Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Western Religious Traditions

  • God of the Plagues

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

    Story

    Today I thought I’d tell you part of the old, old story of how the Jewish people lived in slavery under the wicked Pharaoh, and how Moses led the Jewish people to freedom….

    The God of Israel came down to speak to Moses, and told Moses to go to the Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to Pharaoh, “Let my people go, let them go free.” Moses didn’t want to do this, but God said he had to, and he did.

    Moses said to Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” But Pharaoh was a hard-hearted man, and wouldn’t let the Israelites, the Jews, go free. So with God’s help, Moses took his staff while Pharaoh was watching, lifted it up, and struck the water of the Nile River. Immediately all the water in the river turned to blood, and that made all the fish in the river die. It did not smell good. And because the Egyptians got their water from the Nile, they had a hard time getting enough water to drink, or to wash with.

    Well, you think that would have been enough to convince Pharaoh not to fool around with Moses — and to not fool around with the God of the Israelites. But the Pharaoh was a hard-hearted man. Moses came to Pharaoh, and said, “Now will you let my people go?” But Pharaoh said no.

    This time Moses stretched out his staff over the river, the ponds and lakes and all the water, and with God’s help he let loose a plague of frogs. There were frogs everywhere! There were frogs in Pharaoh’s palace, frogs in everyone’s houses, frogs in people’s beds, so many frogs that the bakers put them into bread by mistake. Yuck! Bread with frogs in it. It tasted horrible.

    Well, you think Pharaoh would have learned his lesson, but the Pharaoh was a hard-hearted man. Moses said, “Let my people go!” and Pharaoh just said, no.

    This time Moses stretched out his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and with God’s help released a horde of gnats. Do you know what gnats are? They are little insects that bite you just like mosquitoes and when they bite you it’s just like a mosquito bite which swells up and itches, but gnats are so small you can’t see them. There were gnats everywhere, a plague of gnats, biting everyone all the time. It was most unpleasant.

    Well, you think Pharaoh would have learned his lesson, but that Pharaoh was a hard-hearted man. Moses said, “Let my people go!” and Pharaoh just said, no.

    So with God’s help, Moses sent a swarm of flies to plague the land (if you’re keeping count, that’s the fourth plague Moses lets loose on Egypt). Flies everywhere! — on your food, in your eyes, everywhere.

    But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses made all the cows and chickens and other livestock get sick — no milk to drink! — no eggs to eat! (That’s number five.) Everyone got very hungry.

    But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses made everyone in Egypt get pimples and boils that hurt like the dickens and looked nasty (that’s number six).

    But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses let loose thunder and hail — big hailstones that damaged all the crops (that’s number seven).

    But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses brought locusts into the country of Egypt. The locusts covered every inch of the land, and if there was anything left in the fields that the hail had not damaged, the locusts ate it up. (That’s number eight.) Now there was basically no food left to eat in all of Egypt.

    But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses brought a dense darkness over the entire land of Egypt, except for little bits of light that were in the houses of the Israelites (that’s number nine).

    But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. This time, God said, “Moses, go tell Pharaoh that I, God, will make every first-born child die throughout the land of Egypt.” But God also told Moses that all the Jews should make a mark over their doors with the blood of a lamb, and that way God would know that God should pass over those houses, and not make the firstborn child die. (And that was the tenth, and the very worst, of the ten plagues.)

    This time, when Moses went to Pharaoh and said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh said, “Go! Go! You bring nothing but disaster to me and my kingdom.” And Moses and his people left as quickly as they could, before Pharoah could change his mind again.

    That’s the first part of the story of how the Jews, who were kept in slavery by Pharaoh, at last gained their freedom. Some people don’t like this story because it is kind of disgusting in places. Even so, this story reminds me how important religious freedom is. It would have been very easy for Moses and the Jews to just try to fit in to life in Egypt — but they didn’t; they stayed true to who they were as a religious community.

    Readings

    The first reading this morning is from the Hebrew Bible.

    Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Hold out your arm over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come upon the land of Egypt and eat up all the grasses in the land, whatever the hail has left.’ So Moses held out his rod over the land of Egypt, and the LORD drove an east wind over the land of Egypt; and whn morning came, the east wind had brought the locusts. Locusts invaded all the land of Egypt and settled within all the territory of Egypt in a thick mass; never before had there been so many, nor will there ever be so many again. They hid all the land from view, and the land was darkened; and they ate up all the grasses of the field and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left, so that nothing green was left, of tree or grass of the field, in all the land of Egypt.

    Pharaoh hurriedly summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘I stand guilty before the LORD your God and before you. Forgive my offense just this once, and plead with the LORD your God that He but remove this death from me.’ So he left Pharaoh’s presence and pleaded with the LORD. The LORD caused a shift to a very strong west wind, which lifted the locusts and hurled them into the Sea of Reeds; not a single locust remained in all the territory of Egypt. But the LORD stiffened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.

    (Exodus 10.12-29; the new Jewish Publication Society translation of the Tanakh)

    The second reading this morning comes from the book More Than Numbers: The Way Churches Grow, by Loren Mead:

    “The civic congregation… is tempted to rebuild an ‘establishment’ of the right people and institutions and groups, closely in touch with one another, quietly consulting about the critical issues of the day. Each has its own realm of power, but there is such an interpenetration of values and concerns that a basic consensus among power brokers emerges. In this coalition statesmen [sic] consult with bishops and moderators at prayer breakfasts before undertaking great enterprises of war or peace. Civic religion reigns.

