"Sorrow Welcomed Here"
#92-16Presented on The Lutheran Hour on December 15, 2024
By Rev. Dr. Michael Zeigler, Lutheran Hour Speaker
Copyright 2025 Lutheran Hour Ministries
No bonus material MP3
Text: Zephaniah 3:14-20
I was talking with a friend of mine—I'll call him Steven. Steven was telling me about his friend, a woman, a Christian woman, who said she hadn't been to church in a long time. She said she wanted to go to church...just not her church. "Why not?" Steven asked her. "Because," she said, "when I'm there, it's as if I don't exist."
Her church was one of those churches where people were always supposed to be happy. Happy music that is uplifting. Happy prayers that are optimistic. A gladsome pastor, with sermons that are always engaging and funny and practical. Every service was a mountain-top experience, and it was nice for a time, but then something changed after the accident. Her husband was killed in a car accident and left her with two small children, and one now very large house.
When she returned to their church, she suddenly felt out of place and alone. She was alone because her husband wasn't with her. But she was also alone because her church wasn't with her. They were all headed up to the mountain top, and didn't have time to stop for someone like her. The hidden message was, "This is a joyful place. Sorrow isn't welcome here."
Not always, but sometimes, we Christians give the impression that joy comes only in the absence of sorrow, which is one of those good-sounding ideas that is totally false. A powerful illustration of this falsehood, of this belief that joy only happens in the absence of sorrow, a parable that unmasks the truth, is a short story by the English novelist Charles Dickens. It's titled The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain.
Dickens wrote the story in 1848, five years after he wrote his better-known A Christmas Carol. The Haunted Man is also a Christmas story, but some critics don't like it. It's too much of a downer, they say. Christmas is supposed to be about joy, right? But it was sorrow that was on Dickens' mind and heart that Christmas, because his sister Fanny had just died that September. And, still grieving, Dickens crafted this Christmas story for the occasion.
The main character in the story, the haunted man, is named Mr. Redlaw. He is sort of an Ebenezer Scrooge-like figure, financially successful, a little socially isolated. And like Scrooge, he also is haunted, not because of his "bah humbug" attitude toward Christmas, because outwardly, Mr. Redlaw is a good guy. His problem isn't curmudgeonly-ness but sorrow. He's depressed. And he thinks that sadness is his problem. "Who wouldn't want to forget their sorrows?" he asks himself.
And he starts to believe that's the solution. He believes that he will find relief, that he'll find joy only when sorrow goes away. And so, like in A Christmas Carol, as if on cue, a ghost appears to make him a deal. He need only say the word, and the spirit will cause him to forget all his sorrows and wrongs and trouble.
Redlaw's not sure, at first. "What shall I lose, if I assent to this? What else will pass from my remembrance?" he asks.
The specter assures him: "No knowledge [will be lost]. No result of study, nothing but the intertwisted chain of feelings and associations" of sorrow.ii
Redlaw agrees.
But it's a bargain—remember? And there's always a catch. And if there's a lesson here, it's never make a bargain with an evil spirit! There's always a catch. Because in this case, it is that his condition will become contagious. He will spread this "gift" to everyone he meets. Everyone with whom he comes in contact will also forget their sorrows, wrongs, and troubles. And for a while, he actually thinks he's helping people. After we hear the ghost's bargain, Dickens changes scenes and introduces us to Mr. Redlaw's first victims.
It's Christmas Eve, in a small house, the home of the Tetterby family, not all that different from the home of Mr. Scrooge's clerk, Bob Cratchit, except that the Tetterbys have more children—seven little boys, to be precise. And instead of a Tiny Tim, they have one chubby, colicky baby girl named Sally, whose personality "consisted in never being quiet, in any one place, for five consecutive minutes."
The father of the family was a small man, common-looking, balding, stooped over. Mr. Adolphus Tetterby was his name. But his wife calls him "Dolph." The wife, the mother of the family, is Mrs. Sophia Tetterby, a stoutly robust woman who is twice the size of her husband, who affectionally calls Mrs. Tetterby "my little woman."
Mr. Tetterby was at home that evening, trying to read the newspaper over the roar of the children running in the background around the room waiting for their dinner. Mrs. Tetterby has just returned from the market. She sits down, flustered from the cold outside, kisses baby Sally, and gets to work setting the table for dinner. Mr. Tetterby noticed that as his bride laid out the cloth and the plates, it seemed that "she were punishing the table rather than preparing the family supper, hitting it unnecessarily hard with the knives and forks, slapping it with the plates and coming heavily down upon it with the loaf."
Mr. Tetterby asks what he thinks to be a harmless question: "My little woman, what has put you out?"
"I'm sure I don't know," she retorted. "Don't ask me. Who said I was put out? I didn't."
As his wife continued to assault the table, Mr. Tetterby put down his paper and began to call the boys for supper.
"Your supper will be ready in a minute, m' boys—your mother has been out in the wet, to the cook's shop to buy it. It was very good of your mother so to do."
