A Christmas Parable
Did you know that “A Christmas Carol” was not the original title for Charles Dickens’ famous Christmas story? The working title was “An Appeal to the People of England on Behalf of the Poor Man’s Child.” And it didn’t start out as a novella but as a political tract decrying the evils done to poor people and children by the captains of the industrial revolution. In 1843 Dickens was the speaker at a rally to raise awareness and money for children trapped in the sweat shops of England. He was a social activist. He first decided to write a tract then decided that “his sledge hammer would come down with twenty times the force” if he wrote it as a story – a parable. His social commentary was searing and memorable because he couched it in story. It worked for Jesus. Today those parables of Jesus are told as children’s stories but back then they could have got you lynched. “The Good Samaritan” – a lovely little morality tale, unless you are telling it to an audience who hates Samaritans and can’t imagine a good one existing. Then you twist the knife by saying that he helped after a priest and a Levite passed up the opportunity to do so, the best and most religious people in Jewish society. The point was made and the story stuck and still speaks to this day. So with Dickens’ book, published in 1843 and has never been out of print. It’s been made into plays, movies innumerable. Though packaged as entertainment, the social commentary can’t be ignored. The rich are heartless and without compassion when it comes to the condition of the poor. The poor are kind and good like Bob Cratchet and Tiny Tim. The rich are Jacob Marley rattling his chains in Hell and Ebenezer Scrooge counting his money alone and loveless. Dickens holds up the image of what is possible in the person of old Fezziwig, not the best business man perhaps, but beloved by his employees for his generosity. And, as with most morality tales, he holds out the possibility of redemption and transformation. Dickens would have been part of the “Occupy” movement. In England in the nineteenth century, the economic and social disparities were just as glaring, and the rich seemed just as compassionless and even disdainful of the poor. The distance from Wall Street to Main Street was even further than in our society. Poverty was more than an unfortunate situation; it was a crime for which one could be imprisoned. But, how was it that Dickens had such a highly developed sense of outrage over the cruel disparities of the society in which he lived, while others treated it as normal and acceptable? As one of the most celebrated writers of his time he certainly must have been part of that privileged upper class. But his father was an office clerk, rather like Bob Cratchet. Charles came from a large family, again, like the Cratchets. It was hard taking care of eight children on a meager salary and he got behind in his bills. When Charles was twelve, his father was sent to debtor’s prison. Charles had to drop out of school and go to work in one of those awful factories. So, when he has Scrooge sarcastically remark about debtor’s prisons and work houses, it is from a personal sense of pain. Dickens’ parable was as inflammatory as Jesus story of the Good Samaritan. It reversed the roles. In English society the wealthy were the people of quality and virtue while the poor were considered without culture or character and not worth the space they occupied. In Dickens’ story the poor are virtuous while the wealthy are scoundrels. It is the rich and not the poor who need redemption and transformation. But, Dickens would be first to admit that even though his book has never gone out of print, it’s not the greatest Christmas parable. That would be the first one, the one the Christians tell, about God coming in flesh in a manger. If it is hard for the comfortable wealthy to identify with the plight of the poor, then consider this troubling conundrum. How can a God who is all powerful identify and sympathize with my weakness? How can a God who dwells in a place where streets are made of gold relate to my poverty? How can a God who is all-knowing have pity on my ignorance? How can the eternal God know the fear I have of my mortality? The answer? The Christmas story. The parable about God incarnate. The great God of Heaven set his glory aside to take on human flesh and all that mortality implies. Born of a peasant family in a cow stall in a little backwater town of the outskirts of the Roman Empire. Surely he has born our sorrows and shared our grief, assured Isaiah. A high priest that has been in every way tempted, like us, observes the writer of Hebrews. He thought not equality with God a thing to be grasped; he emptied himself and became one of us. It’ the parable of Christmas. The promise to all the Bob Cratchets in the world, that God understands because he has been there. And for all the Scrooges in the world, redemption is possible because God himself has paid the cost to make it possible. There’s one more thing. This story isn’t a work of fiction like Dickens’ story. It happened – about 2011 years ago – today.
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