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Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons.

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When you think about Christmas, what memories come to mind?

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Sweet memories of laughter, carols, and cookies?

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Or sour memories of loneliness, family fights, and disappointment?

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We have a whole lot of memories wrapped up in the Christmas season, and that's true

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for Ebenezer Scrooge as well.

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So join us this week as we look at Scrooge's encounter with the ghost of Christmas past

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and what it shows us about our own memories.

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Today's reading is from Matthew chapter 1, verses 18 to 25.

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This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about.

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His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together,

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she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

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Because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law and yet did not want to expose

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her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

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But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and

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said,

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Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what

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is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

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She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will

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save his people from their sins.

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All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet.

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The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which

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means God with us.

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When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary

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home as his wife.

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But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son, and he gave him the

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name Jesus.

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The word of the Lord.

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Well a few years ago when I was serving at another church, I got a very strange phone

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call.

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A young lady phoned and she had a problem.

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The problem she had was that her house was haunted, and she told me that not only was

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there an eerie feeling in her house, but there was noises.

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Things would go bang in the middle of the night.

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She would hear footsteps in the hallway at night and doors slamming.

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But the real tipping point came when something grabbed a hold of her foot in the middle of

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the night, she said.

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And I was like, I don't know anything about this.

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But we assembled a crack squad of parishioners from our church, and we said we're going to

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try to help this young lady.

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So we went over to her house, and even as we got to her house, it was a duplex, we met

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the neighbor first actually, and the neighbor was like, oh yeah, this house is haunted.

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This house has been haunted for years.

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And then the owner, the one who called, took us inside and showed us all the different

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rooms where all the different things had kind of taken place.

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And so then we said, OK, I guess this is where we go to work.

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And going to work for us meant we were going to pray.

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And so basically, we started outside the house and we walked around the whole perimeter of

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the house, just praying.

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And then we went inside the house and we went through room by room by room, praying in each

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room.

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And we prayed in each room that the power of evil would be forced out, pushed out of

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this place, and that the power of Jesus would hold sway and be fully welcomed into that

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house.

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And then we left.

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And a couple of weeks later, she called back and she said, I've got great news.

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It worked, she said.

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No more noises.

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No more banging.

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No more footsteps and no more nighttime visitations.

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That's a true story.

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And I've never had another experience like that before.

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But what I can tell you, guys, if there's something strange in your neighborhood, who

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are you going to call?

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If something weird and it don't look good, who are you going to call?

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Ghostbusters.

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No, this Advent and Christmas, though, we're looking at the real ghost story, the most

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famous ghost story of all, and that is the story of a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

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One Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge is visited not by one, but by four ghosts.

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And there was plenty of clunking and clanging and door slamming.

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And yes, there was even a visitor that appeared at the foot of Scrooge's bed.

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And that voting machine announced everybody I did business with and he

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Are you the spirit whose coming was foretold to me?

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I am.

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Who and what are you?

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I am the ghost of Christmas past.

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Long past?

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No, your past.

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Now, most of us have never seen a ghost and I'm not even here to talk about whether ghosts

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exist or any of that stuff.

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But what I do want to say is that all of us are haunted.

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All of us are haunted.

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We're not haunted by literal ghosts, but we are haunted by memories.

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And actually ghosts and memories are a lot alike, right?

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For memories and ghosts, it's always something from the past, right?

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Usually something from years ago that refuses to move on.

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All of us have got some memories that are haunting you from your past and it could have

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been decades ago, but they're still lingering, still haunting you.

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Secondly, both ghosts and memories haunt us in a way that it seems to pay wants us to

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pay attention to something that's unresolved in our life.

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Some old hurt that we never dealt with.

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And some of you may be here this morning, you're haunted by memories of some unfinished

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business in your life that you never properly attended to.

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And thirdly, memories and ghosts are a lot alike because both of them cannot be ignored.

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You got to do something about these memories that flood back.

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They literally grab a hold of you, like grabbing a hold of your foot in the middle of the night

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and they will not leave you alone until you face them.

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In fact, the ghosts of Christmas past did exactly that to Scrooge.

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In the book, we're told that he grabbed a hold of Scrooge and forced him to address

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some of the painful and happy memories that he had in his own past.