    “The enticement of this view is that most of us can thank back to a time when such an establishment seemed to work. There’s the rub. ‘Most’ of us. In fact, such coalitions are always blind to the large segments of society that are left out in the cold, excluded from participation, unnoticed in suffering. Yet ‘most’ did see and today remember that more orderly, simpler life. Even those victimized and excluded by the establishment sometimes are tempted to return to a simple — but at least predictable — victimization!

    “Denominational executives get tempted in this direction by flattering invitations to lunch and a conference at the mayor’s office or the governor’s mansion.

    “Much of what is called ‘outreach’ in local congregations tries to make a difference to those who suffer and it is profoundly right in this motivation. The temptation I am describing creeps in to turn it into a religious public welfare program. The temptation leads congregations to make outreach to the oppressed the primary task rather than an expression of a community whose primary task has to do with relationship to God. Yes, the two are related. But congregations must be grounded in relationship to God and yet have very limited capacity or expertise to accomplish the other. Most such efforts carve out a small arena in which a congregation is tempted to assume is it about the task of rebuilding Christendom. Congregations are not very good at that, and they run into problems of burning out staff and volunteers.” [pp. 97-98]

    Sermon

    When I began here at First Unitarian, members of the Search Committee and other lay leaders told me that this congregation has a serious commitment to the principles of freedom of the pulpit. If you haven’t heard that term before, the phrase “freedom of the pulpit” sums up the theory that a minister in our tradition should be able to speak the truth from the pulpit, without fear of reprisals or other repercussions from within the congregation. That is the theory of “freedom of the pulpit,” and it is a good theory.

    In practice, freedom of the pulpit was abused by many Unitarian Universalist ministers in the 1960’s. There is the famous story of the Unitarian Universalist minister who preached a couple of sermons against the Vietnam War. Members of the congregation told him that they would appreciate it if he would hold off on preaching another sermon on the Vietnam War. But, as he later proudly recounted the story, he invoked the principle of freedom of the pulpit and gave the congregation another sermon of Vietnam, and another one after that. Whereupon many in the congregation invoked the principle of “freedom of the pew,” and stopped coming to church on Sunday morning — or at least, that’s how I heard the story told.

    When I say that many Unitarian Universalist ministers abused the freedom of the pulpit, what I really mean is that these ministers succumbed to the temptation of believing that they could construct a just society. Of course we all want to construct a just society. But there’s a difference between constructing a just society on the one hand, and on the other hand trying to force your interpretation of justice on everyone else. Episcopal priest Loren Mead puts it this way: “I am not saying that religious people should not be seeking to work for justice in society. I am simply saying that 2,000 years [of Western Christian tradition] have left us with a legacy of wanting to legislate the whole thing in our own image. We leave no room for pluriformity.”

    Considered thus, I believe that “freedom of the pulpit” has limits. It is not my job to tell you what to believe or do in the realm of politics. But it is my job to try to describe how we might all grow in our religious faith together; it is my job to hold up a vision for how we might create a religious community that nurtures us; and it is my job to hold us all accountable when we are failing to grow in faith together, when we are failing in our vision of creating a religious community that nurtures all of us.

    And so I come to the story of Moses and the plagues. What a strange story!– Moses goes to Pharaoh and requests that the Israelites be freed from bondage so that they might follow Moses into the desert in order to better worship their God. When Pharaoh refuses to let the Israelites go, Moses calls down plagues upon the Egyptian people: a river filled with blood, a plague of lice and vermin, a plague of frogs for Pete’s sake. What on earth was Moses thinking?

    If Moses had been a Unitarian Universalist minister, he would not have wasted his time calling down plagues on Pharaoh’s people. No indeed, if Moses were a Unitarian Universalist minister, he would have done things quite differently. He might have worked within the system, lobbying and schmoozing in the halls of power, working to get Pharaoh to change the laws of Egypt so that the Israelites would gain their freedom without having to actually pack up and leave. Or he might have organized protests in front of the Pyramids to bring down the corrupt regime of Pharaoh and usher in a democratically-elected government sympathetic to the Israelite presence in Egypt. In either case, if Moses had been a Unitarian Universalist minister, there wouldn’t have been any of this nonsense of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, everyone trekking through the desert for forty years eating mana and grasshoppers, and finally arriving at the Promised Land — which is what Moses did, according to the book of Exodus.

    If Moses had been minister here in First Unitarian in New Bedford, we can be pretty sure that he would have worked within the system, lobbying and schmoozing with City Hal– I mean with Pharaoh, organizing the Inter-Church Council so as to have more political clout, working to get Pharaoh to change the laws of New Bedford so that the Israelites would have the maximum freedom with the minimum amount of displacement. Of course, at the same time Moses and the middle-class people from First Unitarian would also be working at relieving the suffering of the many people who did not flourish under Pharaoh’s rule.

    There are at least two problems with this hypothetical course of action for this mythical First Unitarian as lead by Moses. First, by concentrating much of their energy on politics and relief work, it would be very easy for Moses and the people of First Unitarian to neglect their religious purpose. Second, by building a coalition with the New Bedford Pharaoh and the New Bedford political system, Moses and the people of First Unitarian undergo a risk that we heard described in the second reading this morning: “such coalitions are always blind to the large segments of society that are left out in the cold, excluded from participation, unnoticed in suffering.”

