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Across the Pastor’s Desk Way back in l977 I made a promise that I have had a hard time keeping. The late Bishop Herbert Spaugh made me promise him that I would read Charles Dickens’s beloved, “A Christmas Carol,” between Thanksgiving and Christmas of each and every year. The book was short, barely 28,000 words, so I made the promise, without setting an end date. For a number of years, this was not a burden. Then, as the repeated readings began to pile up, I found myself skipping over the parts I liked less well, so that I could get to the good parts. Then, it seemed as if all the scenes Dickens’s little masterpiece had become overly familiar, and I just could not make myself go once more into that overly familiar territory. I stopped reading the book each and every year, though I did periodically read the book in the proper season, and nearly always I would go to the final chapter of the book, that finishes by describing the new edition of Ebenezer Scrooge. After describing the wonderful transformation of Scrooge, Dickens summed up his best known character saying: (Scrooge) 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. And: (Scrooge) knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. Bishop Spaugh loved “A Christmas Carol,” because he believed deeply in the idea of conversion. He believed that with the help of the true Spirit of Christmas, even the most narrow, mean, bigoted, lazy, selfish, and uncaring men and women could
become new, made over in the image of him who first entered this world as a baby in Bethlehem of Judea something more than 2,000 years ago. Now, in my defense, lest you think I am a total bust, I made this promise to Bishop Spaugh long before another Moravian pastor (who should have been a bishop) gave me one of the most valuable pieces of advice I ever received. He said, “Make as few promises as you can; but keep all the promises you make.” Likewise, the first year I failed to keep the promise, I did not do so intentionally. I simply misplaced it in the midst of the rush. Today, I am much more selective about making promises. That said, I do regret that I let this promise to Bishop Spaugh go by the boards, and I am determined to put it back into play, annually. This year I find myself looking forward to making friends once more with Scrooge, and Bob Cratchit, and Tiny Tim. Though it will never measure up to the story that St. Luke tells in the 2nd chapter of his gospel, it does make a fitting follow up. It reminds us that the true Spirit of Christmas is so wonderfully compelling and powerful, that many who do not know the whole story as the New Testament tells it are tremendously effected by it. Somehow, for a few weeks each year, the real story with its vocabulary of sacrifice, surprise, generosity, caring, and joy, gets through the filter of crass commercialism and smaltzy sentimentalism, pierces us to the heart, and moves people to be a better version of themselves. Of course, a temporary make-over is not enough. The new Scrooge kept Christmas in his heart all the year through. Let us do likewise, for we celebrate the birth of him who, though he was rich, richer than Midas, yet for our sakes, he became poor, to make many rich. The Pastor