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Now I want to say that Charles Dickens himself, who wrote this book, wrote this little novel,

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himself, he had many painful and happy memories that haunted him throughout his life.

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For example, there was the pain of his childhood.

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When Dickens was 12, his father sent him away to, or his father got sent away to prison

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and Charles Dickens had to work in like a sweatshop, you know, filling little bottles

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with shoe polish.

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And it was a humiliating way of life for him.

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He never wanted to talk about it, but when he did, he said, the factory was crazy.

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It was a tumbled down old house.

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No words can express the secret agony of my soul.

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It's a secret I've tried to keep my whole life.

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He said, these are, these are memories that haunted him forever.

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But he also had happy memories, happy memories.

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There were times when he remembered Christmas is filled with singing and storytelling and

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feasting and games.

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He once wrote, happy, happy Christmas that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood

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days.

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Yeah, we're all haunted by memories from our past.

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Some good, some bad, some happy and some sad.

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And there is something about Christmas.

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I think you would agree.

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Christmas that brings back all those memories in a major way, in an intense way, whether

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those are warm memories of family traditions or whether those are sad memories of loved

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ones that we have lost.

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And Advent is actually the perfect time to talk about memories because Advent actually

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plays with our sense of time.

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In Advent, we stand here in the present and we look to the past and remember this, this

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great event that happened with Jesus Christ being born.

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But we also look to the future in the hopes that the word, his kingdom will fully come

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one day.

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And yet in the present we're called as the hymn says to allow Christ to be born in us

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today.

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Advent is all about the past and the present and the future all coming together.

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This is the perfect time for us to deal with things like memories.

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In fact, the ghost of Christmas past himself is like a fusion of past, present and future.

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We're told that he's a strange looking figure.

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He's like a child.

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Okay, so he's young.

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No, he's actually not young.

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He's more like an old man.

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Oh, oh, so he's old.

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No, no, he's got white hair.

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So yes, he's old, but we're also told he's got the face like a baby.

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And so he's young.

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So what is he?

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What's going on here?

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What's going on is the past and the present and the future all kind of coming together.

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In this Advent, we're going to look at the present and we're going to look at the future.

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But today we've got to talk about those ghosts, those memories that haunt us from the past.

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You probably got some notes on your way in here.

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I invite you to follow along and see how much we can learn as we look back at the memories

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that haunt us.

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And the first memories we need to look at are what I want to call hurtful memories,

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hurtful memories.

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Unfortunately, for too many of us here, we know what it is like to be haunted by hurtful

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memories.

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Scrooge knew it too.

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When the Ghost of Christmas Past started showing him some of his hurtful memories, he says,

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oh, why do you delight in torturing me?

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And there are some memories we carry around with us that are torturous to revisit over

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and over again.

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Like for example, one type of memory that hurts us over and over again are those memories

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that we have of abandonment.

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Nothing hurts more than being left out, left behind, and excluded.

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And actually Scrooge knew this painful memory all too well.

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There's my old school.

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How lonely and deserted it looks.

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Not quite deserted.

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A solitary boy, yourself Ebenezer, forgotten by his friends, is left there still.

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I knew.

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As we end up finding out, Scrooge wasn't just abandoned by his classmates, but he's also

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abandoned by his father.

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His father refuses to let Ebenezer Scrooge return home for Christmas.

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Now the worst part of abandonment is that when you get rejected enough times, it hurts

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so much that you actually start to believe that you're unworthy of companionship, that

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you're unworthy of relationship.

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And that is actually why I think later on in Scrooge's life he's so emotionally detached

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and cold because it's a defense mechanism for him.

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He didn't want to get hurt like this again.

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All his friends went home for Christmas and he was left behind.

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All his family went home every Christmas, but he gets left behind.

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I don't know.

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Are any of you here today haunted by memories of abandonment of some sort?

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Maybe as a kid you were bullied in school.

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Maybe your father didn't care for you either.

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Or maybe you were excluded by friends or classmates or whatever.

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That kind of ghost, I just want to say, can haunt you your whole life long.

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Now the good news is, if there is any good news, is that Jesus understands this perfectly.

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Jesus was despised.

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Jesus was rejected.

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He knew what it was like to be abandoned by friends and even on the cross he knew how

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it felt to be abandoned by his father.

