Homily | 🎄 The Ghost of Christmas Present

Third Sunday of Advent

Psalm 146:5-10 | James 5:7-10 | Matthew 11:2-11

Christ Lutheran Church in Aptos, CA

A couple of weeks ago, we started our Advent journey in this homily series with Ebenezer Scrooge and the three ghosts from ‘A Christmas Carol’—(or the Gospel of Dickens as I like to reference it). Last time, we met the first ghost—the Ghost of Christmas Past who took Ebenezer back through his own history to see how he became the man he is. And now, that ghost has left Scrooge trembling in his bed as he awaits the second ghost—the Ghost of Christmas Present.

Meanwhile, in our Scripture from the Gospel of Matthew, John the Baptizer is in prison, and he’s asking the question you and I might be too polite to say out loud: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

Translation: “Jesus, is this really it? Because from where I’m sitting, you’re not who I expected. I expected someone to usher in the Kingdom of God. You know, justice, rolling down like waters. The powerful, thrown down from their thrones. The humble lifted up. But here I am, in a cell, and you’re frolicking around Galilee hobnobbing with drunkards, telling your little parables, and nothing seems to be changing. So be straight with me, cuz. Are you really the Messiah or should I keep looking?”

This is the Advent question. We’re waiting for something, but we’re not really sure what. Is it peace on earth? An end to suffering? At least a clear sign that God is in charge here?! And meanwhile, parents are still burying children who die too young. Betrayal looms large. Spouses wake up alone after 50 years of marriage. The news shows us refugees fleeing violence, families ripped apart, and people with power using it to crush the most vulnerable. Who can blame us for thinking, “If I were God, I’d run this ship differently. If it was my job to save the world, I definitely wouldn’t hang on a cross... and die.”

Back to our story, the Ghost of Christmas Present shows up. When Scrooge enters the next room, he finds the spirit sitting on a throne of abundance: game, poultry, chestnuts, mince-pies, and big bowls of punch. This spirit is overflow incarnate. Generosity embodied.

He doesn’t lecture Scrooge about economics or morality or whether the poor deserve charity. He just bellows out, “Come in and know me better, man!”

He takes Scrooge to the Cratchits’ house, where they’re celebrating Christmas with almost nothing. Bob Cratchit’s paychecks from Scrooge barely cover enough to feed his family of four. His disabled child, Tiny Tim, is fragile, his future uncertain. They have every reason to despair. But there they are, raising their glasses, laughing, reveling in each other’s presence. Even drinking to Scrooge’s health, despite the bind he has them in. The party is happening, with or without Scrooge’s approval.

Then the ghost shows Scrooge his nephew Fred’s party, full of joy despite Scrooge’s decades of refusal to join. The ghost and Scrooge continue on...

It’s brilliant how Dickens tells the story. He describes the terrifying, bleak environment first (the outside), and then contrasts it with the warmth and humanity found inside. He takes Scrooge to people “labouring in the bowels of the earth.” These miners approach a “mud and stone” hut. Despite the bleak landscape, Scrooge sees a light shining from the window. Inside, they find “cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire.” It’s a multi-generational gathering (”an old, old man and woman, with their children and their children’s children, and another generation beyond that”) all decking the room in holly and singing a Christmas song.

The Ghost then moves them to a place Dickens describes as a “dismal reef of sunken rocks” where the water “raged and dashed” and the “storm-birds” rose and fell like the waves. It’s solitary, dangerous, and surrounded by the “awful sea.” Despite the storm outside, a “ray of brightness” shines from the lighthouse lamp. Inside, there are only two men (the keepers of the lighthouse). But even in this isolation, they’ve “made a fire” that sheds a “warm and mellow light.” Dickens notes that they “wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog.”

Finally, they move directly over the “black and heaving sea.” Dickens describes the “horror” of the water and the “darkness of the night.” An ominous picture. He lists the lonely figures of the ship’s crew: the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, and the officers on watch—all “dark, ghostly figures in their several stations.” The wind hums through the rigging, which Dickens notes is usually a “funeral cry.”

Yet, “every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day.”

Scrooge sees all this, and his first knee-jerk response is cynicism and defeatism. He’s got what we might call Scrooge-vision. He sees only the squalor, the chaos and instead of entering it with love, he builds walls of isolation and self-protectionism against it. He becomes curved in on himself to protect himself against the chaos of life. He notices the threat to Tiny Tim’s life and misses the feast happening right now at the Cratchits’ table.

We’re all wired this way. We inherited these nervous systems that are designed to look for threats in a split second. It kept our ancestors from becoming lunch for a saber-toothed tiger hiding in the bushes. Now it mostly just keeps us anxious.

The Ghost doesn’t create any of this joy he’s showing Scrooge. He’s just a messenger. He just makes Scrooge see it.

What Scrooge and John the baptizer are both missing is this: The party’s already happening. The problem isn’t that the kingdom isn’t coming. The problem is our vision.

Jesus doesn’t defend himself against John. He doesn’t send back a theological dis track or 95 theses.

He just tells his posse, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

Now, before we get too excited, let’s be clear about what Jesus is and isn’t saying... If we look at the whole story, it’s clear: Jesus doesn’t heal every sick person. He doesn’t raise every dead body. Even his buddy Lazarus will die after his divine resuscitation. Jesus didn’t keep all suffering from happening around him. Toward the end of his ministry, it’s as if he realized it wasn’t the healing that would save the world, but his own dying and rising—the pattern of life in every atom of creation.

Tiny Tim’s chair is still precarious. The Cratchit’s poverty is still real. Kids on this very planet today are dodging drone strikes and machine gun fire instead of playing in the park. This upside-down Kingdom that Jesus announces doesn’t eliminate death and injustice. It proclaims the presence of grace and life teeming in the midst of the chaos. Dickens caught onto this.

The Cratchit’s aren’t celebrating because everything is and will forever be okay. They’re celebrating because even when everything isn’t okay, there’s still the warmth, connection, love, and presence of God so palpable around their dinner table. The party isn’t contingent on Tiny Tim being healed. It happens despite the fact that he might not be. Maybe even because of it.

God’s grace doesn’t wait for conditions to be perfect. It overflows right here, right now, in the middle of the mess.

Our job isn’t to make the kingdom come. It’s to notice it’s already breaking in. We’re invited to be “hope dealers”—people who’ve learned to see the grace that death and empire and suffering can’t stamp out.

The farmers in the letter from James we read today are waiting for the harvest, but here’s the thing: the harvest is already growing. Their anxiety doesn’t make it grow faster. Their worry doesn’t improve the yield. The rain falls, the sun shines, the seeds do their slow work underground whether it’s on the farmers’ timetable or not.

So Advent becomes less about anxious waiting and more about joyful noticing. Gaudette. Rejoice and wake up to what’s already true.

Soon, we’ll gather for Holy Communion. In our own little holy huddle, amidst the dark sea and crushing chaos of our own lives and of our neighbors, we get to be like Fred, throwing the party whether Scrooge shows up or not. We get to be like the Cratchit’s, who celebrate with almost nothing because we’ve learned to see the abundance and beauty in simple elements of bread and wine. The fullness of Christ—the Logos that created the universe—fully present in the tiniest crumb. We get to be like the miners and lighthouse keepers and the sailors, finding light in even the darkest places because God’s grace is stubborn and death doesn’t get the last word. Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

And so it is. Amen.