    Instead of making up stories about some mythical First Unitarian as it might have been led by Moses, the Unitarian Universalist minister — what, in fact, has happened here at our non-mythical First Unitarian in New Bedford?

    Here’s my take on what has happened here in the real First Unitarian:

    We pride ourselves as being a serious player in the political arena. We pride ourselves in having had ministers who have been active participants in the civic and political life of the city of New Bedford. (Some of us may even worry a little about the current minister, who is not particularly active in the political and civic life of New Bedford, who doesn’t even subscribe the local daily newspaper; why, even the minister isn’t quite sure what to make of himself in this context.) We pride ourselves as having political influence in the city and the region, and we take real and justified pride every time a member of this congregation has a letter to the editor published in the local daily newspaper.

    We take pride in past accomplishments. We are justifiably proud of having founded Unity Home, a settlement house that we founded in the North End of New Bedford a hundred years ago. We are justifiably proud of having been a co-founder of the Inter-Church Council, which has done so much good work and has had so much political influence — even though we now feel forced out of the Council because we aren’t Christian enough any more. And we take pride in our reputation as “the social action congregation.”

    We are indeed the “social action congregation.” While it is true that our political influence has declined, primarily because our numbers declined precipitously during the urban violence of the 1960’s and have remained low ever since. But mayors and politicians still pay some attention to us, and we do have influence beyond our tiny numbers.

    As a social action congregation, however, we face two big temptations. The first temptation we face is the temptation to “rebuild an ‘establishment’ of the right people and institutions and groups, closely in touch with one another, quietly consulting about the critical issues of the day” — to quote our second reading this morning. Indeed, if your minister — me! — if I weren’t so doggone pig-headed, I could be out in the community more, and we could in fact rebuild that establishment of the right people and the right institutions taking care of the critical issues right now.

    The second temptation is perhaps more tempting: we could build a version of a truly just society, right here in New Bedford. We could build a society that cares for the poor, helps the weak, honors those who are suffering. This temptation is the one that tempts me personally. This temptation is so tempting, it’s hard to believe that there could be anything wrong with it. But tempting as they are, something’s wrong with both these temptations. Let me quote Loren Mead again:

    “An activist congregation is often tempted to build a… version of the Just Society. It assumes that a political order can be constructed that incarnates fully the principles of justice…. A clue to the empire-building nature of this temptation is the role of clergy in it. Generally clergy are the leading figures, the prophets and movement heads…. This is a temptation of Church to take authority over Empire. The laudable aims of the activists become the pressure for empire building in a new way.”

    Well, so what? So what if we engage in a little empire-building? At least our empire would be based on sound principles of justice and equity, right?

    Maybe so. But remember that some conservative Christians have succumbed to this temptation at the national level here in the United States. These conservative Christians, some of whom implemented Bible study in the White House, decided that they knew what true justice was. True justice means no abortions, not for any reason. True justice means no same-sex marriage. True justice means exporting democracy to Iraq. True justice means supporting economic growth at the expense of environmental safety. They are quite certain they know what justice is, and they are working hard to implement true justice, as they understand it. But in my opinion, they have released plagues upon the land.

    If we tried to do the same thing, don’t you think that there would be many people who felt we were wrong, that our vision of a just society was wrong? Isn’t there a very real possibility that we would be wrong in at least one important area? And what would we do when we encountered resistance to our social justice programs? –would we squash that resistance, or listen to it seriously?

    I don’t think we should succumb to either of these temptations. I don’t think we should try to rebuild the old establishment of the late 19th C., where First Unitarian was part of the inner circle of decision-making, where members and ministers of First Unitarian walked the halls of power. Nor do I think we should succumb to the temptation of believing that we are the ones who have the true answers, that we are the ones who know how to build the just society here in New Bedford. That kind of narrow, dogmatic thinking releases its own kind of plague upon the land.

    No, I believe the purpose of a Unitarian Universalist church is different, and pretty straightforward. The way I think about it, there’s a vertical and a horizontal dimension to our purpose here. On the vertical dimension, we’re here to ask ultimate questions of truth and meaning, and although we don’t expect final answers to our questions we’re here to get in touch with some sense of the ultimate (which some of us happen to call God). On the horizontal dimension, we’re here to build a safe and supportive community, a community where we support each other in our spiritual journeys. You have to have both dimensions, the vertical and the horizontal; a sense of the ultimate, and a sense of community. That is our purpose.

    From a very practical and pragmatic point of view, we have another purpose. We build up a strong religious community, so that we may send our members and friends out into the world to tackle the problems of the world. I stole this idea from Loren Mead, but notice that here again there are two dimensions: building the church from within, and sending church members outside the confines of our community.

    You will notice that this is very different from saying that our church will go out and effect change in the world; I am saying that our church nurtures and supports each of us individually, so that we can then in turn go out and do the work that needs to be done in the world. You will notice that this conception of church has a very different role for the minister; rather than paying the minister to go out into the world to do the justice work that needs to be done, the minister’s primary work is within the congregation, building the congregational community, and supporting the individuals who go out to work in the world. I’m not saying that you will agree with me, but certainly you will notice these things.