He continued helping in this way, until Mrs. Tetterby, now exhibiting some tokens of contrition caught her husband round the neck and wept. "Oh, Dolph, how could I behave so?"iii
Mrs. Tetterby confessed what it was that had put her out. It began when she was on the way home from the market, seeing all the Christmas festivity, "such delicious things to eat, such fine things to look at, such delightful things to have"—for those who've got money to buy them. She'd been hit by such a wave of regret over her life, married to a poor, small, common-looking, man, who was going bald, and all these mouths to feed. Mrs. Tetterby admitted it all to her husband. "I felt all this, so much, when I was trudging about in the cold I began to think whether I mightn't have done better and been happier, if—I—hadn't," she paused, twisting her wedding ring round her finger.
"I see," said Mr. Tetterby. "If you hadn't married at all, or if you had married somebody else?"
"Yes," sobbed Mrs. Tetterby. "That's really what I thought. Dolph, do you hate me now?"
"Why no, Sophie," said Mr. Tetterby. "I don't find that I do, as yet."
Mrs. Tetterby continued to explain that as soon as she had gotten home when she had been there a little while, she felt a rush of recollection, all at once, that softened her hard heart and filled it up till it was bursting. It was the rush of memories, she said, "All our struggles for livelihood, all our cares and wants since we have been married, all the times of sickness and the hours of watching seemed to speak to me, Dolph, and to say that they had made us one."iv
As Mr. Tetterby hugged his wife, who was now sobbing on his shoulder, a stranger appeared at the door—a pale man in a black cloak. He said his name was Mr. Redlaw. He explained that he had observed Mrs. Tetterby in the street with a look of such sorrow on her face that he thought he may be able to help her.
Just then, Mrs. Tetterby raised her hand to her forehead. Mr. Tetterby did likewise, both struck by the strange sense that they had lost something. The stranger departed.
"The wife was standing in the same place, twisting her ring round and round upon her finger. The husband, his head bent forward, chin on his chest, was musing, heavily and sullenly.
Suddenly, he snapped at the children, "Get to bed!"
And their mother added, "The place is inconvenient and small enough without you. Get to bed!"
Husband and wife retired to their separate corners and for the rest of the night "did not interchange a word."v
Charles Dickens' Haunted Man illustrates that whatever joy is, it cannot be the result of sorrow's absence. Joy in marriage, joy in family, joy in friendship does not come from the lack of sorrow. But sometimes, we Christians give the impression that it does. And we work so hard at making ourselves happy and keeping our spirits up and avoiding anybody who might bring us down, especially at Christmas. But Dickens' parable reminds us, what's more likely to be welcomed in if all sorrow leaves is not joy, but coldness, indifference, or resentment.
And this may be why, in the wisdom of Christians who've gone before us, we have the tradition of reading the Old Testament prophets in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The prophets help us remember that joy and sorrow go together. This weekend, many Christian communities around the world will be hearing a reading from the prophet Zephaniah. Listen to what it says. Listen to the tone:
"Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! ... the LORD has taken away the judgments against you; He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the LORD, is with you; you will never again fear evil. On that day it will be said to Jerusalem: Fear not ... let not your hands grow weak. The LORD is with you, a mighty Warrior who will save you; He will delight in you with gladness; He will quiet you with His love; He will rejoice over you with loud singing" (Zephaniah 3:14-17).
Zephaniah tells us that joy comes not from the absence of some thing but in the presence of Someone—the LORD, God. Joy is present because the Lord is with you. The Lord is in your midst, he says. Joy comes from being with God, even when sorrow, trouble, and wrong are close at hand. Sorrow is close by, because the message of Zephaniah comes at the very end of the book, in the last few verses of the last chapter. But most of the book is sorrow. It's an announcement of God's judgment on His people, on all people. God's judgment is coming on all of us. Because we have tried to mass-produce happiness, mountain-top experiences for their own sake. But doing so, we push people away. We push the truth away. We push God away.
And then this void that we create—in the absence of love for God and love for neighbor—we welcome in resentment and entitlement, arrogance and indifference. And they grow like cancers inside us because we live as if God doesn't exist.
But God is never absent, Zephaniah tell us. He is present. He tells us the sad truth of how we've made a wreck of His world. And He's coming to judge, to clear away the wreckage. He comes because He loves. Love doesn't mean denying the truth or ignoring the consequences. Love means that God suffers the consequences with us. It was for love that He sent His Son to be born among us, to fill the God-sized void we've made in the world and in our hearts. Jesus came in truth and love. He suffered and died on the cross, a mighty Warrior, to save you. And joy?—joy comes not in forgetting the wrongs that caused it, but in the One who rose from the dead to forgive them, and carries the scars forever to prove it.