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My God, why do you forsake me?

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So if you're struggling with memories of abandonment, you're not alone.

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You're not alone.

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But there's another hurtful memory that can haunt us and that's the memory of heartbreak.

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If you've ever had a broken heart, if you've ever had a relationship that failed on you,

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then you know what I'm talking about.

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How that memory can keep haunting you and hurting you over and over again.

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And Scrooge knew it too.

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Then you no longer love me?

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You no longer love me.

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When have I ever said that?

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In words, never.

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Well, in what then?

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In the way you have changed.

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But how have I changed towards you?

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By changing towards the world.

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Is it such a terrible thing for a man to struggle to be something better than he is?

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Another idol has replaced me in your heart.

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You know, Scrooge, this was such a pivotal moment in his life because when this heartbreak

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kind of happened in his life, that was the moment he turned to the pursuit of a life

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of wealth and materialism.

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And again, chose that over love and connection.

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And it's again, it's no surprise, therefore, that later in life, Scrooge is so emotionally

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detached, avoiding relationships, protecting himself from further heartbreak.

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Now again, I want to say some of us here today, some of us watching online, you are still

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haunted by memories of broken relationships, failed relationships, heartbreak, lost love.

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You still feel that pain.

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It haunts you.

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You still feel that regret.

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And maybe like Scrooge, you try to numb that pain by getting busy or distracting yourself

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or going to work extra hard.

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But that ghost lingers.

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It still hangs around.

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And again, I want to say to you, Jesus was well acquainted with what it felt like to

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be to be unloved.

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You know, he came to this world, this world that he loved, and the world rejected him.

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He came to the people that he loved, and they didn't care about him.

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They didn't love him back.

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Jesus knew all about heartbreak.

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But finally, there's another hurtful memory we need to look at.

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And that is this memory of loss.

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And this is a big one, right?

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When death separates us from the people that we love most.

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That is a painful memory that just never goes away.

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Promise you what, then?

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I'll promise you anything, dearest.

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Only that there isn't going to be any need.

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You're going to get well again, then.

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No.

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You are.

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You are.

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Dear God, you must.

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And you can't die.

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You mustn't die.

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You're going to get well again, then.

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Then you're going to get well again.

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Ms. Scrooge's sister is one of the few people who actually loved him in life.

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And so her death left this huge hole, this huge grief.

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It made him resentful.

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It made him resentful toward her son, his nephew.

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And all of this just only adds to his sense of emotional detachment.

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And I just want to say that if you have lost someone that you loved, you will know that

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Christmas brings back these memories like a hundredfold.

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Even if it's been years, even if it's been decades since that person passed away, it

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hurts more at this time of year, I think, than other times.

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And of course, that is normal, absolutely normal.

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But sometimes our grief can lead us to resentment or bitterness or detachment.

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And again, it is helpful for us to know that Jesus, too, knew the pain of loss, even though

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he was the son of God.

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He wept at the grave of his dead friend.

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Hurtful memories like ghosts.

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They come to us unbidden and there is nothing that we can do to stop them.

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But what we can do is we can invite God into those memories.

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We can remind ourselves that Jesus understands those memories.

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But it's also important, I just want to say, for us to reach out and talk to other people

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about that pain and those memories.

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In fact, we've got a group of people here at Trinity who are trained to walk with people

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who go through abandonment, who've gone through heartbreak, who are suffering with loss.

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And so I would encourage you, please email our care team today after the service, because

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one of the biggest risks we face is not dealing with hurtful memories, because they can end

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up holding us back in life.

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And that is definitely what happened to Scrooge, right?

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Some think of Christmas Carol is the story of how Scrooge couldn't let go of his money.

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But really, it's a story of how he couldn't let go of his past.

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Seven years after Scrooge's friend, maybe his one and only friend had passed away, he

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still hadn't taken Jacob Marley's name off the door.

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And there it stands as a symbol of how hurtful memories can leave us stuck in the past, refusing

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to let us go.

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So that's one type of memory that can haunt us.

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But there's another type of memory I want to share with you today, not hurtful memories,

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but I want to call them hollow memories.

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You see, sometimes our memory can play tricks on us.

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We think we're remembering something correctly, but we're not.

