Learning From The Ghosts Of Our Past Transcript

Chapter 1: Past Experiences Shaping Our Present

Redemption is possible for all by making peace with our past and embracing hope and transformation.

Today is the second day of Sunday of Advent. We are getting closer and closer to that Christmas event, and we can feel the stress of it. At least it can slowly boil up and bubble up as you realize that you have more to do than you can squeeze in in a few weeks, whether that is getting those Christmas cards out, getting cookies made, getting all of the visits coming out. I know this week is a busy one for our family. Perhaps you remember these weeks where you have something every night of the week, perhaps except one. You're like, how am I going to get everything done? We remember Christmas past when we pulled it off. We remember the Christmas past when everything seemed perfect, and everything worked. Or perhaps you remember those Christmases past when nothing seemed to work, where you were hurt, where you hurt others, those Christmas past when perhaps things weren't quite what you wanted them to be, and the pain you still feel today. I talk about Christmas's past because that is the focus of this week's message. 

We're working through the Christmas Carol this Advent season. We're talking about the redemption of Scrooge, how he transformed from this miserly man that wanted nothing to do with anyone else in the world. He did not want it to be in his own company at times, for he saw no profit in this transformation from what we celebrate on Christmas Day, the redemption available to all. Yes, this is a fictional story. Yes, it transformed a culture and is drawn upon today. It is one of my favorite Christmas stories that I watch and try to read every year. The reason for that, I said last week. It reminds us that redemption is possible and that there is hope no matter how far we think we are or how far we think somebody else is. There is a hope that transformation is possible and that we are not lost in that darkness. We're still in the way things are, but Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, speaking to and calling us forth, can bring hope, transformation, and peace. But one of the things that we need to do to enter that redemption and that transformation is to make peace with the past. 

Chapter 2: The Impact of Loneliness and Insecurity

Scrooge's loneliness and fear of poverty are overcome through love, realization of true security, and redemption.

In The Christmas Carol, Scrooge travels back to memories of his past, accompanied by the ghost of Christmas past, not just the long past, not things that have happened in the world, but more specifically, his past. What about our past can shape us and turn us into who we are today? How did Scrooge get to where he was from his past, and how is our past shaping us to this day? And for Scrooge, I'd say his past was really drawing on a few things that shaped him into the man that he was, that he had to wrestle with, he had to make peace with, he had to learn from, he had to stop avoiding for that redemption to take root. The first is Loneliness. When you think of Christmas past, where you felt lonely or not just Christmas, but any day, we'll go outside of the Christmas narrative just a little bit. Loneliness can shape us and herald us into a future where we don't think we need anyone. When we grow up. We live in times where we think nobody wants anything to do with us, or we think it is because people don't want to speak to us or that we're just feeling alone. Then, that's the way things are supposed to be. There are many people in our world who are lonely, especially after the time of COVID and the pandemic, where we had spent two years kind of isolated from one another and people who were already feeling isolated, even in the midst of crowds and people kind of internalized that even further. There is so much Loneliness in our world today where people think that there's no one around them who cares about them, cares for them, or even acknowledges their existence, and they start internalizing that. 

In the story of Christmas story, Carol Scrooge's Loneliness was as a child when his friends and the boys that he grew up with in the boarding school didn't really hang out with him, and they would go off to their families for Christmas while he was alone. His father didn't want anything to do with him, and so he thought that was the way things were, that he was supposed to be lonely, was supposed to be alone, and he had to wrestle with that when he visited that time again. He had to wrestle with it because we were not built; we were not created as human beings to be alone and to be lonely. We were given the gift of comfort from one another. We were given the gift of presence, to be with one another and nourished by one another. The more we try to be alone, the more we think being alone is how we're supposed to be, and the more isolated and cold we become. Likewise, if we see someone in our midst who pushes people away and wants to let them, we want to let them say you know what? I don't need to be near you; you're cold, so why bother me? We see this in the Christmas story. 

Somebody who did not do this, Scrooge's nephew, who every year would go on Christmas Eve knowing what the answer would be when they said, come and dine with us, come and spend time with us, come and be with us during this Christmas day. You don't have to be alone. Come and eat with me and my wife and our friends. Every year, Scrooge said no. Every year, he would turn them on and say I do not want to be with other people; I just want to be left alone. And yet, in the nephew's persistence, we see Scrooge finally when there are points of redemption when he's wrestled with that past, saying you know, I don't want to be lonely anymore, I don't want to be isolated anymore, I want to be with other people, and finding joy in that. When he finally makes peace and wrestles with the Loneliness of his past, he knows where he can go because the nephew always made the invitation. So whether you're feeling lonely and you usually feel lonely and isolate yourself or you know somebody else who has, perhaps the point for us today is that we don't know their past, we don't know why they isolate themselves, but maybe we need to be more persistent in the invitation. So we have Loneliness and Scrooge having to reconcile, wrestle, and come to peace with it. Remember a time when he didn't feel lonely, remember a time when he wanted to be with other people and rekindle that flame within him again. 

