The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made.

I was reading the advertisement for the New York presentation of “A Christmas Carol” and it has a great tag line, as it assures us that this is an experience that will transform us, it says: “Enter Bah Humbug, Exit Joy to the World”.

That is my hope for each of you and for me, for your families and for mine, and for our life together in these next weeks as we move from Advent to Christmas and then to Epiphany, that we might enter with all of the Bah Humbugs that we have accumulated, and nurtured at times, and that we might exit, not only with the words of Joy to The World on our lips, but with the reality of Joy to the World in our hearts, that we might be transformed into the people whom we were created to be.

“Enter Bah Humbug, Exit Joy to the World”.

I have no doubt that the wonder of Dickens’ story can help us do just that, in fact I am counting on it working on me when I watch the various versions in the movies and cartoons that we have at home and especially, in a few weeks, when our family travels over to McCarter Theater for our annual visit with the Cratchits and the Spirits and our own lives. The story is an unintentionally marvelous piece of Reformed Theology, with its call to our memories and to our dreams and to our current activities, our past, our future and our present, it is a literary echo of the sacrament that we celebrate today, this three fold feast of remembrance, of hope, and of communion.

And in the character of Ebenezer Scrooge, we find ourselves, don’t we?

Oh, an exaggerated version, absolutely, but still don’t we recognize some of ourselves there?

And haven’t we all had times when the music seems flat and the lights annoying and the crowds frustrating and we are confronted with some obnoxious person who is just so in love with the Christmas season – you know someone like me - that we want to echo Scrooge when he said:
“What’s Christmas to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer . . . If I had my will, every idiot who goes around with “Merry Christmas” on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly though his heart. He should!”

Scrooge was a product of his times and his experiences, as we all are.

He was born poor and emotionally neglected and so he grew to worship wealth and to avoid the pain of human contact. Scrooge was living in the wilderness, the place where nothing grew, the place where there were no connections, the place where we have all found ourselves at one point or another.

His wilderness was called London, ours is called New Jersey, but we know the wilderness terrain, don’t we?

We know how to walk the streets and not made eye contact, we know how to follow a shopper to a parking space at the mall, we know how to avoid the potential for pain by not giving our hearts to others, to a cause bigger than ourselves.

And aren’t there corners and canyons of all of our lives that are as dry and lifeless as Scrooge’s, there are corners and canyons of our lives that are as desolate and forsaken as Judah in the time of Jeremiah or the wilderness of John the Baptist.

When Jeremiah spoke to the people it was in the aftermath of the Babylonian conquest and he was speaking from Ground Zero, in the wreckage of Jerusalem. The best and brightest of the people had been captured and moved off into slavery and those who were left were confronted every day with the damage that had been done. For over 20 years Jeremiah would speak of God’s ongoing promises to his people, his determination to keep his covenant even in the face of their rejection of him. It would get Jeremiah arrested as a traitor because he wouldn’t close ranks and wave the flag, he insisted upon faithfulness to God above loyalty to the King and he brought the promise of hope to the people in the darkest times of their lives.

That’s what Advent does for us, it reminds us – in our own wildernesses of luke-warm commitment to the Church, in our own wildernesses of wrecked careers and shattered marriages, in our own wildernesses of fear that those whom we love will grow ill and old and die and so will we – in those dark and gloomy realities of our lives, Advent is the first glimmer of light beyond the horizon, it is described in the words of one of my favorite hymn “And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, steals on the ear the distant triumph song, and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.”

Advent is the sound of that distant song, those silver bells chiming in our wilderness, ringing at first gently and then with increasing volume until it drowns out all of the chattering humbugs of our lives.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made.

The song Silver Bells, don’t worry I’m not going to sing it, is a call to use our sense of hearing to discern the changes in our culture at this time of the year. In the wilderness of a city sidewalk we her the sound and even something as mundane as a stop light becomes a sign of the coming of Christmas to the person who is looking for it.

And I think it is accurate to say that our hearing gives us the first clues, the realization that the preparations for Christmas are upon us and when I hear the first public notes of the Christmas music – while we are in the store buying our Halloween candy – I always smile and I see people smiling back and I realize that it is time.

And here we are at the start of it all, today.

“Enter Bah Humbug, Exit Joy to the World”.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made.

Of course there are always those who don’t want to admit that they have humbugs crawling around in their souls, those who don’t want to admit that they have wilderness stretches in their spiritual lives, those who don’t want to admit that there is devastation and rubble in their relationships.

Scrooge didn’t think he had a problem, the rest of the world did.

But then, in one holy night, his past, present and future came together and he could see who he was and he could see who he could become.

I can’t give you that night.

Even when we get through these days and we get to the 24th and the carols and the candles I can’t give you, in that short time, the tour of the wilderness of your life that Scrooge experienced, I can’t give you the regrets and failures and opportunities and challenges and hopes and visions that are unique to you and your family all in one whirlwind of an evening. But we can do it over the course of a season, God can give it to us.

That’s what Advent is for my friends, when the cards come, as the lights glow, let them take you back to those relationships that once were special in your lives, make the phone call that you have been postponing, write the note that you put off and as you do you will hear those silver bells in the wilderness of your memory.

And then when the opportunity presents itself, do the sacred thing for someone in need, whether it is a family from our care list, an individual from our prayer list, whatever the need might be, find it and fill it and you will hear those silver bells in the wilderness of your heart.

And then look to the possibilities of the future with a new song in your life, a new vision of what you can be and what your family can be and what your church can be and let that song and that vision sustain you in the dark and lonely days so that you can hear God’s promise that laughter and love and music will prevail and as you do you will hear those silver bells in the wilderness of your life.

Let your Christmases – past, present and future – come together over these next four weeks, let God’s spirit guide you through the rubble and wreckage, and listen for the sound of the silver bells, growing louder and finally, when we gather here on the night of the 24th you will hear nothing but God’s love for you and for all of us. “Enter Bah Humbug, Exit Joy to the World”.

It is a good description of a Christmas Carol and it is an even better description of what our Advent can be like this year if we chose. “Enter Bah Humbug, Exit Joy to the World”.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made.