Luke 3:1-17               The Sin of Ebenezer Scrooge             December 7, 2008

         Every year during Advent, my family builds a mobile like this one to help us prepare for the coming of Christmas.  Each morning at breakfast, we read a brief devotional and then we hang a new piece on the mobile.  By Christmas, the mobile will be filled with images from the Bible about Christmas.   This year’s mobile is entitled “John the Baptist presents Jesus.”  John is a major symbol for the Advent season because John is one who calls us to prepare the way of the Lord.  John calls us to repentance.  John calls tells us of our sin and the one who comes to save us from our sin.

        This month of Advent, we are looking at Christmas through the eyes of Hollywood.  Last week, we saw that one of the great messages of Christmas is that we can discover a wonderful life when we accept God’s will for our lives. Just as God had a wonderful life for George Bailey, God has a wonderful plan and purpose for each of us.  That is good news.  However, there is a problem.  If God loves us and has wonderful plans, then why is the world in such a mess?  Well, the answer is that we do not always follow the ways of God.   Isaiah 53 says that our world is in a mess because we are like sheep who have each wandered off on our own way.  It is true that God has a wonderful life for us, but this morning, I also want to see that we have messed up that plan as we have fallen into our own plan.  And that is our Sin.

      Now for Hollywood and for most of our culture, the symbols of Christmas are wonderful, happy and fun.  But there is one well known symbol that points us to this problem of Sin.  Charles Dickens’ classic story, “A Christmas Carol” was written in 1843 and tells us of Ebenezer Scrooge, a cold-hearted, tight fisted, selfish man, who despises Christmas.  His last name has come into the English language as a byword for miserliness and hatefulness.  Scrooge is a banker who takes advantage of people in hard times.  He has only disgust for the poor, thinking the world would be better off without them.  When told of children starving, he comments that this will "decrease the surplus population." When he finally agrees to give his clerk, Bob Cratchit, the day off with pay, Scrooge says that the practice is like having his pocket picked on an annual basis. 

       After showing his shabby treatment of his employees, his business acquaintances, and his nephew, the novel resumes with Scrooge at his residence, intent on spending Christmas Eve alone. However, while he is preparing to go to bed, he is visited by the ghost of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, who had died seven years earlier on Christmas Eve.   Because of Jacob Marley’s greed, he is doomed for eternity bound in chains. Well, let’s take a look….( In the film, the ghost of Jacob Marley tells Scrooge that link by link, he is building his own doom.  If he does not change his life, Scrooge will also walk for eternity on chains.)

        Well, the rest of the story reveals to us that in the past, Scrooge had not always been so mean spirited.  His life and his choices have made him who he is.  He once was in love with a girl named Belle.  But in his work-aholic state of greed, he puts off their marriage.  Finally, at Christmas time, she tells him that he loves money more than her.  She leaves him and marries another.  We watch event after event, step by step, as Scrooge follows his own way, makes his own decisions, until he is a sinful bitter old man. 

        That is the nature of Sin.  It is going our own way, making our own decisions without looking to God’s ways and God’s plans.   I sometimes counsel with individuals and most times I see that they have ended where they are due to a series of bad decisions and going their own way.  The good news is that we can change.  Just as we arrived in a bad place due to bad decisions, we can discover a new place by making good decisions.  And the most crucial first decision is repentance.

      That is the message of John the Baptist.  He calls for people to repent.      What does it mean to repent?  It can be a painful thing.  It means to look seriously at myself and my own sin.  Not just the bad things of this world but the sin within my own heart.  It is a hard thing to really look at myself.  Scrooge spent a long night with three ghosts looking at himself.   At the end of the story, he meets the Ghost of Christmas future, the one he fears the most.  Scrooge finds himself falling into the pit of death and he wakes up crying, “I want to live.  I want to live.” 

      Do you want to live?  Then spend some time this Christmas looking at yourself in a spirit of repentance.  God still has a wonderful life for you and a wonderful eternity ahead.  Whatever sin is in you, God can give you a new heart.  How can that be?  Well, we will see that next week when we take a look at a man named the Grinch.  But the message from John the Baptist and the message from Scrooge is that we must first repent, turn away from our sin, and prepare for the Lord.  That is what Advent is all about.  Amen.