Jonathon Edward Durham: “I mean things are perfect, but the universe is 14 billion years old and you managed to exist at the same time as A Muppet Christmas Carol.”
Maybe you’re thinking: we just read that beautiful scripture of that beautiful Story and are sitting in front of the full stable where the Baby Jesus, Love itself, has arrived and I’m bringing up A Muppet Christmas Carol?
Yes. Yes, I am. This is the moment of Emmanuel. God with us. I can imagine Jesus with a glass of wine, popcorn, and watching a good story with us.
A Christmas Carol is one of my favorite stories and the story around A Christmas Carol is also one of my favorite stories. It highlights how we are constantly getting lost and forgetting the Big Stories and need reminders. Yes, in the Big Stories, but also in the other stories that highlight the Big Ones. Life stories. Children’s stories. Music stories. Art stories. Book stories.
Charles Dickens lived in a time when people had lost faith and forgot to tend to one another. The poor were forgotten and tucked away…in poor houses, in debtors prisons. Out of sight and out of mind. Where man tended to his own business and his own coffers and let others take care of themselves…
Maybe that sounds familiar…and so a story to remind us…
Scrooge was afraid. Scrooge was a miser because he was afraid of being poor and of being “not enough” again. He wasn’t a “bad man”. He was a frightened man. And fear can make us selfish and blind. Sometimes, we need help to see again.
The Cratchits also have much to fear. They are very poor, close to destitute poor. They have a very sick child, close to death sick. But they don’t give in to the fear. They use it to come together and to remember what matters most.
A wise friend said this week that we will find what we seek. Yes, there is a lot to grieve and hate and despair, but there is also so much beauty and hope and joy. It’s all intermingled and we can’t push aside the “bad” stuff, it’s part of life, but we don’t have to sink into fear and scrooge-y-ness. Our faith asks more of us than that.
We might find that the stable is too full or not full enough. We’re looking for perfect where perfection doesn’t exist. We might find that there are too many people around us or not enough. We’re looking for our perfect, not remembering that our perfect isn’t the same as the perfect of the person next to us. We’re too much or too little…we have too much or too little…we can never win.
Except maybe with God who loves us…regardless.
A Christmas Carol reminds us that we are called to think not just of me…not just bless me. But: Bless Us All.
Blessings come from God, but they also come through our tending to one another. They come to us in giving. A Christmas Carol reminded us to be giving and kind again and to see all those around us—including the meek and the poor. Blessings come to us in seeking, not perfection, but the perfectly imperfect all around us. The perfectly imperfect within us.
Our faith is one of leaning into hard times…we look at the manger and the gentle cattle lowing and the softly cooing baby. But Mary and Joseph just walked 90 miles to get here. PAUSE. Mary just birthed a baby with no women to help her, in the chaos of a barn, very far from home. PAUSE. This poor couple are tucked away and out of sight of the Inn where the rest of the paying customers are warm and safe. PAUSE.
Yes, our faith teaches us to be good and kind and giving in hard times. Our faith teaches us to trust in the hard times and when we are in good times to share and minister to those who are not.
Our faith is to be in relationship with God (Universe-Spirit) and that means that, in return, we are the hands, and words, and even the thoughts of Grace in this world.
So yes, God Bless Us. But also, and most especially, God Bless us Everyone.
Community Church of North Orange & Tully 