Looking Forward
Photo Credit Ryan Klinck
By Robert Bishop
Charles Dickens’s response to widespread apathy for the plight of the poor was to write A Christmas Carol. We owe the humanitarian spirit of the Christmas season to this work. Without Dickens, the Salvation Army isn’t represented by bell-ringing Santas and George Costanza doesn’t have a Human Fund. The memorable imagery of Ebenezer Scrooge’s three visiting spirits weighs on our collective consciousness.
Dickens’s first tactic is to lean on nostalgia. He writes to a privileged audience. The Ghost of Christmas Past reminds Scrooge that he had help pulling up his bootstraps. Remember when things weren’t so great for you? Shouldn’t you have empathy for those who are now where you were?
The Advent season is future oriented. The first candle we light represents hope. When we hope for God’s shalom, we necessarily declare that the present is inadequate. The world must be changed, and for the better. It is during this season, the first of the Christian year, that we learn again to wait in anticipation.
Advent feels like a natural fit for the Missional Wisdom Foundation. We celebrate it easily. In our educational programs and in our literature, we also teach a future orientation and approach to Christian community. We invite people to imagine possibilities that are not yet and might be, and encourage the renewal and adaptation of spaces that people aren’t using anymore.
We are not unique in this regard. My own congregation says the following words whenever we meet: “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” It’s a beautiful way to say that we don’t care what you’ve done, only that you’re going with us. After all, if Christian community is best expressed on the margins, what good is dwelling on the past? Or, to paraphrase a comedy bit, don’t ask marginalized people time travel questions. They have no use for going backwards.
It can be a bit uncomfortable, then, if we stop to dwell on The Ghost of Christmas Past, as Ebenezer does during the one o’clock hour on his fateful night. Even those of us who do not have significant trauma can be hurt by examining the stories that shape who we are and have become.
When Scrooge is first awakened by the Ghost of Christmas Past, he wonders if past means “Long Past.” No, is the reply, it is your past. Fair enough. The message is perhaps better received if it is personalized. I wonder, though, what it might look like if we collectively sat together in Scrooge’s one o’clock hour. Would we be shamed into empathy? Would we be reminded of the atrocities we have committed and watched happen with our approval? What do we as a church or a neighborhood or a nation do with the idea that we all have some Scrooge in us?
Perhaps, this Advent, we wait for two o’clock, for a shalom that couldn’t possibly come from us.