The Scrooge Syndrome

Sunday talk by Josh Reeves. Are you embracing the holiday with anticipation and excitement or with woe and annoyance? If it's the latter, you may be suffering from Scrooge Syndrome. Symptoms may include grunting when you hear that Christmas song again or rolling your eyes after hearing how much money someone spent on a toy for their child, only for the box to be enjoyed. There is a cure for Scrooge Syndrome — it is a realization of the deeper meaning of the holiday, available to awaken in us all.

Transcript

So,

Raise your hand if you've done any of the following yet this year.

Rolled your eyes or grunted because a neighbor,

According to you,

Is putting up their Christmas decorations way too early.

Yes.

How many people have said something like,

I'd rather be going to the dentist than putting up Christmas decorations today?

Anybody?

A few of you,

Yes.

How many of us have intentionally avoided the Salvation Army volunteer outside the grocery store?

I did it the other day,

I saw him right ahead and I did kind of a backspin across the post right in.

I can't not give.

How many of us have cursed in some way the commercialism and materialism of the season?

Yes.

So we all sometimes suffer a little bit from the Scrooge syndrome,

But I want you to know today it can actually be a very healthy,

Positive thing.

Scrooge is Ebenezer Scrooge,

Who was brought to us through Charles Dickens in England in the 19th century,

Who wrote A Christmas Carol,

Which to me,

It's not only one of the great works of literature,

It's like a spiritual or religious text.

And Scrooge is described there,

We are told,

To edge his way along the crowded paths of life,

Warning all human sympathy to keep its distance.

Does this sound like anybody here?

Maybe this past week.

And we hear from Scrooge,

He says,

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.

If I could work my will,

Every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding.

I don't know what kind of pudding,

But.

And buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

Now,

That might be going a little too far,

But this is what I want you to know about the character of Scrooge.

We often talk about Scrooge like he's a villain,

But the truth is,

Is that Scrooge is a great hero.

He goes on a spiritual journey,

Visited not so much by the ghost,

But by the spirit of the past,

The present,

And what is yet to come to become enlightened and to receive the great blessing of Christmas.

See,

If you're feeling a little extra grouchy this time of year,

All that it means is that Christmas is working.

See,

There's this great blessing.

There's something about this time of year,

No matter what you call it,

That's a primordial kind of time.

It's a time that calls back all that has been,

All of our loved ones.

It's a time that puts us in touch with what is.

It's a time that causes us to think about our relationship with what is yet to come and it's a sacred time,

This time where it is most dark and yet the light shines most brightly internally.

See,

The blessing of Christmas when we're grumpy,

It haunts us.

And that's why perhaps we get grumpy in the first place.

And all that we're called to do is to receive the blessing,

The blessing that is being alive,

The blessing that is the miracle of life,

Seeking to make itself known in your heart and in mine.

How do we receive the blessing of Christmas?

First of all,

We have to break out of the curse.

You've got to break out of the curse.

A curse not put on us by some witch out there,

But a curse that we damn ourselves with.

It's the curse of a tunnel vision that sees life through a pessimistic prism.

It's the curse that tells ourselves that we're not good enough,

That life is just about survival and getting as much stuff as possible.

It's the curse that says,

I can't believe I have to have another Christmas in this damn pandemic.

It's that anger.

It's that regret.

It's that desire to pull away.

It's that curse we put ourselves into,

And it's that rut.

It's that mediocrity.

And we have to break the curse by breaking ourselves out of it.

I remember several years ago before my family and I moved here to Colorado,

We had to go to the passport office,

Which was at a big post office in Long Beach,

California.

And it was like the DMV died and went to hell.

It was like 85 degrees and it was packed.

And I had my number and the number was like 100 ahead.

And the fluorescent lights,

It was like they were set to stun.

They're just burning your eyeballs in there.

And at one point,

We've been there over an hour and there's a gas station next door.

And so I grabbed our son Gavin and I said,

We're just going to go to the gas station and get a bottle of water.

And my wife April would stay there.

And so I'm in line at this gas station suffering.

Just miserable.