    Let’s get back to Moses for a moment. If I try to read the story of Moses as historical fact that is literally true, I don’t like the story:– all those plagues! all those innocent people who had to suffer and die! a river of blood is disgusting! But if I take the story about Moses and the plagues as poetry, rather than as literal fact, I find that the story holds truth for me. Moses was concerned with building up his religious community, and when his community was faced with such oppression that their very existence was threatened, he decided to lead them out of Egypt. Yet even though he could have, he did not walk the halls of power side-by-side with Pharaoh.

    We are lucky enough to live in a society that is generally tolerant of religious differences, so it is unlikely that we will have to leave the country. Yet on a poetic level, we can understand this story is telling us that sometimes religious communities have to stand up to the prevailing norms of society in order to hold on to their own sense of truth and goodness; and sometimes religious communities have to work to maintain appropriate boundaries so they are not overwhelmed or subsumed. To these ends, Moses is concerned with the vertical and horizontal dimensions of his religious community: he wants his community to remain in contact with their God; and he wants his community to remain a healthy, thriving community.

    Mind you, I am not Moses. I haven’t the vaguest idea of how to unleash plagues on Egypt. As a religious leader, my purpose has not been to release a plague upon anybody. My purpose has been to try to describe how we might all grow in our religious faith together; and my purpose has been to hold up a vision for how we might create a religious community that nurtures us; and my purpose has been to hold us all accountable to realize our vision of creating a religious community that nurtures all of us.

    And maybe I am actually using a little of that mythical freedom of the pulpit which I don’t really believe in. If that’s the case, I hope that you will use your freedom of the pew to continue the conversation, and that you will begin to talk with each other, and with me, about your visions for this community.

  • Songs of Comfort

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading is a translation of the 65th Psalm from a book published by the American Unitarian Association in 1867, a translation of the book of Psalms by Unitarian minister George Noyes, which I have modernized and adapted slightly.

    Happy are those whom you choose
    to bring near to you, to dwell in your lands….

    You make fast the mountains
    with your great strength;
    and still the roaring sea,
    the roar of its waves.

    You make the coming of the morning,
    and the time of the evening to rejoice.

    You visit the earth,
    enrich it exceedingly,
    with your river full of water.

    You supply the earth with corn
    when you have thus prepared the earth.

    You water earth’s furrows
    and break down its ridges
    and make it soft with showers
    and bless its increase.

    You crown the year with goodness,
    your footsteps make fruitful the wilderness;
    the hills are covered with gladness.

    The second reading comes as essay on the Psalms, written by Kathleen Farmer, from The Women’s Bible Commentary:

    “As a category, the psalms of lament are remarkable for their use of abrasive, impetuous language. The psalmists refuse to mince words or to couch their demands in polite, euphemistic terms. Thus, for instance, the speakers in Psalms 35 and 44 bluntly tell God to wake up, pay attention, and get busy helping them before it is too late for them to be saved. The psalmists remind God that human beings have too limited a life span to wait for justice to come at God’s own convenience (Psalm 90). The psalmists also use remarkably vivid, picturesque, and exaggerated language to describe the unbearable situations in which they find themselves. Most remarkable of all is the consistency with which the psalmists seem to find themselves empowered by their prayers to move from their situations of grief and despair into situations of hope and confidence….

    “Assurance does not come only to those who wait passively for their pain to be noticed or for their needs to be filled. The psalm shows that a renewal of faith can come through the articulation of rather than through the denial or repression of innermost thoughts, no matter how far those thoughts seem to go beyond the ‘accepted norms’ of society or organized religions.” [“Psalms,” Kathleen A. Farmer, in: Carol A. Newsome and Sharon H. Ringe, editors, The Women’s Bible Commentary, p. 141]

    SERMON — “Songs of Comfort”

    Half a dozen years ago, I spent the summer at Massachusetts General Hospital doing a chaplaincy internship. A hospital chaplain sees all kinds of extreme situations: people who have been told they will die in a few days, people suddenly struck down with debilitating illnesses, all the situations you’d expect to find in a hospital. But one of the most memorable incidents for me had nothing to do with one of these life or death situations.

    I was making the rounds in one of my assigned units, and a woman who was in the hospital for a couple of days for minor surgery asked to talk with me. I sat down, and we talked about her illness; she was in quite a bit of pain. We talked further, and it came out that she was a good Bible-reading Christian of the old school. Then it came out that she would like to hear me read one of the Psalms. Which one? I asked, thinking that she would want to hear that old standby, Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” I thought that would be the sort of psalm you’d want to hear if you were in pain.

    But the psalm this woman asked me to read was quite different: it was one where the poet who wrote it calls on God to strike down the poet’s enemies. I’m no longer quite sure which psalm the woman asked me to read, but to the best of my recollection it was Psalm 35, which begins:

    Contend, O LORD, with those who contend with me;
    fight against those who fight against me.

    Take up shield and buckler;
    arise and come to my aid.

    Brandish spear and javelin
    against those who pursue me….

    May those who seek my life
    be disgraced and put to shame;
    may those who plot my ruin
    be turned back in dismay. [New Revised Standard Version]

    Although I was a little surprised at her choice, I read the psalm to her. “Oh, that’s a good one,” she said, and leaned her head back against her pillow. She was quite satisfied with it, and took great comfort from hearing it.

