Nobbling the Hobgoblins (1): The Hobgoblin of Greed: nobbling Ebenezer Scrooge
a sermon by Bob Faser
2nd October 2011
St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Bacchus Marsh, Vic.
I think we’re all familiar with our first hobgoblin, Ebenezer Scrooge. In Charles Dickens’s story A Christmas Carol, Scrooge was the hard-nosed miser who refused to celebrate Christmas, who never gave to charity, who underpaid his employee, and whose response to appeal to his own better nature was “Bah! Humbug!”
Dickens’s story was the tale of Scrooge’s transformation, with a bit of supernatural assistance, to a greater level of generosity in his life. But, before the transformation, we can see Scrooge as a rather miserable character, as quite a “hobgoblin”.
At one level, there is Scrooge’s lack of any generosity toward others. When two men came collecting funds for the poor, Scrooge threw them out of his office saying, “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” Scrooge was a great believer in the market economy and in the notion that “Greed is good.” Ayn Rand had nothing on Scrooge.
But, in addition to this economic greed, we find a severe joylessness in Scrooge’s life. Dickens said that people avoided him in the street, and even the guide dogs for blind people would pull their owners out of Scrooge’s way to avoid contact. Scrooge was:
Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever drawn out generous fire; secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
Scrooge had this tendency to live “on the cheap”. He took the old virtue of thrift and made a deadly vice out of it.
Contrary to what you may have been taught, thrift is not always a virtue. Frequently it is a deadly vice.
I realise that there may have been some venerable elders from back in the time when this church was a kirk turning in their graves so loudly that you couldn’t hear my last point, so I’ll repeat it: Contrary to what you may have been taught, thrift is not always a virtue. Frequently it is a deadly vice.
I believe living “on the cheap” is a serious trap for individuals and for churches today. We need to recover the Christian virtue of gracious extravagance, reflecting the overflowing extravagance of God – that extravagance without which none of us would exist.
Contrary to what you may have been taught, extravagance is not always a vice. Frequently it is a gift of God’s grace.
One biblical example of this gracious extravagance is found in the account of a woman who used some incredibly expensive perfume to anoint Jesus’ head or feet (depending on the particular gospel in which you read the story).
In one version of the story, the woman who anointed Jesus was Mary, the sister of Martha. In another version, she was unnamed.
In all versions of the story, she was criticised (either by Judas or by the whole group of disciples) for not doing something more practical with this expensive resource, but Jesus strongly defended the woman’s extravagant act.
Contrary to what you may have been taught, extravagance is not always a vice. Frequently it is a gift of God’s grace.
An example more close to our own times can be seen in that most Christian of films Babette’s Feast. This film is set in a small Danish village in the 19th century. Two pious spinster sisters – daughters of the village’s former Lutheran pastor, now deceased - live in the village and provide a charitable service to the poor: austere, joyless meals, accompanied by a similarly austere and joyless religion, also accompanied by a high level of condescension toward the recipients of their charity.
Into this scene comes Babette, a younger French woman who once ran a café in Paris. Babette was a refugee from some violent political turmoil, violence in which her husband was killed. She was told by a Frenchman who once lived in Denmark and knew the two sisters that she’d find safety there. She began working as a housemaid for the sisters.
One day, Babette won a lottery and found herself with a great deal of money. She decided to host a grand, French-style banquet for the sisters and for the poor whom they fed. After some resistance, the banquet was a success. The poor enjoyed themselves immensely – even the spinster sisters relaxed a bit.
The radical nature of Babette’s gift to the people of the village was only realised when it was revealed that Babette spent her entire lottery winnings on the banquet. Only then did the spinster sisters realise the extent to which Babette and her feast reflected the overflowing extravagance of God.
Contrary to what you may have been taught, extravagance is not always a vice. Frequently it is a gift of God’s grace.
Sometimes we only learn this lesson the hard way:
• Scrooge,
• The two spinster sisters in Babette’s Feast,
• The disciples watching the woman supposedly “waste” the expensive perfume.,
• Ourselves:
It’s difficult to nobble the hobgoblin that calls us to live our lives “on the cheap”.
We see the examples of overflowing extravagance in the life of Jesus.
• We see this overflowing extravagance in his praise of the woman’s supposed “waste” of the perfume.
• We see this overflowing extravagance in the loaves and fishes. A little boy’s simple lunch results in baskets of leftovers … overflowing extravagance par excellence.
• We also see this overflowing extravagance in the sacrament we celebrate today.
I’ll make a suggestion now. As a way of celebrating God’s overflowing and gracious extravagance, and as your way of declaring your intention to be a participant in the divine extravagance, as the bread is passed around at Holy Communion, please don’t feel you need to restrict yourself to a tiny, almost microscopic bit of bread. Instead, please take a decent-sized piece as your way of saying to God, “Thank you for your extravagant grace. Please help me to be extravagantly gracious and graciously extravagant as well, and help me to nobble the hobgoblin of Scrooge.”
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Next week’s sermon in this series is: “The Hobgoblin of Snobbery: nobbling Hyacinth Buckét”
Copyright: Robert J. Faser, 2011.
