministry, our Lord often used stories as a way to drive home His points or to provoke deeper thought from His hearers about the things He taught. This makes sense as telling stories and listening to them are such essential parts of the human experience. Stories draw our imaginations in and allow us to identify more deeply with the messages embedded in them. Many Christians, myself included, cannot help but find Christian messages or themes that remind us of our faith within stories, even if they were not intended by the author. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol might just be one of the most timeless and longstanding stories in our popular culture, and with the sweltering heat we’ve been experiencing, perhaps my desire to “think cold thoughts” brought this story to my mind while contemplating this week’s Gospel reading.
For those who have not seen or read an adaptation of A Christmas Carol, or those who may need a refresher, the story goes like this: Ebenezer Scrooge was a money-lender in nineteenth century London. Scrooge was known throughout town for his cruelty and greed. Scrooge worked very hard to gain and hold onto every cent he could, and not to spend a penny more than he had to. Scrooge overworked his clerk, Bob Cratchit, and on Christmas Eve nearly refuses to give Cratchit Christmas Day off. Later that night, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley. The ghost warns Scrooge that his greed would lead to his doom, and that over the course of the night Scrooge would be visited by three spirits that would bring him warnings in hopes to get him to change his ways.
Over the course of the night, Scrooge is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, showing the effects of Scrooge’s greed on those around him, ultimately culminating in the potential death of Bob Cratchit’s sick son, Tiny Tim. Scrooge also sees his own grave in the future, where no one mourns the loss of him, but instead some find joy in the fact that his cruelty toward them is over. Horrified, Scrooge promises to change.
The next day, on Christmas, Scrooge pours out generosity to everyone around him, proving that he truly has changed his ways. He begins to care for Bon Cratchit and ensures that Tiny Tim can be taken care of. Scrooge’s repentance transforms his greed into generosity and brings Tiny Tim to shout out “God bless us, every one!”
In our Gospel reading for today, Christ Jesus brings a much less dramatic, but more important call to repentance from greed and selfishness. When a man comes to Jesus asking Him to get his brother to share his inheritance, Jesus has no part in the man’s squabble over money and property. Instead, He turns to the crowd He was teaching and gives them a lesson on what we know as the ninth and tenth commandments. Christ Himself says that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” In the parable Christ teaches with, the rich man had a very profitable harvest, and so he tore down his barns and built larger ones. For anyone who’s worked with farming, I’m sure that this does not sound like a bad idea. And in truth, it isn’t! God had blessed this theoretical man in the parable with plenty and making good business decisions with that plenty isn’t something outside the realm of what God would want or allow. It is what the man decides to do afterward that is the issue.
This man who was given plenty as a gift by God decided to simply rest on his laurels, reveling in his plenty, and choosing to “relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” He saw these gifts given to him as his own treasures and an invitation to kick his feet up and dive into earthly pleasures. We sinners are often tempted to find our joy and contentment in the gifts, rather than the gift-giver. People say that money doesn’t buy happiness, but often when we say that, we don’t truly mean it deep down. We like money. We like stuff. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it can buy a new convertible, or a trip to Disney World, or a bigger house. Money can buy us things that can make us happy for a time. It can solve so many problems that we have, like debt, or financial insecurity, or worst of all, boredom. Even as I make light of some of it’s use, make no mistake, our earthly possessions prove to be a great threat to our faith. Even if our love and security is not found simply in our possessions, we can be turned inward by the thought that we somehow earned and deserve the things that we gain. Especially in our context here in America, we are taught to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps, to work hard and get things done to get ourselves where we want to be in life. Simply put, we are taught to rely on ourselves. And when we achieve our goals and become the “masters of our own lives,” then we feel like the rich man in the parable: we can eat, drink, and be merry. We can relax.
But all of these things distract us from what is truly important. While all things are given to us by God alone, they end up becoming temptations that turn us inward, putting our fear, love, and trust in ourselves and our things above God. This rich man of the parable who had celebrated in all that he had gathered for himself completely misplaced his faith, putting it in himself and his possessions, placing these things above God. In the parable, it switches up somewhat abruptly at its end. While a typical parable would end with some sort of narrative showing the results of the character’s actions, Jesus says that God simply speaks directly to the man, admonishing Him. “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” Here, the message of the parable is given: Those who place their love and trust in their possessions will answer to the LORD on the Last Day, and their possessions will not be there to save them.
Our money and all earthly possessions are given to us as gifts from God to bless us and bless others through us. God gives to us what we need in order to sustain us in our daily life, but often gives us more than this so that we can be tools through which we benefit others. God calls us to not hold onto our possessions greedily, but to give freely to the poor, to widows, to those who are in need, and to the church. In this giving, the LORD not only cares for those who need it, but shows them His love and care directly through the Christian servants He uses. While it may not always be as dramatic as the giving done by the repentant Ebenezer Scrooge, we can give joyfully knowing that all we have comes as a gift from the Lord.
Charles Dickens, while he may have had a complicated relationship with the church as an establishment, was a devoted Christian, and wrote himself that: “All my strongest illustrations are derived from the New Testament.” A Christmas Carol is truly a Christian story that professes a good message for all Christians. Here in our Gospel reading, as well as in A Christmas Carol, we can take away a message that the gifts that the Lord God gives to us are not something to hold onto viciously. It is good to be generous with what the LORD gives us. Setting aside part of our earnings to give in service to the Church, both at your local congregation as well as in mission work across your community and the globe, is a good thing. But while Scrooge learns about true Christian Charity and Generosity, there is a dimension to Jesus’s Words on the topic of earthly treasures that Dickens does not reach: the opposite of greed and covetousness is not only giving charitably and generously giving to the church or to those who are in need. It is also placing your trust solely in the Lord. We share generously because we know that all things are gifts from God, and because we know, as the saying goes “you can’t take it with you.” Earthly possessions are temporary, but God’s love and care are eternal. The gift of eternal life, of grace, mercy, and forgiveness, won for us by Christ Jesus upon the cross, is worth far more than any earthly gift that we have, and it is the only thing we have that will truly not pass away. When Christ returns and restores us all to life on the Last Day, then we will relax, but in the presence of God rejoicing in the beauty of His gifts. We will eat and drink continually the body and blood of the Lamb of God for all eternity. We will be merry, not because of temporary earthly gifts, but because we will worship before the throne of our Creator. Until that day, be wary to lay up your treasures in heaven and not on earth. Trust in the LORD, as He is trustworthy and the source of all good things. You are not Scrooge. Instead of spirits in the night, you have received the Holy Spirit, who brings you the truth of the Light of Life. Let it be our prayer that the Holy Spirit would lead us to remain in faith toward God and not in ourselves or our possessions, and to find our true hope in the treasure of Christ Jesus’s saving work.
In the Holy Name of Jesus + Amen.