    Personally, I wouldn’t take any great comfort from that particular psalm, or from any of the psalms that call on God to strike down one’s enemies, to do vengeance. But later, as I thought about it, I realized that the 23rd Psalm, the one which is best known in our culture, and the one which many families request to have included when I do a memorial service, has its own call for vengeance. It begins with: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters”; which all sounds fairly comforting; but towards the end, we hear: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”

    For some of the greatest pain that human beings can experience is the pain that comes when you are held down by someone who has power over you. Much of the poetry in the book of Psalms was written thousands of years ago by people in the ancient Jewish community who were being held down by a few wealthy people from their own community. In his book The Hebrew Bible, Bible scholar Norman Gottwald says this about the ancient Israelites who wrote the psalms some three thousand years ago: “…there can be little doubt that an enormous part of the suffering which psalmists protest is the pauperization of the populace through the manipulation of debt and confiscation procedures in such a way that even the traditional courts of Israel can be used to amass wealth in defiance of the explicit laws of the community.” [Norman K. Gottwald, The Hebrew Bible: A socio-literary introduction, p. 539]

    In other words, a few extremely wealthy people in ancient Israel managed to get even more wealth by manipulating the legal system by confiscating property and getting poor people even deeper into debt. These few wealthy people even flouted the laws of ancient Israel, laws which actually prohibited anyone from amassing too much wealth, for the ancient Israelites knew that it is not right for a very few people to have a very large amount of wealth.

    If you see parallels between ancient Israel and America today, I think you’re absolutely correct. We read in the newspapers that the super-rich, the wealthiest one tenth of one percent of the American population, continue to amass more and more wealth; while the poor, the working people, the middle class, the upper middle class, and even the merely rich people in this country find themselves losing ground. We can’t pay for health care, we can’t pay for elder care, we can’t pay for housing; while the super-rich keep getting richer and richer.

    Now if you think this is going to turn into a political sermon, you’re wrong. But from a religious point of view, the ancient Jewish poems in the book of Psalms confirm our feeling that such injustice is wrong; such injustice is not inevitable; and such injustice is not moral or ethical. Furthermore, according to Bible scholar Norman Gottwald, the psalm writers knew that even your personal physical illness could be related to things you may suffer at the hands of unjust society, for, as Gottwald writes, “it is well known that the incidence of some diseases is closely related to poor diet, harsh working conditions, ecological abuse,… and demoralization in the face of unrelenting injustice.”

    And this may be why the 23rd psalm remains so popular in our society. Next time you hear people reciting the 23rd Psalm at a funeral or memorial service, and you hear, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies,” think about what that might mean. Injustice can kill you; even if it doesn’t kill you outright, it can grind you down and hasten your death.

    So thinking back to my experience with that woman in the hospital, it is entirely understandable why she asked me to read the 35th Psalm to her, and I can fully understand how it would comfort her to hear:

    May those who seek my life
    be disgraced and put to shame;
    may those who plot my ruin
    be turned back in dismay. [NRSV]

    I personally do not believe in a God who would “Take up shield and buckler; brandish spear and javelin against those who pursue me.” Yet neither do I believe in religion that remains quiet in the face of obvious injustice; there is no comfort in such a religion.

    In the second reading this morning, the reading by Kathleen Farmer from The Women’s Bible Commentary, tells us a little bit more about Psalm 35. Farmer tells us: “the speaker in Psalms 35 and 44 bluntly tell God to wake up, pay attention, and get busy helping them before it is too late for them to be saved.” Kathleen Farmer tells us that some of the comfort that comes from Psalm 35, and from any of the psalms, is an assurance that help doesn’t come to those who sit passively and wait. And so the ancient writers of the psalms cry out, in pain and in anger, they call upon their God to wake up and pay attention.

    Along these lines, I am particularly moved by the words of the 69th psalm, which begins:

    Save me, O God,
    for the waters have come up to my neck.

    I sink in deep mire,
    where there is no foothold;

    I have come into deep waters,
    and the flood sweeps over me.

    I am weary with my crying;
    my throat is parched.

    My eyes grow dim
    with waiting for my God. [NRSV]

    Who among us hasn’t felt at some point in life that we were neck-deep and the waters were rising? These ancient Israelite writers forthrightly said that their God didn’t always acknowledge human problems: “My eyes grow dim/ with waiting for my God.” Their God didn’t always acknowledge human problems, even when those problems were utterly overwhelming: “I sink in deep mire,/ where there is no foothold.”

    Even if we do not believe in the God of the ancient Israelites, we can still appreciate these poems. As with any poetry, you do not need to take these poems literally. They can move you whether or not you believe in God. To hear their “abrasive, impetuous language” [Kathleen Farmer]; to hear poets who don’t mince words, who aren’t polite in the face of suffering and injustice; this alone can empower us, can help us find our own inner power. We do not need to remain passive sufferers; we can find strength within ourselves, strength in the ordinary stuff of daily living.

    Lord knows we all could use some strength in our lives. We all have trials to face in our personal lives: health, money (or rather the lack of money), family problems, job; it may be different for each of us, but we each have a greater or lesser share of trials to face. Beyond our personal trials, we also have the big communal trials that we face together: the war in Iraq and Afghanistan that grinds on year after year; injustice and hatred; continued inequality for women and people of color; violence on the streets and in the home; global climate change and looming environmental disaster.

