Scrooge’s Story is OUR Story

December 12, 2024

A Christmas Carol 1873 Getty Research Institute

I absolutely love Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol because it is OUR story. As we follow Ebenezer Scrooge through a supernatural evening, we come to recognize that we are old Ebenezer Scrooge and old Ebenezer Scrooge is us. His journey, led by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, is our journey if we choose to take it.

When we first meet Scrooge, he is described as “…a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. a squeezing, wrenching,grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!” When it comes to Christmas, Scrooge's response is the response of a man most miserable. He cries:

Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? 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. He should!

The real problem is that Scrooge does not recognize his state, how miserable he is, his need for salvation. He is like so many today who go about their tasks, having never looked deeply into a mirror. But then a ghost helps him see…

When the ghost of Jacob Marley visits Scrooge, he explains that he has come to warn Scrooge so that he might escape Marley’s dire fate. To this Scrooge responds, “You were always a good friend to me, . . . Thank’ee.” Here is the first bit of tenderheartedness directed by Scrooge to someone other than himself. He feels gratitude for Marley. It is here that we first see the frosty heart of Ebenezer Scrooge begin to thaw.

Before Scrooge is visited by Jacob Marley, he shows not the slightest bit of kindness or tenderness. His heart is hard. His focus is utterly self-centered. He has nothing to offer others but scorn and an occasional “Bah, Humbug!” Scrooge now shows the tiniest morsel of positive feeling to anyone. It’s Marley’s gift of undeserved kindness that first touches Scrooge’s soul. Marley extended grace to his former partner. In no way did Marley owe Scrooge anything. And there’s no reason to believe that Marley stood to gain anything for himself in helping Scrooge. Moreover, in no way whatsoever had Scrooge done anything to deserve Marley’s help. Marley’s intervention was simply an act of grace.

It is this act of grace that not only begins to soften Scrooge's heart so he can hear the message the other spirits will share with him, but it is this act of grace that helps Scrooge to discover a truth so important that there can be no salvation without it...that he is a sinner.

This is what the prophet Isaiah helped the nation of Israel recognize:

For all of us have become like one who is unclean,

And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment;

And all of us wither like a leaf,

And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

There is no one who calls on Your name,

Who arouses himself to take hold of You;

For You have hidden Your face from us

And have delivered us into the power of our iniquities.

-Isaiah 64:6-7

Centuries later, Paul would reiterate Isaiah's words making sure we understood they applied to all of us, "All fall short of the glory of God."

There is not a day that goes by when I do not experience pride, selfishness, or greed. The Bible tells me that these sins push me away from God. Nothing I can do will make up for my sins; there are too many. If I could make up for them by serving in the church, reading the Bible, giving to charity, being a good neighbor, the whole time I was making up for my past sins against God I would be committing new sins. It would be an endless cycle, one which I could never win.

Marley explains that Scrooge’s sins are many. Scrooge is told that he carries a “ponderous chain.” Yet, there is still hope. Marley tells Scrooge, "I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate." Marley's ghost tells Scrooge that he will "be haunted by Three Spirits.” In their coming Scrooge might escape his chains. "Might" because it is a choice.

In these weeks leading up to Christmas, may we choose to open our eyes (no ghostly visit necessary) to the fact that we have “fallen short of the glory of God.” Let us choose to cry out to God for forgiveness, remembering, “…while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us;” therefore, "Everyone who calls [makes a choice] on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 5:8; 10:13).

Jacob Marley is "as dead as a doornail," but our God is not.

Our Savior was not buried with "a stake of holly through his heart," but died with nails through his hands and rose again with lightening and earthquake.

Not because of a ghost but because of our Savior, like Scrooge, we have been given a chance to escape the chains we have forged in this life.

Let us never find ourselves saying "Humbug" to such a gift.