Wow! Some of you may know Anne Lamott’s little book on prayer, Help, Thanks, Wow. Most of us are familiar with prayers asking God for help, especially in difficulties. Many of us also practice daily forms of prayerful gratitude. “Wow” is something else. So that’s what I’d like to focus on this Christmas morning, which is definitely a good time to say, “Wow!”
Let’s start with a fictional character: Ebenezer Scrooge. How many of you know who he was? Of course, you do. He’s the hero of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. It’s an old story now – Dickens wrote it in 1843 – but it still seems so relevant to me. In fact, I’ve always loved the story. I remember watching as a girl the 1951 black and white version starring British actor Alistair Sim, whose wonderfully expressive face and gestures so perfectly captured old Ebenezer for me. Of course, there have been many other versions of the story since then. For the last several years I’ve listened once a year at this time to an audio version of the original story read by Tim Curry, a gifted actor who wonderfully renders all the various voices in the story. Most of you probably know the story: how on Christmas Eve old, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future and wakes up on Christmas day with a newly transformed heart.
A Christmas Carol is really a timeless fable, and every time I listen to it, I hear something new. This year I heard two motifs in the story that are connected, at least for me. The first is how isolated and alone Scrooge is before his conversion. He seemingly cares nothing for his clerk, Bob Cratchit, verbally abuses a couple of men collecting for the poor, and refuses the hospitality of his nephew Fred. After leaving his office on Christmas Eve, he goes home alone to his solitary, gloomy chambers in an empty and unused warehouse. The second motif is how excited Scrooge was when he woke up after the spirits’ visitations. In the 1951 version, after tucking his nightshirt into his trousers, Alistair Sim’s Ebenezer does handsprings, as he discovers that he is still alive. Even Tim Curry manages to convey the giddy joy Scrooge feels on Christmas morning. Wow!
The excitement Scrooge really speaks to me. Actually, today’s Scripture readings make me feel almost as excited, as joyfully giddy, as Scrooge felt. Wha…? The excitement was all last night, wasn’t it? Last night there were angels filling the skies, belting out “Glory to God in the highest….” There were astounded shepherd saying to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see what the angels were talking about.” And this morning? No angels, no stable, no charming, weary mother, no shining baby.
But, believe it or not, hear it or not, this morning’s readings also give us some pretty exciting news, exciting enough perhaps to make us giddy and joyful. Take the reading from the prophet Isaiah. This portion of the book was probably written in the mid-6th century BC, towards the end of the Judean exile in Babylonia. Here the prophet begins to foretell the eventual return of the exiles to Jerusalem. Can’t you hear the prophet’s almost breathless excitement, as he pictures someone running to proclaim that God is in charge, and that God is delivering God’s people? The news is so exciting that the watchmen up on the walks break out in singing. Even the streets and walls of Jerusalem are commanded to sing. Imagine it: Would the walls of Warsaw have broken out in singing in 1945, or in Raqqa, or in an abandoned Appalachian coal town? And what were the watchmen and the ruined walls so excited about? They knew that God had done something so wonderful that no one could miss it, that all would see what God had finally accomplished on their behalf. Wow!
Even the opening of the Letter to the Hebrews, which sometimes overwhelms us with its theological understanding of Jesus, picks up the theme of what God has done. Actually it’s a sermon, not a letter. It was probably written sometime between 60 and 100 AD, i.e., probably after the gospel of Mark, the oldest gospel, and probably before the gospel of John, the latest. In order to prepare his hearers for his description of who Jesus was and what Jesus did, the writer begins by rehearsing the mighty acts of God in the past, some of which we just heard. Some “wow!” there too. And more “wow!” to come.
But it’s the gospel reading that, for me at least, contains the most exciting, even shocking, news of all we’ve heard. Wha…? “It’s all so abstract,” you say. “Bring back the baby and his charming mother.” Nope. This morning we get to hear something entirely different. And here let me say that what we just heard is not a “prologue,” as some call it, as if these verses are somehow detached from the story about Jesus that the evangelist has to tell. No, we have heard the very beginning of Jesus’ story, which we need to hear in order to understand the rest of the story. Actually, the very first words of this gospel would have excited, perhaps even shocked, its original hearers. “In the beginning….” Does that sound familiar? It should. Those are the opening words of Genesis, and the Greek words in John are exactly the same words as at the beginning of the Greek translation of Genesis.
“In the beginning” takes us back to the story of how God spoke Creation into being. That’s a “wow!” right there. So John’s hearers knew from the very first sentence that they were going to hear a creation story, i.e., something pretty spectular. They were ready for a story about God expressing Godself through God’s cosmic principle, what the Greeks called the Logos, or the Word. God expressed Godself through the Word, the evangelist told them, in order to produce the cosmos, to bring forth light – just as in Genesis – to shine that light onto all people and invite all people into that light. And now the exciting, even shocking part! That Word, that expression of the great hidden mysterious ground of the entire cosmos, that construction foreman of all that exists, joined itself to humanity and pitched its tent among us, or “became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood,” as Eugene Peterson puts it. Wow! Hear that again. What is eternal, unchanging, immortal, allowed itself to become changeable, mortal, and subject eventually to the same fate as all of humanity. What is distant, mysterious, and unseen, suddenly came right to us, plain to see. Wow!
This is the exciting, even shocking, good news of this day, in some ways even more exciting and shocking than the news of the baby and his charming mother, and everything else we see in Nativity scenes. This is what we celebrate today: that divinity and humanity are irrevocably joined, that God shines through to us in Jesus. And there’s more: because humanity and divinity are irrevocably joined, the same divine quality, the same light that we see in Jesus, we can now see also in ourselves. I’m risking heresy but I’ll say it anyway: it’s not the incarnation that we’re celebrating, it’s incarnation, that the great cosmic mystery is ultimately also incarnate in us. All of us who are awake to the presence of God within can also shine forth God to the world. Wow! We should be jumping up and down. We should be running out into the streets calling out, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it,” like the newsies in old movies.
Why don’t we do that? Well, of course, we Episcopalians don’t do that. We do “everything decently and in order.” A little swaying in the pew or chancel when the music gets a little dancy maybe, but calling out “Hallelujah, Praise the Lord?” I don’t think so!
Which brings me back to Ebenezer Scrooge. Waking up as a changed man and excited to discover that he was still alive, Scrooge excitedly ran to his window. The scene outside it was now in full, glorious sunlight. Scrooge then began the joy-filled, challenging process of reconnecting with the people around him. He called to a young lad to get the poulterer, so he could send an enormous turkey to the Cratchit family. He dressed and went church. On the way home he ran into the old gentleman soliciting funds for the poor. Scrooge apologized for abusing him and pledged an exceedingly generous amount. Then he did what was hardest of all: he went to his nephew’s house and begged forgiveness for his neglect and ill treatment. And of course, the good-natured nephew warmly welcomed him into the family gathering, now filled with Christmas warmth and joy.
So, just as Charles Dickens intended, as we seek to live more deeply into the mystery of incarnation, perhaps we can take Scrooge’s example to heart. In our excitement at what God has actually done, perhaps we too can come out of gloom, darkness, and isolation. Perhaps we too can welcome the brilliant light of day, seek forgiveness where we know we must, then renew, extend, and cherish our connections with the rest of the human family. Let the words of African-American theologian Howard Thurman speak to you:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
That God has called us and empowers us to do any of these things should surely cause all of us to say, “Wow!”