    Just listening to that list of problems is enough to bring me down, to make me feel as if “the waters are up to my neck…/ I have come into deep waters,/ and the flood sweeps over me.” Actually, when it comes to global climate change, we might quite literally see floods sweeping over us, what with the melting polar ice cap and rising sea levels.

    I’ve been thinking about global climate change quite a bit this year. The scientific consensus is that global warming is happening right now, and the consensus also is that we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. Some scientists tell us to expect more and bigger hurricanes. Some scientists tell us to expect warmer winters, which is nice, but much hotter summers, which is not so nice. But mostly we don’t quite know what’s going on, or how bad global climate change could be. Not a comfortable situation for us to be in.

    With all the bad news about global climate change, I’ve been longing for a little comfort. Archeological evidence shows us that the land of Israel had been forested and green thousands of years ago, but human development had turned it into a desert, perhaps during the time of the ancient Israelites. The writers of the Psalms may well have seen ecological disaster first-hand; and some of their poems can offer us a measure of comfort as we face our own ecological disaster. The 19th Psalm tells about the beauties of the natural world:

    The heavens are telling the glory of God;
    and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

    Day to day pours forth speech,
    and night to night declares knowledge.

    There is no speech, nor are there words;
    their voice is not heard;

    yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
    and their words to the end of the world.

    In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun,
    which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy,
    and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

    Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
    and its circuit to the end of them;
    and nothing is hidden from its heat. [NRSV 19.2-7]

    So the ancient Israelite poet tells us about the glories and beauties of the natural world. The next part of the poem can be taken in at least two ways. You can understand it literally as telling you that the God of the ancient Israelites is perfect and must be obeyed; or you can understand it in a metaphorical, poetic way. Let me read you the next passage, and then tell you how I understand it as metaphor and poetry:

    The teaching of the Lord is perfect,
    renewing life;

    the decrees of the Lord are enduring,
    making the simple wise;

    the precepts of the Lord are just,
    rejoicing the heart;
    the instruction of the Lord is lucid,
    making the eyes light up…. [Jewish Publication Society translation of the Tanakh, Psalm 19.8-9]

    If you wish to understand this as literally telling you to obey the laws of the God of the ancient Israelites, that’s fine with me. But you can also understand this metaphorically, where God’s teaching is the laws of Nature. The laws of the natural world are perfect, and Nature renews life and rejoices the heart; the laws of Nature are quite lucid, making our eyes light up when we finally understand them.

    Perhaps this poem was written with reference to the desertification of the ancient Middle East; but we can read it in reference to global climate change. The laws of Nature, the instructions of God, are indeed quite lucid:– Don’t dump tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere because it causes global warming! And this applies beyond global climate change:– Don’t dump toxic wastes into New Bedford harbor because the toxic waste will cause cancer! Don’t lead an unsustainable lifestyle, because it’s not sustainable! These teachings and instructions are clear, simple, and they should make anyone’s eyes light up.

    And I take a certain amount of comfort from the fact that this is a religious poem, carrying with it all the moral and ethical force that religion can carry. Today’s environmental crisis has roots in religion; we seem to think that we have been divinely ordained to exploit the earth. But we can take comfort that this ancient religious poem, one of the religious writings that lies at the core of our Western culture, tells us with all the force of religion that we should not break the laws of Nature.

    I take comfort as well from the 65th psalm, which tells of the beauties and wonders of Nature, which tells us how Nature cares for us, supports us, upholds us. To whom was this song addressed?– certainly not to the stereotypical vision of God as an old man with a long white beard sitting on a cloud somewhere. No, you could sing this song to the Goddess, you could address this song to Mother Nature. We heard one version of the 65th psalm as the first reading this morning, but let me read you another version, a different translation:

    …you are the hope of all the ends of the earth
    and of the farthest seas….

    You visit the earth and water it,
    you greatly enrich it;

    the river of God is full of water;
    you provide the people with grain,
    for so you have prepared it.

    You water its furrows abundantly,
    settling its ridges,

    softening it with showers,
    and blessing its growth.

    You crown the year with your bounty;
    your wagon tracks overflow with richness.

    The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
    the hills gird themselves with joy,

    the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
    the valleys deck themselves with grain,
    they shout and sing together for joy. [NRSV 65.7,9-14]

    This poem brings me comfort on several levels of meaning. It comforts me because it reminds me how beautiful Nature is, and it reminds me to appreciate what a beautiful world we live in. It comforts me to realize that the Jewish and Christian religions, which take this poem as part of their scriptures, that these powerful religions can be brought to bear to help people understand that we have a religious duty to protect the earth. And this poem comforts me on a very personal level:– personally, when I am feeling down, when I am feeling as if I’m neck deep and the water’s rising, I don’t take much comfort in rejoicing over my perceived enemies. But I have always taken great comfort in the natural world.

    Our problems today are unique, of course. The problem of global climate change is of far greater magnitude than the localized ecological problems of the ancient Middle East. And each of us faces our own unique and individual problems. I cannot know exactly what you are going through; nor can you know exactly what I am going through; and neither you nor I cann know exactly what problems that woman in Massachusetts General Hospital was facing, the woman I told you about at the beginning of this sermon.

