I had a revelation for Christmas this year.
Funny, that's what I always wanted.
It started during Easter. I was asked by my church to perform spoken word for Easter. I wrote something. I didn't really like it. To be honest, I'm not sure they really liked it either. I'm not sure anymore if my art belongs in a church. By the time I create it, censor it, and wrap it up in a neat little package that "goes with the theme," I hardly recognize it and everything just becomes a little flat.
I wonder if Isaiah had to do "churchy" versions of his work...
Probably not.
Anyway, one way that we had decided to spice up my lacking spoken word piece was to add a vocalist. So, Carolyn (one of our vocalists at the time), Cindy (then director of creative arts ministries) and myself made a list of hymns that would be acceptable to sing snippets of in between my readings. One of the ones I liked was "Come, Thou FOunt of Every Blessing." I sent Cindy the lyrics and she sent me back a message.
Cindy: "Yeah, that's fine, just take the second verse out. You know, the one that talks about ebenezer. No one knows what that means."
Just take it out huh? NO one knows what that means? It kind of frustrates me when we have to dumb down literature or good music because the audience's literacy level has slipped below what it was at when the work was created. That's why we keep having to have new translations of the Bible. They don't make "more modern" versions of, say Moby Dick, or War and Peace.
It seems like everyone wants church to be really easy.
Insert Commodores reference here.
No, I'm not going to explain that to you. If you don't know, look it up.
Point being, I got all self righteous and huffy, talking about the decline of western civilization, and how we should all know what ebenezer means... blah blah blah, we ended up picking another song.
8 months later, I realize that I still don't know what ebenezer means. I think it has something to do with Christmas
Insert Charles Dickens reference here (you had better know what that means)
So, I looked it up. Funny that no one in church knows what that means. It's actually a biblical reference.
btw, those of you that use wikipedia to look things up will note that Ebenezer may refer to an abandoned water park in DuPage County, Illinois.
It doesn't.
You can find the reference to this in 1 Samuel 7:12. Basically, the Israelites had lost the Ark of the Covenant. Again. It seems like the Israelites treated the Ark of the Covenant like I treat my car keys. Everyone was in this big panic to get it back, and they actually did get it back, but there was no room in its normal place in Shiloh, because of all the monuments to other gods. At this time the army of the Philistines rose up against the Israelites. These guys were huge. I always imagine Dwayne Johnson (the Rock) up against Woody Allen (Jewish). Things were not looking good for Woody. Samuel, speaking on behalf of God, mentioned that some help could be had if the people of Israel would just get rid of all that extra stuff they had in storage for those other gods, and start worshiping their God, like the old times. They decided to try it, and the people of Israel had a spring cleaning day. wiped the floors clean of unholy sacrifices, ceased to burn grain to the wrong gods, and hauled some serious ass scooting false idols out of the temple. Right when they did this, God sent a huge thunderstorm, which scared Dwayne and all his friends out of their minds. I must have been one hell of a storm. Basically, Woody and crew went in there and cleaned up really fast, and that was the end of the war.
Simple, right? Ebenezer.
Okay, obviously, there's more.
Afterwards, Samuel erected a stone monument to God, and he called it "ebenezer," which means "stone of help." (If you had looked up the verse I mentioned earlier, you wouldn't have had to read anything up to this point. You see how research helps us?) It is a reminder that God will help us, if we would only ask, and obey what he tells us.
Stone of help! At long last. That is what it means.
Christmas.
This revelation has changed my interpretation of A Christmas Carol. Scrooge's first name is Ebenezer. He is defined by help. That sounds soooo weird to me. He doesn't begin the story as someone helpful*. There are things that make him stone, like his demeanor, his heart, or the stubborn will he has to be so grouchy. I think maybe he has rocks in his head. But stone of help? Why would Dickens name him that?
I think he was trying to draw our attention to something.
The thing about the original ebenezer, from the book of Samuel, is that, before Samuel assigned that value to it, it really was just a rock. Rocks can be used for everything and anything. You can skip them across a lake. You can throw them (unless you live in a glass house, or are not without sin). You can even trip over them. They become something great when you assign a value to them. Even some of our greatest works of art were once just rocks. If you look at Michaelangelo's David in its original form, I doubt you would be impressed.
I think that's the way I look at Scrooge. It's probably even the way I look at myself.
So, anyway, that's what Dickens did. He assigned a value to Scrooge before anyone else could see it. He was just a regular stone. He could have been a stumbling block, a block head, another heart of stone, but he became a stone of help. That seems really deep to me.
There are a lot a parallels to the scripture as well. The Israelites were worshiping false gods. Scrooge only cared about his money (the false god of choice in the western world). He (like the Israelites) had to be broken down. Faced with his eminent death, he realized that the things he cared about were absolutely meaningless, so he needed to find something that was meaningful. Scrooge found it in using his money to care for other people. By helping. By becoming a stone of help.
Dickens (like Someone Else I know) could see a person in his story as not who they were, but who they were becoming. And, I think, all the things that do not make sense about all people will one day be made clear. I wait for that day, and this Christmas, I celebrate one of the many ways that act of becoming is being made more clear to me
*If you don't know the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, just watch TV a LOT for the next 2 weeks or so. You'll find it somewhere.
