Xmas 2020: "When Love is Found"

 

Christmas Eve 2020

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

I have some very good friends who, during Advent, watch every single version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. That’s right, its’s Scrooge, Scrooge, Scrooge, all December long. However, there is only one version of “A Christmas Carol” that is in my person Christmas movie repertoire - “Jim Henson’s the Muppet Christmas Carol.”

Most of you probably know the basic details of the original story – three Christmas Ghosts visit greedy and selfish Ebenezer Scrooge and teach him how to find the love he has lost. In this version, Michael Kane plays human Ebenezer Scrooge, surrounded the rest of the Muppets perfectly filling the roles, with Kermit as Bob Cratchet, the Great Gonzo as Charles Dickens narrating the tale, helped by his sidekick, Rizzo the Rat, as Himself. 

As kids, my siblings and I practically wore out our VHS copy of this movie. Fast forward in both years and technology, and thanks to the magic of streaming services, new generations can enjoy what gave me so much happiness as a kid. With one caveat.

The first time I streamed this movie as an adult, something was missing. About halfway through the movie, the Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge the Christmas party where he met Belle, and it was love at first sight. Dissolve to a snowy landscape, a few years later, with the young couple discussing Scrooge’s desire to delay their wedding for yet another year.

In the streaming version, the movie cuts to Belle walking away when she realizes that Scrooge no longer loves her as much as he loves the idea of running a successful business. But I pause the movie and play the missing song that I remember from my childhood, a song that later movie editors decided was “too adult” and “too boring” for kids. This is Belle’s song, “When Love is Gone.”

The movie still makes sense without it…. But when “When Love is Gone” is GONE, we miss the actual transformation from Ebenezer Scrooge - the man - to THE Ebenezer Scrooge. Belle turns to him, tears streaming down her face, to say, “be careful or you may regret the choice you make someday.” And in that moment, he DOES have a choice – he can acknowledge the weight of his mistakes and try to make amends… or he can let his heart shrivel up, so he doesn’t have to feel the pain anymore. We all know what Ebenezer chooses.

I know lots of kids used this song it as a snack break or bathroom break, or pressed the Fast Forward button - and was it my favorite song THEN when I was a kid? No way. But now that I am an adult, I know that this song was simply waiting for me, to be there I needed it. It was like it was waiting to be found. It’s the song for when you’re watching nostalgic movies in your apartment by yourself, that first Christmas alone – post break up, post-divorce, post death of a loved one, post coming out or post transitioning. This year too, it is the song we didn’t know we might need for 2020 – watching Belle break up with Ebenezer, and sing about how her dreams of their future life being dashed – on Christmas eve no less – we’re right there with you!

Tonight we recall how, all those many centuries ago, another young couple had their wedding plans up-ended – not by slow business growth, but instead by angels, and a surprise pregnancy, by compulsory travel, a census, and taxes, and by the lack of room at the inn. Not at all the circumstances in which any parent wants their first-born child to arrive. Their feet ached, they were dusty and tired, frustrated that no one would make way for a woman in in active labor, uncomfortable with straw poking Mary as she pushed, and despairing that they only had rags and a cow feeding trough to put baby Jesus in.

When Martin Luther preached about Christmas, he relished describing the real and gritty details to his shocked parishioners: to a crowd picturing a sanitized version of the Nativity story (even in the 1500s) Luther would say “Who showed the poor girl what to do? She had never had a baby before…. It must have gone straight to her heart that she was so abandoned. She was flesh and blood, and must have felt miserable – and Joseph too – that she was left in this way, all alone, with no one to help… her eyes were moist even though she was happy.” *(Martin Luther's Christmas Book p. 32)

Every year, Christmas arrives with the lights and food and the songs and the gifts… But Christmas also comes with labor pains, loneliness, and in tears – both joyful and sad. Everyone remembers that one year they had “that Christmas” – the Christmas where everything went wrong. Grandma in the hospital, the kids got the bad stomach bug, travel plans were cancelled because of a big snowstorm.

It’s just that for 2020, we are ALL having THAT year….at the same time! And Christmas is right in the middle of the worst of it. Like Mary and Joseph on the night that Jesus was born - We too are tired, and worried, and making do with a bad situation.

In the year 2020, few good things DID happen, including one Christmas miracle. The original the lost song “When Love is Gone” WAS FOUND! When the song was cut, the original film was lost, and now, in my opinion at least, this movie gets another chance be whole again, not unlike our Ebenezer Scrooge.

When Scrooge wakes up in his own bed on Christmas morning, having been visited by those three spirits, he gets another chance to be whole again, as well. The ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future have been successful in their quest – Ebenezer has transformed back, from Scrooge to man, full of repentance and compassion and love.

For unknown reasons, he is no longer able to reconcile with Belle. But he wastes no time seeking forgiveness and reconciliation with other people in his life, – his cheery nephew Fred, and his dedicated employee, Bob Cratchit, who  he had spent so much time pushing away He gives Bob a raise, pledges a generous donation to a homeless charity, and hosts a grand Christmas dinner, involving a huge turkey bigger than Tiny Tim.

Scrooge celebrates because is no longer lost; he was found. Among the food and his friends, Scrooge begins to sing with the melody of “When Love is Gone,” but instead with new words, and is joined by a chorus of new-found family - “the Love we FOUND, the love we FOUND, we carry with us, so we’re never quite alone.”

We’re not alone in being alone right now, we’re not alone in feeling lost and numb and trying to survive until the new year arrives. Though we may feel quite lost at the moment, we haven’t lost love, or lost Jesus, or lost Christmas this year. Christmas is not gone just because we cannot gather together as we used to, and light candles and sing in a dark sanctuary or gather and eat with all of our loved ones, or even if your gifts have not even arrived, or have gotten lost in the mail.

Jesus was born into just such a moment. Jesus – Son of God, Prince of Peace - arrives to unprepared and scared parents, and by visited first by rag-tag shepherds to be found in a manger, and later, out-of-town foreign dignitaries. He grew up, and found himself to be Public Enemy Number one, because he dared to show the love of God to those who the rest of the world considered lost. And at another time when Evil seemed to reign, when death seem to win, and all seemed lost… three days later, love was found again in the darkness of an empty tomb, having defeated the power of death itself. THOSE angels on THAT day said the women at the empty tomb – “why do you search for the living among the dead? You won’t find him HERE.”

Christmas looks different this year. But it isn’t lost. It isn’t dead. We can find it in the very places it always already always lived. In you. In your heart. In your home. In your actions and words. In generosity and selflessness. In welcoming the stranger. In caring for the sick and reaching out to the lonely. In upending the expectations of the world.

Do not search for Christmas here… because you’ve already found it. It was never lost. It was never gone. Because Love has been with you the whole time. Thanks be to God. Amen.