Eastern Shore Chapel Episcopal Church
Virginia Beach, Virginia
Christmas 2004

Dare to Hope
The Rev. Canon William Kolb

There is an older story about Christmas and then there is a newer one. The older one is a book entitled A Christmas Carol. It was written by the legendary Charles Dickens and published in December of 1843. The newer Christmas story is the movie A Miracle on 34th Street, which was introduced to the American public in 1947. The book and the movie, created 104 years apart, in different countries and through different media, have one deeply important human truth in common.

In the hauntingly moving Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is a wealthy older man who considers Christmas, and all that goes with it, to be – in his words – humbug - hogwash - sentimentality. Scrooge even begrudges the poverty-stricken clerk in his London business a day off for Christmas. His heart is closed and his mind is forever focused on the accumulation of monetary profits.

In the movie, Maureen O’Hara plays an executive at R. H. Macy’s department store in New York City. She is practical, brainy and very careful. She teaches her 8-year-old daughter (played by a very young Natalie Wood) to believe only what she can see, touch and prove with her mind. The two of them are extremely practical.

In the novel, Scrooge experiences a series of visits from Spirits: the Spirit of Christmas Past, the Spirit of Christmas Present, and the Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come. As we look at his earlier life, we see that Scrooge is emotionally abandoned by his father, watches the death of his young sister, and then loses the love of his life to his own appetites for money and miserliness. The woman who knows his deepest self breaks off with him, and his heart closes up for good.

In the movie, the Maureen O’Hara character, for whom the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade is a primary responsibility, hires a man named Kris Kringle to play Santa Claus in her production. When the man claims that he’s REALLY Santa Claus, she considers him to be emotionally unstable. She angrily, at one point, corrects a man friend never to encourage her daughter in the belief that the man might actually be Santa. As the movie proceeds we learn that the O’Hara character has gone through a painful divorce and is wary, even cynical about men, and about life in general.

As Scrooge goes through his visits with the spirits, each of who take him on video-like journeys back to actual past events in his life, he stoutly resists the possibility of allowing his heart to melt and believe in the Spirit of Christmas. So, too, does the Maureen O’Hara character, who is drawn more and more to an admiration and affection for this Kringle fellow, but who resists mightily the growing temptation to believe in Santa Claus and thus in the spirit of Christmas.

You can imagine, if you do not already know, how these two stories come out. Both finally have their hearts melted and filled with joy. They open up to the Spirit of Christmas, to themselves and to those around them. They are both lucky to have had such a revelation. Not everyone does.

As we moved towards this night (day) these past two weeks, I was aware of the stress of Christmas on so many. Some people actually said they couldn’t wait for it to be over. Some wrestled with the expectations of others, as they prepared their homes or their food or their gifts. Some seemed to be trying to recapture the feeling of Christmases past.

I thought about the original Christmas--in a manger, in a stable, wrapped in swaddling cloths. Oh my, I thought, the simplicity of Bethlehem. I thought about how good it would be to be back there instead of trying to make Christmas in today’s world.

And then I thought maybe the first Christmas wasn’t any better than today’s. Here they are, Joseph and Mary, torn from their home and having to make a long trip on foot, with Mary pregnant. All because it was required that they return to their place of birth to pay their taxes. They have to go to a large, busy and complicated city where they know no one. They find that no rooms are available after their exhausting journey, and they end up sleeping in a dirty, smelly stable with animals and all the attendant aromas.

It occurred to me, however, that that rather nasty scene did produce the birth of the Messiah, the Lord, the very body of God, the presence of Divine Love and caring in our lives. That suffering and patience brought forth the One who this night (day) casts his Spirit over our modern Christmas, and for those of us lucky enough to be able to stop long enough to feel it, the One who gives us real Christmas in our hearts.

That Spirit is love for all time…it enters into the stress of modern Christmas; it enters into old family feuds; it embraces our loneliness, our fears, our hopes, and our memories of Christmases past.

And I thought about the fact that some of us receive the Spirit of Christmas and that some do not.

And I thought about the book and the movie
and it occurred to me
that we all yearn for that spirit.

We yearn to believe, because that yearning expresses our universal hope
for God to be real,
for love to be unconditional
and for heaven to be where we are headed.

I realized that neither Scrooge nor the character in the movie SEEMED to yearn.
In fact they resisted.
And I think a lot of us resist, for the same reason that they did.
Many of us are afraid to yearn.
Afraid to hope that we are safe.
Afraid to hope that the world can be trusted.
Afraid to hope that somebody really loves us.

But hope is its own reward. It opens our hearts to life,
and God calls us to hope.

The Spirit of Christmas is always here for us.
Our battle is not to find, or be found by, that Spirit.
The battle is within ourselves,
As we struggle to take a chance
and to dare to hope, to feel, to rejoice -----------
By allowing our hearts to open up to that Spirit --
The Spirit of Christmas.
Amen.

Copyright 2004 Bill Kolb

Gospel: NRSV

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