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Our memories are sometimes just a hollow shell of what really happened in the past.

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Now what I'm talking about is this thing that we call nostalgia.

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And nostalgia kicks into really high gear around Christmas time, when we hear the carols,

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when we smell the cookies, when we see the Christmas lights, oh, we're transported back

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into our memories, memories of past Christmases.

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In fact, when Scrooge is shown his very first memory by the ghost of Christmas past, he

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was conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each connected with a thousand

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thoughts and hopes and joys of cares long, long forgotten.

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That's nostalgia.

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But here's the thing, nostalgia often lies to us.

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In fact, the word nostalgia comes from two words, nastos, which means homecoming, and

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algos, which means pain.

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Pain.

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Why pain?

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Because the memories aren't real.

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We're haunted by these idealized and sanitized memories.

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All the negative stuff of the past has been filtered out, and these hollow memories, they

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seduce us into this romanticized idea of how things used to be, but things never actually

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used to be that way.

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It's just what our mind is kind of telling us.

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And so now we're aching and we're longing for this world, which we think we know, but

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it's actually a world that we never ever did know.

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Even when the ghost of Christmas past comes in and takes Scrooge on his journey, we're

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not quite sure whether what Scrooge is seeing is actually completely accurate or not.

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Look at this.

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Look at this picture.

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It's beautiful.

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Snow topped houses, boys riding around on ponies.

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It's the perfect picture postcard Christmas scene.

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But the ghost of Christmas past says, these are but shadows of the past, which means maybe

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these memories aren't actually located fully in reality, and maybe they're not telling

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the full story because our memory is sometimes quite selective, isn't it?

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The ghost of Christmas past selects certain moments out of Scrooge's past, but not other

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parts.

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Why not?

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Those other parts could be important.

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They might provide context for what's going on.

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Our memory is always selective in what it remembers, and our memory is also quite limited

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in what it remembers.

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There are some things that you will remember vividly and you'll remember them your whole

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life, and there's other things that will fade away and you will forget.

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But just because we forgot them doesn't mean that they also weren't important in our life.

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And memories, of course, are highly subjective, right?

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We remember our interpretation of past events, but other people who were at those events

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and they're with us, they may remember things very, very differently.

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The Israelites, they were haunted by nostalgia after they escaped Egypt.

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Now, remember, in Egypt, they suffered harsh, harsh labor and oppression, and they cried

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out to God to rescue them, and God did rescue them.

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Moses came and led them to freedom, but then nostalgia kicked in.

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Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

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Actually, let's go back to Egypt.

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It wasn't that bad, right?

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Was it that bad?

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No, it was actually pretty good.

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Remember, we actually had lots of food we could eat there.

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There was fires and lots of meat and all this good stuff to eat.

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No, no, they're being haunted by a hollow memory.

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Egypt was not a place of comfort.

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It was not a place of abundance.

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They're remembering wrong.

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And I just want you to think about how we remember wrong at Christmas all the time.

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Think about what you remember of the Christmas story.

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Angels, the star, shepherds, wise men in the manger.

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And yet this morning, we just read the Christmas story.

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Oh, we just read it to us.

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And you know what the story told us?

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It told us that Mary got pregnant by the Holy Spirit, Joseph planted a worser, an angel

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intervened and Jesus was born.

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There was no star.

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There was no shepherds and no wise men yet.

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The Christmas story tricks us and the way it tricks us is that we end up blending together

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all the different stories.

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Matthew's story mixed with Luke's story in a way that we think it should go.

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And we filter out actually the other things that we don't include in the Christmas story.

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For example, Jesus birth, yeah, it was marked by these signs and wonders, but also misunderstanding

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and jealousy and terror.

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Joseph almost divorced Mary.

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Herod slaughtered children in Bethlehem.

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Mary, Joseph and Jesus had to flee to Egypt as refugees.

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Even the angels, they were cute little cherubs with big plump cheeks.

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We're told that these were like warrior angels that were announcing the arrival of God's

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King.

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See, the version that we put on the Christmas cards is the sanitized one, right?

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It's the no hard travel, no fear, no violence.

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But the real story is always more complex.

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C.S.

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Lewis, he describes nostalgia as a longing for something that has actually never appeared

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in our experience.