And I think,

You know,

At least April's there with me so I could go to the gas station and get this bottle of water.

There's all sorts of people there who don't have any water at all.

No one else there with them.

And so I think,

You know,

I asked the gas station attendant,

How many bottles of water do you have?

And I walk out with over a caseload.

Gavin's got some and I've got some and I return into that post office like George Bailey returning to Bedford Falls.

Hello,

You old post office.

Hello,

Lady whose back of your head is all that I've seen.

Would you like some water?

Hello guy with a shirt too small for your body.

Would you like a glass of water?

On and on.

And some people take the water and some people don't.

And it's not like I'm trying to do some act of kindness.

It's an act of rebellion,

Right,

Against the misery of being in that place.

But I'm breaking out of this rut and I'm finding happiness and joy.

And as a byproduct,

Happy to provide some water to some folks as well.

My son the whole time just got his hand over his face.

He's just totally embarrassed.

So we get our photos taken and the next day I'm with my wife and we're at an Ulta beauty store getting her some makeup.

And I'm paying for it and the lady behind the counter says,

Hey,

Were you at the postal office yesterday?

I said,

Yes.

She goes,

Were you the one giving out the water?

And I said,

Yes,

I was.

And she says,

You know,

It was so funny.

I was there with my family and we were kind of at each other all day.

We were miserable,

Not having a good time.

We didn't share a word until we were on our way home and we started talking about you handing out those bottles of water.

And all of a sudden we started laughing together and connecting and there was this healing experience and thank you so much for doing that.

And again,

I didn't try to do it as an act of good for others,

But it was an expression of when we break our own curse that we put ourselves in,

When we get out of that rut and are willing to share and be a blessing,

It can bless people in so many different ways.

The miracle of that experience being that I was there to receive the story of such.

Break out of the curse and become the blessing.

Break out of the curse and become the blessing.

Charles Dickens,

We might think as part of the British elite,

A man of privilege,

But it wasn't so.

Young Charles in 19th century England was born into a family with means,

But his dad had a lot of financial problems and was actually arrested and put in real debtors' prison.

It was a real thing back then.

And young Charles was put in an orphanage and he was taken out of school.

He had to work hard labor every day to help pay off.

His father's debts.

And young Charles would walk every morning through the slums of London.

And it's very similar to Siddhartha,

The story of the Buddha when he leaves his father's kingdom and he begins to see suffering in the world.

Little Charles saw the suffering.

He saw the disdain.

He saw the scuzziness of the streets and yet he saw the resilience of the people.

The lines on their faces,

The way that they would speak together.

And if anyone's familiar with the work of Charles Dickens,

I would argue that this whole experience really carved his whole narrative career talking about these people and how to restore dignity in them and uplift them in life.

Scrooge is probably the most personal of all characters to Dickens because he represents his own father.

Someone who had good inside of him but got too caught up in the material life.

Too caught up in greed.

Too caught up that the blessing of life was never received or never opened his heart.

And so for me,

One of the most powerful parts of the Christmas Carol is the dialogue that happens between Scrooge and his nephew who,

When I do a careful reading,

Sounds like Charles Dickens to me.

It's a conversation that he's having in his mind with his own father.

And it goes something like this.

"'God save you,

Uncle,

' cried a cheerful voice.

It was Scrooge's nephew.

"'Bah,

Humbug,

' said Scrooge.

"'Christmas a humbug,

Uncle?

' You don't mean that,

I'm sure.

" "'I do,

' said Scrooge.

"'Merry Christmas!

What right have you to be merry?

You're poor enough.

' "'Come then,

' returned the nephew.

"'What right have you to be dismal?

You're rich enough.

' "'Nephew,

Keep Christmas in your own way,

And I will keep it in mine.

' "'Keep it,

' repeated Scrooge's nephew,

"'but you don't keep it.

Leave me alone then.

Much good may it do to you.

Much good it has ever done to you.

'" And we hear this following statement from the nephew,

Which is Dickens,

Which helped awaken a society and helped invent the Christmas that we know in so many ways today at a cultural level.