This is the cause of the turning point for Mr. Redlaw in Charles Dickens' story: the presence of God in Jesus. Jesus is nearly always present yet hidden in the works of Charles Dickens, or so I'm told.vi I haven't read all of them. But I have read these two Christmas stories of his, and Jesus is everywhere. In The Haunted Man, Jesus is referenced several times, and mentioned by name at least once. Mr. Redlaw, he prays and he said that it is the memory of "Christ on the cross" that restores him—the definitive occurrence in the universe that was "at once wrong and forgiveness."vii
But it wasn't just the idea of Christ that restored him, but the presence of Jesus in someone he could lean on, his housekeeper, a woman named Milly. Now Milly has also suffered much sorrow—the death of a child, the guilt of her sin, the trouble she's suffered from the sins of others. Milly carries all the same sadness that we do. But somehow, she's immune to Mr. Redlaw's curse.
When he's seen the error of his ways, he comes to her for help, hoping she might undo the damage that he's done. But he still doesn't understand why it might be a good thing for us to remember our sadness and the wrongs that have been done to us. Milly says, "I have no learning, and you much. I am not used to think, and you are thinking all the time. May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done to us?"
"Yes."
"That we may forgive it."viii
And so it happened, in the dead of winter, in the presence of the One who is Truth and Love, Mr. Redlaw's curse began to thaw.
It's Christmas morning now, and Dickens whisks us back to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby. Both of them were drinking their cups of tea in very foul moods. Mr. Tetterby was thinking to himself about how much his wife had aged, and how out of shape she was, compared to other women. And she was thinking to herself about how common-looking he was—small, beginning to stoop, and getting bald. But then, there was a sudden warmth in the house. Something absent had returned. Mr. Tetterby put down his cup. Mrs. Tetterby put down her cup. Mr. Tetterby rubbed his forehead. Mrs. Tetterby rubbed her forehead. Mr. Tetterby's face began to smooth and brighten. Mrs. Tetterby's face began to smooth and brighten.
"Why, Lord, forgive me," Mr. Tetterby said, prayerfully.
"What evil tempers have I been giving way to?"
Mrs. Tetterby said to herself, "How could I ever treated him so ill after all I said and felt last night!"
Mr. Tetterby turned to his wife, "My little woman—am I a brute, or is there any good in me at all?"
"Dolphus, dear," his wife returned.
"I—I've been in a state of mind that I can't bear to think of, Sophie."
"Oh! It's nothing to what I've been in, Dolph!" cried his wife in a great burst of grief.
"My little woman," said her husband, "You make me reproach myself dreadful, when you show such a noble spirit. Sophie, my dear, you don't know what I thought. I wondered how I had ever admired you—I forgot the precious children that you have brought about me and thought that you don't look as slim as I could wish. I never gave a recollection to the cares you've had as my wife. And I quarreled with you for having aged but little in the rough years that you have lightened for me. Can you believe it, my little woman? I hardly can myself."
Mrs. Tetterby, in a whirlwind of laughing and crying, caught his face in her hands, and held it there. "Oh, Dolph! I am so happy you thought so! I am so grateful you thought so! For I thought you were common-looking, Dolph. And so you are, my dear, and may you be the commonest of all sight in my eyes, till you close them with your good hands. And I thought that you were small; and so you are, and I'll make much of you because you are, and the more of you because I love my husband. And I thought that you had begun to stoop; and so you do, and you shall lean on me, and I'll do all I can to keep you up.ix"
I was talking with my friend Steven about his friend, the one whose husband had died, who didn't want to go to church anymore. Because when she was there with all her sadness, she felt out of place. Steven did invite her to his church, and she came. And then eventually he helped her find another church, close to where she lived, and she found a home there.
They still keep in touch, he told me. "We had lunch together just recently," he said. "She's remarried now. Her children are grown. It's been almost 20 years since her husband died."
"Really, that long?" I said. "You've kept in touch with her all this time?"
"Yeah," he said. "You know, God brings people into your life to be close to, and you stay with them, whatever they're going through." And he said it as if it will be the commonest truth in all the world.
Would you pray with me? Dear Jesus, You were born in a sad-looking stable in a forgotten corner of nowhere. You became a Man of Sorrows, and still carry the scars so that we might be one in You. Help us to remember people in sorrow. Be present in us to keep them up. Because You live and You reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever. Amen.
[1] Charles Dickens, The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain, Digiread.com Publishing (2009), 18.
[2] Ibid., 19.
[3] Ibid., 24-31.
[4] Ibid., 35.
[5] Ibid. 36-37.
[6] See Gary Colledge, God and Charles Dickens: Recovering the Christian Voice of a Classic Author (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012).
[7] Dickens, Haunted Man, 85, 88.
[8] Ibid., 85.
[9] Ibid., 75.
Reflections for December 15, 2024
Title: No reflection segment this week
Music Selections for this program:
"A Mighty Fortress" arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
"O Jesus, Grant Me Hope and Comfort" arr. Henry Gerike. From Magnificat by the Concordia Seminary Chorus (©1994 Concordia Seminary Chorus) Used by permission.
"Crucifer" by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
"Hark! A Thrilling Voice Is Sounding" From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.