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And if we aren't careful, our Christmas can become less about celebrating what's actually

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in front of us and more about chasing the ghost of some memory of what Christmas should

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be.

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And do you know what happens when we do that?

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When we try to recreate some perfect Christmas that never was, right?

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We always feel disappointed.

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We'll always feel let down.

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It will never measure up to those expectations, expectations that weren't actually based in

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reality in the first place.

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The truth of Christmas.

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Is that what we're following?

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Is that what we're celebrating?

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Or is it some hollow memory that we're chasing after?

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It's amazing how how Christmas can change for us when we actually embrace embrace what

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God is doing here in front of us in this moment in the present and not get distracted by hollow

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memories from the past.

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And so so sometimes here we go.

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The memories that haunt us are hurtful memories.

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Other times these memories can be hollow memories.

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But now we need to turn to those healing memories, healing memories that can transform us.

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I mean, why did the ghost of Christmas past come to Scrooge in the first place?

395
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What is your business here with me?

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Your welfare.

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I welfare.

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Your reclamation.

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Take he rise and walk with me.

400
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What is your business here?

401
00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:30,700
Your welfare.

402
00:25:30,700 --> 00:25:31,700
Think about that.

403
00:25:31,700 --> 00:25:33,000
The past.

404
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:40,560
Remembering the past is for his welfare and actually remembering things can heal us.

405
00:25:40,560 --> 00:25:47,920
For example, memories of belonging can heal us just as memories of abandonment hurt us.

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Remembering the times when we belonged, when we were included, they can heal us in amazing

407
00:25:53,640 --> 00:25:54,640
ways.

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00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:59,640
Oh dear brother, I have come to bring you home.

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Home, home, home.

410
00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:01,640
Yes, home, home forever and ever.

411
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Father is so much kinder than you.

412
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:15,400
He used to be that home is like heaven.

413
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When Fan, Scrooge's sister, unexpectedly arrives in this scene, you can see there's a breakthrough

414
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:22,120
that kind of happens in him.

415
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Her love breaks through his isolation.

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It ends up stirring up in him this new desire for relationship.

417
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:34,960
It reminds him of what it felt like to be wanted, of what it felt like to belong.

418
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I love her words.

419
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Dear, dear brother, I've come to bring you home, home, home.

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We all long for that place called home, that place of belonging.

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And Jesus offers us real belonging by bringing us into the family of God.

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The psalmist puts it this way.

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God sets the lonely in families.

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And at Christmas, Jesus entered into this world.

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Why?

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To bring us home to God.

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His birth is actually the ultimate sign that we're not forgotten and that we're not abandoned,

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but that we're deeply loved and we're invited into God's family.

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00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:20,720
Just as Sadie was welcomed into God's family this morning, Christmas reminds us God has

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00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:24,160
a seat at the table waiting for us.

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00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:31,640
Then arrives to bring Scrooge home and to heal his loneliness.

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00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:39,280
Jesus arrived to really bring us home and heal our loneliness too.

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But the ghost of Christmas pass isn't done there yet.

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00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:46,060
No, he also wants to show Scrooge another memory that can really heal him, and that

435
00:27:46,060 --> 00:27:47,420
is a memory of love.

436
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Because just as memories of heartbreak hurt us, memories of love can heal us.

437
00:27:53,240 --> 00:27:55,160
It makes no difference that I'm poor.

438
00:27:55,160 --> 00:28:00,760
I love you because you're poor, not proud and foolish.

439
00:28:00,760 --> 00:28:03,840
Will you always feel like that?

440
00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:06,840
As long as I live.

441
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:07,840
Longer.

442
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:10,840
Forever and ever.

443
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:13,840
Then I accept your ring.

444
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:14,840
Ours.

445
00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:15,840
You're beneath us.

446
00:28:15,840 --> 00:28:16,840
God bless you, Anne.

447
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:32,600
All right, even though, even though this is a tough scene for Scrooge to rewatch, it reminds

448
00:28:32,600 --> 00:28:39,080
him of a time in his life when he was actually capable of deep love and vulnerability.

449
00:28:39,080 --> 00:28:41,000
He wasn't always the way he is.

450
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:44,920
He has the capacity to love people and to be loved.