    Yet although each person’s problems are unique to that person; although each generation’s problems are unique to that generation; even so, as human beings we all share something in common. Because of our common humanity, we can have some small insight into each other’s problems; because of our common humanity, we can comfort one another, even if we do not fully understand what another person is going through.

    When I read the ancient poetry in the book of Psalms, written thousands of years ago by those ancient Jewish writers, there is much that I don’t understand about them or their poetry. We can’t know much about their lives; the God they worship may not be God as we understand it, and the manner of their worship in the ancient Temple of Jerusalem would probably be incomprehensible to us. Obviously, they can know next to nothing about us: they could not have understood global climate change; they could not have understood what it is like to be in a modern hospital; they could not have dreamed about many of our modern problems.

    Yet there is a connection between us, across all those thousands of years. Their poetry describes human emotions that have not changed much at all. As ancient and alien as it might be in many ways, their poetry can offer us real comfort.

    We do not have to fully understand one another to offer support and comfort to one another. We can reach out across whatever may divide us, extend a helping hand to each other, and know that there is comfort simply in extending our hands.

  • A Christmas Carol

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

    The first half of the worship service consisted primarily of readings from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, abridged and adapted by Dan Harper; this book is in the public domain.

    Readings

    The opening words come from the opening of “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens:

    Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner; Scrooge signed it. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

    Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

    Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

    Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye!”

    But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call “nuts” to Scrooge.

    Words for lighting a flame in the chalice:

    Once upon a time — of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve — old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already — it had not been light all day — and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air.

    Scrooge had a very small fire in his counting-house, but his clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.

    Responsive Reading

    A cheerful voice cried out:

    “A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

    “Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!” This nephew of Scrooge’s had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

    “Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”

    “I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

    “Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? You’re rich enough.”

    Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”

    “Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew.

    “What else can I be,” said Scrooge indignantly, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer? 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!”

    “Uncle!” pleaded the nephew.

    “Nephew!” returned the uncle sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”

    “I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time,” returned the nephew, “when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

    First reading

    Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s-book, went home to bed. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands.

    Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change — not a knocker, but Marley’s face.

    Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.

    Up Scrooge went to his rooms, closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.

    It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.

    His glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant’s cellar. The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.

    “It’s humbug still!” said Scrooge. “I won’t believe it.”
    His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, “I know him; Marley’s Ghost!” and fell again.

    The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

    Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now….

    Second reading

    “How now!” said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. “What do you want with me?”

    “Much!” — Marley’s voice, no doubt about it.

    “Who are you?”

    “Ask me who I was.”

    “Who were you then?” said Scrooge, raising his voice. “You’re particular, for a shade.”

    “In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.”

    “You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.

    “I don’t,” said Scrooge.

    “Why do you doubt your senses?”

    “Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are! Humbug, I tell you! humbug!”

    At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!

    Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.

    “Man of the worldly mind!” replied the Ghost, “do you believe in me or not?”

    “I do,” said Scrooge. “I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?”

    “It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world — oh, woe is me! — and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!”

    SERMON — A Christmas Carol

    “It is required of every one of us,” says the Ghost to old Scrooge, that our spirits within ourselves should walk abroad among humanity, and travel far and wide. To travel far and wide does not mean that you must immediately head off to a far continent. However, sitting in your counting house counting all your money does not count towards such travel. What the Ghost is telling Scrooge (and us) is that our spirits must rove beyond the narrow limits of making money; or for that matter, spending it.

    You all know this as well as I do. We hear this all the time during the Christmas season. We are reminded over and over that the importance of Christmas lies, not in the toys and gifts, not in how much money you spend, but in human contact, human relationships. The advertisements tell us this, and tell us that the gifts we buy are what will cement those human relationships. And I believe the advertisements.

    Yes, our spirits must rove beyond the narrow limits of the counting house, the office, and the mall. And if we don’t let our spirits rove during our lives, says the Ghost, why then we’re condemned to do it after death. As an ultra-Universalist, I say there is no punishment after death; but I’m willing to accept the Ghost’s admonition as a good metaphor. When Scrooge first sees the Ghost of Marley, he notices the chain Marley wears about his middle: “It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.” When Scrooge asks the Ghost about this chain, the Ghost replies: “I wear the chain I forged in life…. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you? Or would you know the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?” At which Scrooge trembles, for he knows full well that he, too, is wound about with chains: chains which bind him to his cold, cheerless, circumscribed world. And even though we chuckle at Scrooge’s stubbornness, we who hear this story are left with an uncomfortable feeling as if perhaps there are chains bound about our own waists — terrible thought! — no wonder the doctor tells us we need to lose weight!

    The Ghost of Marley gives Scrooge hope that he might be saved from the Ghost’s fate. Three Spirits will come and haunt Scrooge: one to show him the past, one to show him the present, and one to show him the future.

    Scrooge falls asleep; the bell chimes the hour, and Scrooge awakens. The first of the three spirits comes, saying: “I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” Scrooge is whisked off to see to see how he spent past Christmasses. The Ghost takes him to see his boyhood home: “They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be.” Like so many of us, Scrooge had had sadness and loneliness in his life, which he had conveniently forgotten. And the Ghost of Christmas Past brings him to see him at his first job, where his boss kept the fires burning brightly and warmly for Scrooge and the other workers, and stopped all work on Christmas Eve so that all might celebrate together. In those days, Scrooge had heartily celebrated Christmas; but then his thoughts had turned increasingly to money; and because money had meant so much to him, he had ended his engagement to a young woman: and so it was that he found himself old and alone, alone except for his money, alone except for his possessions.