The nephew continues,

"'I've always thought of Christmas time 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 there,

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.

'" God bless it,

That blessing.

And I can't help but think of that little boy at night in that orphanage thinking about how he's been taken out of school,

Thinking about how he's been taken from his home,

Not getting to eat what he wants to,

And rightfully thinking,

What right have I to be merry?

What right have I to be merry?

But then thinking about those lowly,

Suffering people he saw on the street,

And those kids all around him who didn't have parents still like he did,

And perhaps saying to himself,

What right have I to be dismal?

What right have I to be dismal?

Then in the most challenging experiences of our life,

The blessing of being alive,

The blessing of the knowledge of the miracle of the Spirit in all things can awaken in us and achieve that merriment,

That charity,

That clarity of life and of being.

The first step to receiving the blessing is breaking any curse we put upon ourselves,

But then it's about knowing that blessing is not only for us,

But it's for everyone,

That the truth of the blessing is that no one is excluded.

It's not God bless us some,

It's God bless us every one.

It's not God bless you and me,

It's God bless us every one.

It's not,

As the joke goes,

God bless America and no place else.

It's God bless everyone,

No one excluded.

I don't mean to just apply this to the egregious people in the world,

But to those who inspire our grumpiness,

Our everyday frustrations,

The person that cuts you off,

The person you're having a conversation with that won't lift their head from their cell phone.

All of those sandpaper people who push our buttons and even in that dysfunctional family experience,

Those people we love but that drive us crazy.

I can't help but want to give a shout out to Stephen Sondheim this week who passed away in his beautiful song from a company called Being Alive,

Which speaks to romance,

But I think it speaks to familiar relationships as well.

He says,

Someone to need you too much,

Someone to know you too well,

Someone to pull you up short to put you through hell,

Someone you have to let in,

Someone whose feelings you spare,

Someone who like it or not will want you to share a little a lot,

Someone to crowd you with love,

Someone to force you to care,

Someone to make you come through who will always be there as frightened as you of being alive.

That's what the blessing is.

It's being alive and it's living that life to the fullest as opposed to allowing it to get drawn back into the seeming fractured surface of things.

Scrooge is the hero of A Christmas Carol,

And this is why it's a religious work in so many ways.

Dickens puts Christ right in the book,

Right in the book as the character of Tiny Tim who affirms God blesses everyone and this is something that Jesus would do.

He would compare the kingdom of heaven to the littlest of things,

The mustard seed,

The little child that each of us needs to be like to get into heaven.

The last shall come first.

So we have this young crippled boy who represents all that the kingdom of heaven and all that the blessing is.

There's a conversation that takes place.

He's coming home on his dad Bob's shoulders and mom says,

How did little Tim behave?

As good as gold,

Said Bob,

And better.

Now he gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much and thinks the strangest things you've ever heard.

He told me coming home that he hoped that people saw him in the church because he was a cripple and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.

Even in those challenging experiences,

No matter how we've been victimized in our lives,

No matter how fractured things may seem,

The blessing is still there.

And what is the blessing but knowing it in your heart and seeking to bring it into your life no matter the challenge.

Sometimes the challenges actually make it even clearer.

I was inspired several years ago watching an HBO documentary called John about John Foley,

Jim Foley.

I apologize,

Called Jim.

Jim Foley was the journalist who many of us know in the news who was assassinated brutally by ISIS in 2014.

And here's this young man who was inspired with a dream of journalism who went out to the Middle East to cover stories that people weren't covering as a freelance journalist and he got kidnapped.

He was there for several months.

His family worked hard to get him out and he was eventually freed and he got home and loved his dream so much.

How many of us would do that?

He went back after having that terrible experience.

And there he would be kidnapped again,

Eventually murdered as so many of us know.

And yet in that year before his passing,

He shared a cell room with about a dozen other journalists from all over the world.

And these men lived and ate and became each other's universe because everything on the outside was shut out from them.

And one of these gentlemen shares eulogizing Jim that there was one night where it was Christmas and they all sat next to each other and they didn't have gifts.

