Even Ebenezer Came Around!
by Joshua Rothenberg, member of Chancellor Baptist Church in Fredericksburg
While it’s a little past Christmas, it’s never out of season to set our hearts and minds on the reality that God stepped down in our neighborhood to save us from “the wages of sin and death” (Romans 6:23). When it is Christmas time, I’m usually enjoying time with my family as we watch classic holiday movies in our coziest pajamas by the fireplace. Our usual catalog consists of watching young Kevin McCallister engineer literal torture devices on “professional” robbers or witnessing Buddy the Elf getting overtly excited at the prospect of “Santa” coming to town. Another tale I’m fond of originated not in holiday cinema, but in old-school Victorian literature that has captivated readers for nearly two centuries: A Christmas Carol.
In 1843, Charles Dickens published a novella centering on the literal overnight redemption of one of the most miserly protagonists ever conceived; Ebenezer Scrooge. As Scrooge’s deceased partner, Jacob Marley exegetes, living hard-heartedly and coldly against God and one's neighbor has consequences for this life and the life to come. To make sure Scrooge avoids the same fate as Marley, the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future team up to show the old buzzard the folly of his ways. Thankfully for Scrooge and those around him, the spirits did their job, and he awoke on Christmas with new eyes and a new heart. Joy, a long-forgotten concept, returns to Ebenezer, and generosity, a once abstract commodity, begins to flow through and in him on the regular. Dickens’ concluding remarks sum up his transformation best: “He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”
This type of radical transformation can still shock us, even though we know one encounter with Jesus is all it takes for a person to go from death to life. He actively invites us to be part of His redemptive ministry, as laid out at the end of the gospel of Matthew, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).
What’s so striking about this commission is that it’s not merely a call to obedience that every believer is invited to, but a promise that God is working even in our finite participation, with the latter part of this verse proclaiming the reality of Emmanuel, or ‘God with us.’ We don’t go into our work, neighborhoods, or schools by our own power but by the power that raised Christ from the dead and now resides in us. As such, we take confidence in ministering and loving those whose hearts are shut off to the gospel, even those who continually spew out “humbugs” to a relationship with Christ.
Whenever I’m watching a Christmas Carol adaptation (the Muppet version is easily the best), one criterion I hold is how well the depiction of Scrooge’s nephew and only living relative, Fred, is portrayed. After his mother dies in childbirth, Fred is the last remnant of a time when Ebenezer remembers what it’s like to love and be loved. A stark contrast to his uncle, he radiates the contagious kindness and optimism that Scrooge’s sister brought to his life decades ago. Thus, at every holiday season, Fred determinedly walks across town to that cold and dingy office to invite the old man to Christmas dinner. Scrooge, in return, will have none of it and just as determinedly slams the door on his offer and on having a relationship with his nephew. By all accounts, it seems like a fruitless endeavor to offer fellowship to someone who has adamantly rebuffed any attempt at human connection, and later in the novella, Fred’s closest friends remind him of such. Fred, however, refuses to badmouth his uncle or forgo inviting his uncle to the idea of community, hoping and believing that even the curmudgeon specimen that is his uncle can change. Even still, he is more surprised than anyone when his uncle finally takes up his offer to spend Christmas with him and his wife, and Fred, with zero hesitation, takes his uncle in, holding no ill will towards his uncle’s previous callous treatment of him. He’s just grateful that over so many years, Scrooge isn’t just coming to his home: he’s come home.
We will never truly see all that God is doing in the lives of our neighbors who have not yet come to know the wonderful love of Jesus for them. Our attempts at relational ministry may be a domino we never see tipped, but it’s a domino nonetheless in a string of dominos he uses to welcome someone into His kingdom. This gives great hope when our attempts to share the love of Christ, no strings attached, are met with insults and treated with revulsion. We cannot give in to despair, though, because Jesus promised that not only would this happen, but we would be blessed (Matthew 5:11-12). I’m not suggesting we place ourselves in emotionally or spiritually compromising situations based on codependent relationships with people who have consistently hurt us; boundaries are not just good, but biblical. There is also scriptural precedence for “shaking the dust off our feet” and knowing that if we share the Gospel and continue to live authentically before God and our unbelieving neighbors, then we’ve done what Jesus has asked of us (Luke 9:5). We don’t need to force or pressure anyone into accepting Him. Rather, we trust that God’s heart is to make tender the rough and coarse texture so common to the touch of the human heart. May He soften our hearts to not see them as projects or obstacles, but as image-bearers of God Almighty. Therefore, may we never rob others of their Creator-endowed dignity, even as they attempt to disparage our dignity, as if it could ever be lost. It is set in stone, for we are His.