The Crachits' Cry from the Wilderness

Isaiah 11:1-10
Matthew 3:1-12

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.  --from Isaiah 11


This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"from Matthew 3


"I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

--from Matthew 3

Charles Dickens is able to recreate such vivid images of child labor and workhouse conditions of debtors in his  novels because he survived such conditions himself. His dad was a gainfully employed man, but a man who had a debt of 40 pounds, which, in those days was the same as stealing 40 pounds.  So he had to go to debtor's prison and his son, twelve-year old Charles, had to work ten hours a day putting shoe polish in jars.

Dickens understood the injustices of life. He understood the need to pen words in protest to such a system. The fact that he did it also in his fiction works is genius.. a lasting testimony to a man whose purpose was to make life better for those around him. His works are a cry in the wilderness to those who are in power. A cry of protest from the midst of the pain. And once he was an established, praised and successful author, but one who remembered his painful past, all the better to be the voice of change.

John the Baptist is the cry from the wilderness we hear this week. He is crying out in the words of Isaiah, begging those gathered to prepare the way for one who is coming after him. One who will demand justice, who will baptize with the fire of the Spirit. One who will see to it that the weak are made strong, that even the child will be treasured, rather than discarded.

This week why not look at the ways we avoid the cry in the wilderness? The ways we drown out the cry of the needy with the LOUD CAROLS sung all around us....  How often, as we buy the sweater on sale for $17.99, do we consider that a little boy or girl much like the Cratchit children in Dickens' A Christmas Carol likely made it for pennies and by working long hours in awful conditions?

The United Nations estimates that worldwide one in six children under age fifteen works full time---around 150 million children.1 (Warren, Andrea, Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London, Houghton-Mifflin 2011, 143)

Scrooge's famous line "Are there no workhouses?" comes back to haunt him when the Ghost of Christmas Present shows him reality.   The cry from the wilderness is hard to hear when you spend all your time counting your own good fortune. It sometimes has to be forced upon us by haunting images.

Who are the Cratchits all around us? Why do we fail them so often? How can we open our hearts, minds, and doors to them not just during Advent and Christmas, but every minute of every day of the year?

Join us this Advent season as we explore the harsh and real theological beauty of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Thoughts? Email me or comment below.