Haunting Mercy (Lessons From A Christmas Carol)

"Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.
-Hosea 6:1


This year, I have read Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, I have watched a movie about how Dickens created A Christmas Carol, I spent this Christmas Day evening watching Austin's Zach Theatre's A Christmas Carol, and for the fourth time in my life, I have spent several months immersing myself in Dickens's tale as an actor--this time playing not one, not two, but eight of the characters in the story.

And you would think I would have had enough. But I haven't.

There are three performances of Penfold Theatre Company's A Christmas Carol Classic Radiocast left to unfold, three more times this season for me to embody The Ghost of Christmas Past, Tiny Tim, Scrooge's niece, Belle, the charwoman, Belinda Cratchit, and a couple of lovable street urchins, and I will leave this experience feeling both sad and grateful.

I have looked across the stage and seen, on the face of my cast mate Clint, the beautiful sadness of a kind man witnessing unkindness and mourning for it. His Bob Cratchit has reminded me that empathy makes a powerful statement, silent though it be. I have seen the heart of a guardian in Julia's charity worker and Ghost of Christmas Present and felt how good strength can be when wielded in love, power bending low to serve the weak.

When Bobby and I stand together, center stage, as scrooge's nephew and niece, filling the theatre with their contagious good humor, catching each other's laughter like a sickness in reverse, I cannot help but feel my soul expanding with the spacious quality of joy. And as I travel along with Robert, our lead, living out Ebenezer Scrooge's unlikely and miraculous transformation, I am reminded of how much in need of redemption I am myself, and how sufficient God in his "merciful heaven" is to the task.

Because there are only five of us in this show, and because we are on stage for the duration of the play, Dickens's words have sunk into me deeper and deeper, and I have seen that God's power to mold us often "lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up . . ."

Also, this play has been a call to action. As I have watched Marley's ghost grieve the fact that he must walk the earth, visiting the places of sorrow where he is now powerless to intervene, I have felt the urgency of the present moment. When Scrooge tries to remind Marley that he was "always a good man of business," and Marley cries, "Business! Mankind was my business," I am awakened to the fact that I am alive: When I say words, people hear me. When I give someone a hug, they feel the embrace. When I choose to be kind, it changes someone's life for the better.

What power the living have. And I am one of them.

And I have seen that beneath the playwright's talent and the acting technique and the powerful visual elements, there is God. He is the "founder of the feast indeed." I feel his love in the tenderness of the Ghost of Christmas Past, the hearty relevance of the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the severe mercy of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Just as Dickens's trio of spirits knew that without regret over the past and fear of a lonely death, Scrooge could not choose the loving life he was made for, so in this "ghost story of Christmastime," I am reminded that what can look to us like God's vengeful anger may actually be the pursuit of our one true Love.

The baby who was born in Bethlehem is the same Jesus who did not leave his followers as orphans, but sent his Spirit to be with them. And I can't help but think about the Holy Spirit when I hear Dickens's words describing the Ghost of Christmas Present:

"Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing . . ."

May we let him in.