    You know how the story goes. The Ghost of Christmas Past departs; Scrooge falls asleep again, and is awakened by the Ghost of Christmas Present, a hearty, likable sort of Ghost, who takes Scrooge off on a journey to see how the rest of the world celebrates Christmas: not grouchily sitting alone, saying “Humbug!”; but celebrating in the company of others, and relishing the human contact. The Ghost of Christmas Present takes old Scrooge to see how his clerk, Bob Cratchit, celebrates Christmas; you wouldn’t think that a man so poor as Bob Cratchit could be merry at Christmas time, but he is, with his family gathered around him. Even Tiny Tim, Bob’s son who can’t walk without crutches, is merry at Christmas. And then off to see Scrooge’s nephew celebrating Christmas, and to hear the nephew’s assessment of his miserly old uncle: ” ‘He’s a comical old fellow,’ said Scrooge’s nephew, ‘that’s the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. His wealth is of no use to him. He don’t do any good with it. He don’t make himself comfortable with it. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.’” Indeed, Scrooge’s offences do carry their own punishment, here and now, in this life: for he is miserable, even though he doesn’t quite know it himself. Although the visits of the Ghost of Christmas are beginning to show himself how miserable he truly is.

    Scrooge receives one more visitor, a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, the grimmest and silentest and most frightening of all the Ghosts. Most frightening, because this ghost shows Scrooge how he will die, unmourned by all, dismissed with the phrase: “Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?” Scrooge will die, and his house be plundered by common thieves as he lies dead on his deathbed, for he will have no one to look after him and care about him. Scrooge will die, and the only people who feel any emotion at his death are a young couple who rejoice because they owed Scrooge money and his death will buy them a little more time to pay off that debt.

    You know the rest of the story. Scrooge awakens in the morning to find that it is Christmas Day — imagine that, all those visits by all those Ghosts had occurred in one short night! — and of course Scrooge has thoroughly reformed. He sends a giant Christmas turkey to Bob Cratchit, his clerk; he gives money to charity; he dines with his nephew; and the day after Christmas, he increases Bob Cratchit’s salary. And as the years go by, he becomes like a second father to little Tiny Tim.

    Yet the funny thing is that we best remember Scrooge as he is before he reforms. We remember him as the mean, penurious, cranky old man who says, “Bah!” and “Humbug!” We remember Scrooge as the man who won’t let his clerk add even one tiny piece of coal to the fire in the office, even though it is frightfully cold. We remember Scrooge as the man who won’t give money to charity to help the poor, for after all that’s what the prisons and poor houses are for. We remember Scrooge as the man whom even loveable, forgiving Tiny Tim doesn’t like.

    We get a delicious sense of enjoyment watching Scrooge in action, before he’s reformed. I think we feel that enjoyment because we have a sense that he’s in each of us. Oh yes, he is indeed. I myself take pride in being a “Scrooge,” and I enjoy saying “Bah! Humbug!” in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and I like to say that there is so much humbug in Christmas these days that it is easy to be a Scrooge. It’s fun being a Scrooge.

    But there’s a deeper reason why we remember Scrooge best before he reforms. The reason is quite simply this: just like Scrooge, we all do like money. We would all like a comfortable life. Perhaps the only thing we despise in the unreformed Scrooge is his unwillingness to enjoy a little bit more of his money; although when you come right down to it, he gets plenty of enjoyment: he eats out at a restaurant every night of his life and he has a big huge house. Really, the unreformed Scrooge is no different than the typical American worker today: we work long hours, we take pride in working so hard that we can’t find time to do anything but eat, sleep, and work — and we do love our money. Yes we do. We are the wealthiest society on earth, and we like it that way, even if it means we have to put aside some of our humanity.

    It might not be a bad idea to face up to our own ghosts: the ghosts of our past, both our individual pasts, and our shared past as the wealthiest country in the world; to face up to the true reality of our present; and to look ahead at what the future might hold for us if we keep on going on the way we’ve been going on. As a society, we are becoming more like the unreformed Scrooge every day: unforgiving, uncharitable, unpleasant, and even unkind. Let us not forget that we are at war on this holiday that supposedly proclaims peace on earth. Let us not forget that the numbers of the poor in our country, our wealthy country, have been growing by leaps and bounds. Let us not forget that money is worshipped above all else in our society.

    I think Dickens’s story is best summed up when Scrooge’s nephew tells what Christmas should be: “a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

    To say this is to say, more simply, that at Christmas-time we really should try to remember the golden rule:– to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. How fitting that we try to live out this great ethical teaching on the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, who presented this wisdom of the ages to humanity once again. It was Jesus who put this great moral teaching into such a memorable form that we still quote his words. Except that while we quote his words, we also seem to need to be constantly reminded of them again and again — by people like Charles Dickens — and, well, by each other.

    So here I stand on this day before Christmas, reminding us all of this again. Love the people around you; love all creation; allow yourself to be loved by others. That is the essence of Christmas; that is what lies at the core of our religious faith: Love humanity; love the people around you; love all creation; allow yourself to be loved.

    Do this until it becomes a habit that continues beyond Christmas-time. Keep on doing that all the year ’round.