The only blessing they had was to know that it was Christmas.

And each gentleman went around and said something that they admired about the person next to them.

And this gentleman got to share about Jim and he shared,

You know,

When I first met you,

Because Jim was well known in the journalist world,

Kind of famous in that way,

I wasn't all that impressed.

You looked exhausted.

You looked like you didn't know where you were,

But as I've gotten to know you,

I've come to realize that there is nothing but good in you.

Nothing but good in you.

It's the greatest compliment he could give Jim and the gentleman shared that when he was going to bed that night,

He thought to himself,

This is the best Christmas I ever had.

What a powerful statement to make in prison as a prisoner of war.

Yet it speaks to the power that that blessing of life cannot be escaped.

And when we try to run away from it,

It haunts us.

It calls us back into what it really is to remember who we are,

To remember why we're really here and to choose to either run away and hide from the great blessing or to groom and to cultivate it in our consciousness,

In our hearts,

In our relationship and in our works.

There's a Sufi saying,

Man's heart is like a piece of ground.

You may sow anything in it and rear it.

When the fruit comes,

Then man knows whether it was a sweet fruit or a poison.

What are you planting in your heart this Christmas time?

What seeds are you planting for just remembering that miracle of life,

Why you're here,

Your relationships and how they've come to you,

Your work and what drew you to it,

How you see the world and if you practice that way of seeing it in your life and in how you interact with others.

No one excluded from the blessing,

Breaking the curse.

And then there's the recognition that when you live from this blessing,

It never decreases.

The blessing only increases.

It only grows and grows.

This is very much the message of the master teacher Jesus when he says,

Do not put your heart into material treasures that will rot and fade away,

But put your heart in heaven so that you may experience eternal life.

What does that mean?

It doesn't mean that you don't have to love your Xbox.

You can love your Xbox.

We can love the material goods of our life.

Yet what we should invest in is in the eternal and what is the eternal but recognizing that miracle of life within yourself.

It's a remembrance that even though people that you love are no longer here in physical form,

That there's a life in that eternity that is right here with you.

It's the recognition that although things may not be perfect today,

That there's still this perfect presence,

This perfect life behind the scenes expressing and holding everything.

It's the recognition that even though you may not know what is to come,

There is that wholeness and completeness of life right where you are.

To become aware of this is the greatest blessing that there is.

And I've learned in my life for all the spiritual studies that I've done,

You know,

15 years a minister or whatever it is,

As skeptical as I can be about all sorts of teachings,

The one thing that's been sure for me,

Wherever I have shown up as blessing,

I have been blessed.

That's one thing that has been so certain for me.

Wherever I've been willing to show up and be a blessing,

To be present for the miracle,

It's expressed itself in some way,

In some form.

And that is the gift of life to each of us.

I love how our founder Ernst Holmes put it.

He said,

Here's a thought I love above most other things that Jesus said.

It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

You and I have never done anything personally to earn this kingdom.

It is the gift of life to us.

And you and I cannot believe,

In fact,

We dare not believe that we could do anything really to destroy it.

We may be able to delay the day of our emancipation.

We may be able to deny the reality of our own spirits because we are individuals.

But surely,

That which God has made,

You and I cannot destroy.

What a good thing to remember in moments of struggle this year,

Of moments of grief,

Of moments of uncertainty,

Whatever may come of moments of the seeming fracture in a relationship,

That there's still that great blessing of life always and ever available for us to remember.

That we are the very expression of what it is,

Or as Meister Eckhart,

The great Catholic mystic once said,

There's not only one begotten son,

But that we are all sons of the only begotten.

In other words,

We are all children of God.

We are all expressions of the Spirit.

And when we remember this blessing,

When we allow it to seep through our own understanding,

To open up to that higher understanding,

It takes root in us,

And it grows and grows and grows.

Think of those areas in your life that could use this blessing.

Think of those untouched areas in yourself that you maybe have been turning away from that could use this blessing.

Think about those places in the world that could use this blessing.

And all we're asked is to have the courage to see it and recognize it,

To embrace it,

And to become it.