Sermon by:
The Very Rev. Pamela Dolan
Sermon for Advent 3, December 15, 2024
“Bah Humbug, You Brood of Vipers”
If you are lucky enough to still be receiving actual Christmas cards in the mail, I think it’s a safe bet that very few of this year’s selection will feature pictures of a wild-eyed John the Baptist preaching repentance by the River Jordan or will be adorned with the message “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
This week’s Gospel passage emphasizes once again the countercultural, uncouth, not-ready-for-prime-time ways of this Advent prophet. He is haranguing people, calling them names, warning them that the axe is lying at the root of the tree and the winnowing fork is in his hand, and that soon anything that does not bear good fruit will be thrown into unquenchable fire. And yet, at the end of what seems like a rant or even a full-on tirade, Luke calmly, almost cheerfully, reports “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”
Good news, huh? Wow, I do not want to know what it sounds like when John delivers bad news!
But seriously, what shift in our perspective does it take to hear this unflinching, unfiltered call to repentance as good news? And how can any of this be appropriate on a Sunday supposedly focused on rejoicing?
To offer one possible answer, I’m going to turn to another favorite curmudgeon who usually shows up at this time of year: Ebenezer Scrooge. You probably don’t need me to outline the plot of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, even if it’s been years since you’ve read the book or seen a stage version of it. It is the ultimate tale of transformation and restoration and in the original is not nearly as saccharine as you may remember it. (And if you’ve really never seen any of the many film adaptations, then by all means go home and watch the Muppet’s Christmas Carol. You can thank me later.)
For example, in case anyone is in any doubt that the character of Scrooge starts off as a really bad-tempered, disagreeable man, you need only be reminded of one of his early speeches, which ends with the famous line, “If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”
The point in bringing up Scrooge on this third Sunday of Advent is that his transformation from a truly cross and cantankerous old miser to the loving, generous, happy soul he is revealed to be at the end of the story is not an easy one. John the Baptist has warned us that all the branches that don’t bear fruit will be cast into the fire, and there is quite a bit of unfruitful, unfaithful chaff that needs to be burned off of Scrooge in order for him to be able to love and be loved again. It’s a painful process, but one with a decidedly joyful outcome.
I’m going to go out on a limb with my comparison here and suggest that Jacob Marley almost serves as a John the Baptist figure in A Christmas Carol, not in preparing the way for the Messiah but in offering good news that at first sounds to the hearer very much like bad news. You’ll recall that Marley was Scrooge’s old business partner, and his ghost is the first to visit Scrooge. Bound by horrible chains and clearly in agony, Marley says, “I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate.” Yet when he tells Scrooge that the only way for him to have a different outcome than his own sorry fate is to be visited by three more ghosts, Scrooge demurs, answering, “I think I’d rather not.”
Luckily for Scrooge, the spirits show up anyway, and they are relentless truth-tellers who take him into some really dark places, not least in his own psyche. No wonder John the Baptist uses such brutal language to talk about repentance—for someone who has avoided it for such a very long time, shutting himself off from any relationship that would ask him to grow and change, it is a very difficult path.
In the end, of course, the bitter medicine offered by the ghosts is exactly what Scrooge needs, and he comes away from the experience a changed man. Or, more precisely, he comes away a healed man, one who has fearlessly inventoried all his faults and failings, and the many wounds he was carrying with him into the world and has found a way to make peace with it all and move forward, free from the invisible shackles that bound him. The reckoning that he had so feared and dreaded turned out to be his salvation. The process has been ruthless and painful, it has involved throwing some of his habits of thought and behavior into the fire, but there seems no doubt that it was worth it.
This is precisely the reason that a call to repentance is indeed good news, whether it comes in the uncouth form of John the Baptist or as spectral visitors from Christmas Past, Present, and Future. It is only through continual seasons of repentance, or intentional efforts to turn our lives in a new direction, that we can be fully healed and made whole. Furthermore, repentance isn’t some internal, spiritual thing that only touches our souls or saves us from eternal torment. It results in new behavior and ultimately in restored relationships and healthier communities.
John the Baptist tells people who are learning to repent that they should live in a way that does not oppress or exploit others, even if they happen to be a tax collector or a soldier, two professions that were known for their abuse of power. It’s no wonder that Charles Dickens, who was desperately concerned about the inhuman exploitation of the poor under the industrial capitalism of his day, portrayed Scrooge as a money lender, working in a counting-house, and likely responsible for foreclosing on and financially ruining numerous poor families in London. He was exactly the kind of person that John the Baptist wanted to reach with his “good news”!
Dickens also emphasizes that when Scrooge comes out on the other side of his transformation, he isn’t just a happier, nicer person. He repairs, as far as possible, the harms he has done. Scrooge works on having an entirely different relationship with money, with the poor, and with his employee, as well as restoring his relationships with his family and his community. Surely this is the fruit of his repentance and healing. It is the kind of course correction that would cause the prophet Zephaniah to say of God’s delight in his beloved ones, “He will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.”
It is hard to imagine a more delightful presentation of the great joy
that follows on repentance, than the last few pages of A Christmas Carol. It’s not just about buying a big turkey and hugging Tiny Tim. Dickens seems to positively revel in portraying the changed nature of Scrooge. He writes of a man “so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions” that he laughs and cries all at once, and dances through his morning routine, even while he’s shaving! Before he interacts with anyone else, Scrooge says to himself, “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!”
The man who once could not find anything merry about Christmas, who could not even utter those words, becomes the man who keeps it better than anyone else, knowing its true meaning and eager to spread its joy wherever he goes. This is the good fruit of his repentance, the reason for his rejoicing.
What else is there for me to add, except to say, “God bless us, everyone.” Amen.