451
00:28:44,920 --> 00:28:48,960
And if he had it then, then he can rediscover it now.

452
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:56,200
Memories of love remind us of what's possible, inspiring us to open up our hearts again.

453
00:28:56,200 --> 00:28:57,560
And if that's true, then you know what?

454
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There is hope for all of us because Jesus loves us.

455
00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:09,200
Jesus loved us first and his love therefore unlocks our ability to love others.

456
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:11,360
And again, that is what Christmas is all about.

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00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:17,000
Jesus came into the world to meet us right where we are, to show us that we're loved

458
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:21,880
by God and then to inspire us to love others.

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00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:28,360
You know, Scrooge's memory of love, it stirs up in him his own heart to love.

460
00:29:28,360 --> 00:29:31,240
And the Christmas story is meant to do the same thing.

461
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:36,840
God's love for us at Christmas stirs us up to love others again.

462
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:44,200
And thirdly and finally, one other healing memory that really rescued Scrooge.

463
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:47,920
Scrooge was so hurt by, of course, the memory of his sister's death.

464
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It was a deep, deep wound for him.

465
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:55,000
But a memory of joy can lift your spirits and turn everything around.

466
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This is a picture of Scrooge being reminded of a Christmas party he once attended.

467
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:02,480
Recall this, no doubt.

468
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:03,480
Recall it.

469
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:04,480
Why, bless my soul.

470
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:05,480
It's a little Christmas.

471
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:06,480
It's a little Christmas.

472
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:07,480
I was a princess here.

473
00:30:07,480 --> 00:30:08,480
Look, there's old Fezzerwick and Mr. Fezzerwick, top couple.

474
00:30:08,480 --> 00:30:09,480
Was there ever a kinder man?

475
00:30:09,480 --> 00:30:39,280
That's like, what a beautiful smile we see on Scrooge's face because he's just so

476
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:45,040
seen how his old boss, Fezzerwick, was able to bring celebration and joy into the life

477
00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:47,560
of his employees.

478
00:30:47,560 --> 00:30:53,720
And it rekindles in Scrooge this idea that actually joy and happiness aren't found in

479
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:59,800
hoarding wealth, but they're found in sharing life with others.

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And if joy can heal us, then Christmas is the best medicine ever.

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Christmas is the season where the angels announce to the shepherds, I bring you good news of

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great joy for all the people.

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Not just joy for the angels, not just joy for those shepherds that day, but joy for

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the whole world, as we sang, joy for all the people.

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Even in the midst of sadness and sorrow, we can remember that true joy comes from generosity

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and community and the good news of Jesus Christ.

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So all these memories, like ghosts, they haunt us.

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And sometimes they're hurtful memories, and other times they're kind of hollow memories,

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and other times they're healing memories.

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And you can tell that it's healing because there's a moment that occurs just right after

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this where you can see that the transformative work has already begun in Scrooge's life.

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Was there ever a kinder man?

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And yet what has this party cost him in your mortal money?

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Three or four pounds at most.

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Is that so much that he deserves your praise?

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00:32:12,840 --> 00:32:14,120
No, but it's not that.

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The happiness he gave to us, his clerks and apprentices and everybody who knew him, was

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as great as it would cost a fortune.

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What's the matter?

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Nothing.

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You see, the transformation has begun.

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00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:30,840
The penny has dropped.

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These memories are beginning their work of healing Scrooge.

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Advent is a haunted season.

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And Christians are a people who gather Sunday by Sunday to remember.

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We're people who gather around this table Sunday by Sunday because Jesus said to do

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this in remembrance of me.

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To remember that because of Jesus, we're not abandoned, but we belong to a brand new family.

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To remember that though we may suffer from heartbreak in Jesus, we are loved by God.

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And to remember that that because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, even our

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most painful memories of grief and loss can be transformed into memories of joy.

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So memories, whatever memories are haunting you today, whatever lingers from your past,

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I just want to invite you.

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Invite God into those memories, both the painful ones and the joyful ones, and allow him to

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bring that healing and hope.

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Because our memories aren't there so that we can keep living in the past, but they're

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there so we can have hope for the future.

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Thanks be to God.

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Amen.

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Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons.

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This sermon was recorded at Trinity Church, Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario on December

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8, 2024.