Another thing in our past that can shape us is fear and insecurity. In the Christmas Carol, the story was so strong that he was so afraid of what the world could do to him, of being made poor and destitute, of losing everything. And we see a bit of Charles Dickens's own story, whose own father wrestled with poverty, wrestled with the poor houses, wrestled with having everything going so well for a while, and then something just happened, and everything is stripped away, and all the security that they thought they had Is now gone and the devastation of life that comes with that. And so in Scrooge's story, that is a driving point of why he is the way he is, why he amasses and accumulates wealth for himself. Because he fears losing that security, he fears the risk of poverty. 

But he has to wrestle with the idea that he took the wrong lesson In the Christmas story. It comes out through love, the love of his life, his soulmate, his dear beloved, realizing that he loves that wealth, those possessions, more than he does her. And he has to wrestle with that and come to terms with it. He could no longer ignore it when confronted with these scenes of his past, and he had to make peace not only with what happened but learn from it because that's his desire for security. That desire to make sure that nothing terrible could happen was driving him inward, driving him to accumulate, and it wasn't giving him the security that he hoped for by amassing all that wealth and all that stuff. It wasn't making him feel any better. The more he had, the more he worried. The more he had, the more he worried about losing what he had. The more he had, the more he worried it would all disappear. And he wanted more; the very thing that he thought would give him security, the very thing that he thought would bring him comfort was, in fact, driving him to feel more insecure, driving him to seek out the very thing that could not offer security. 

Jesus tells us over and over again in the Gospels to not put our trust in the very things that will be destroyed, not put our trust in the things that we think will last, that muff and dust and rust will destroy, but to build up treasures in heaven that will last the things. To put our trust and faith in Christ and trust in his spirit that, no matter what will come, no matter what will happen, it's not that if you believe in Jesus. If you follow him, your life will be made accessible. I don't know if anyone in this room will say that their life has been easy because they follow Christ. But in following Christ, the difficulties that we face, the challenges that we meet each day and each year, and that we face in our life, are made easier by our confidence in him that, no matter what comes our way, we know we can get through it because we have been surrounded by Christ, given his peace and strength, and surrounded by people who likewise follow him that we can lean in on and find strength. So, for Scrooge, the security that he saw and the Loneliness that he not only feared and didn't want initially but also became a comfort to him later in life. After all, if you don't rely on someone else, they can't let you down. The very things that Scrooge thought from his past that would hold him up and protect him ended up being the very things that tore him down. The same is true for us. 

Chapter 3: The Christmas Story and Finding Redemption

Philippians passage contrasts A Christmas Carol protagonist with Christ, challenging listeners to reflect on past values and find security in heaven.

The Philippians passage that I read for you to this day is one of my favorites in the New Testament and favorite in Paul's letters because this is one of the first articulations of a Christmas story, of a moment in time where the God of all creation, the Lord of all, gave up the splendors of heaven, knowing that to be the glory of God, the presence of God, is not something to be exploited, is not something to be grasped onto and used for his own purposes or held onto. But he emptied himself out, becoming not only human but also a slave, giving up the glories and riches of heaven for the poverty of being born in a stable and being obedient even unto death. It's such a minuscule passage in the grand scheme of things, but it's one of those earliest written accounts of how people understood Christ and what he did. And it's that Christmas story that the Lord of heavens would be born into a lonely, stable and live a life of poverty, even though he had the richness and the glory of heaven itself. It stands in stark contrast to the protagonist of The Christmas Carol, whose redemption we seek, who would never give up the wealth that he accumulated, he would never give up the Loneliness that he relied on to not be let down, for in those he found comfort, compared to Christ, who gave up heaven itself to walk in obedience for our sake. 

These two stories stand in contrast. And it is because of this Christmas story, it is because of Christ's willingness to leave heaven and walk among us, to walk even unto death in obedience to God, that we can find our own redemption, that we can find our own hope, that we can find how it is that we can live in our world, not relying on the things that we think lift us up, think, give us security, that we think will glorify ourselves and, hopefully, God, in sort of off to the side. But will you be willing to give it up, all of it in obedience? And we find that, just as Christ's willingness to give it all up, they become human and walk among us to teach us how to see God anew, to teach us how to live with one another and to worship God and follow God faithfully, we find our own redemption, we find our own transformation. We find the workings of the redemption of the world and in following after him and being willing to follow in obedience, to give it up, being willing to give up everything for God's sake, others may find redemption through seeing how we live and seeing that our security and our hope and our peace is not built on the things of this world but on heaven itself. 

We need to come to that. Other people can come to that. But first, sometimes, we've got to wrestle with the ghosts of our past. What is it that our past has taught us to cling to, give us glory, lift us up, and make us feel important and valued and recognize is that of God? Do we have to reevaluate it? Do we have to wrestle with it? Do we have to no longer ignore those lessons and pretend that the past didn't happen, or do we have to wrestle with it, learn from it, and make peace with it so that we can come forward into the present and see what God has in store for us this day?