You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch...

August 02, 2020

Ninth Sunday After Pentecost

You’re a mean one, Mr Grinch, you really are a heel…

Thus sung Boris Karloff back in 1966, when Dr Seuss’ seasonal tale, “How the Grinch stole Christmas” was turned into a TV special, complete with newly composed songs written specially by the author for the broadcast. And so, as Boris Karloff, and somewhat more recently Jim Carrey have told the world in song, “You’re a mean one, Mr Grinch, you really are a heel…” The reason that the Grinch is a heel, of course, is because he hates Christmas. And not just the day, but: “the whole Christmas season! Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason. It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right. It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight. But think that the most likely reason of all May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.”

Let’s stick with Dr Seuss’ diagnosis about that inadequately small heart, and let’s notice the consequence of such a terrible condition. For this wonderful - and supremely theological - classic depicts the life of a lovely community of Who’s - a group of happy Seuss-ian creatures who know how to celebrate together the joys of life. But not the Grinch. He lives outside the community, on his own. The Grinch lives in a deserted place. And it is in this deserted place, when the hour is late, that Dr Seuss’ classic begins, and we see just what a heel the Grinch is - just how his attitude and behavior has separated him from the community. And before you turn too many pages, you will find that heel of a Grinch scheming to take away things which belong to other people - things to which he is most certainly not
entitled.

You’re a mean one, Mr Grinch, you really are a heel…

It’s an old-fashioned insult. You may not be familiar with it. Various dictionaries of slang chart its main usage as being in the first half of the twentieth century and claim that the roots of the term lie in the gangs of the US underworld. But they’re wrong. They are wrong not by decades or even by centuries. They are wrong by millennia, for we need to go back into the pre-history of monotheism, initially to a story we heard read in church three Sundays ago. For if you jump back seven chapters in Genesis from the passage we just heard read, you can read again of the birth of the twin boys Esau and Jacob. A troublesome birth for a troublesome pair, wrestling with each other in Rebekah’s womb even before they are born. And Jacob - the younger sibling - emerges into life gripping his brother’s heel. And, so the biblical text explains to us, he is named Ya’aqov - literally ‘the heel’.

And thus it is that well before Dr Seuss penned the lyrics and Boris Karloff and Jim Carrey started singing them, back in the very mists of time, they were already singing: You’re a mean one, Mr Jacob, you really are a heel…

You can see it in Jacob’s Grinch-like surroundings and in his Grinch-like behavior. From the word ‘go’, Jacob has been pretty much the ultimate heel, as his name so rightly suggests. As a young man he acquires his elder brother’s birthright for a plate of stew, and when their father is on his deathbed, Jacob pulls a trick to prevent Esau from receiving his father’s final blessing, taking it for himself. The result of his treachery, however, is that Jacob ends up fleeing - fleeing to escape Esau’s inevitable fury. And as Jacob flees, the hour gets late, and we are told very pointedly that the sun sets on him. Night falls on Jacob in a deserted place, as he approaches the borders of the Promised Land. And - heel that he is - this is no ordinary night. For - at least in spiritual terms - this is a night that is going to last for years and years. For the Bible makes no mention of the sun rising the next day, and Jacob spends the next twenty years or so far from home, working for Laban the Aramean in the distant fields of Haran.

And here in the darkness of exile and fear, the tables are turned on this Grinch-like character, and he discovers what it is like, not to deceive but to be deceived, as his hoped-for marriage to Rachel turns out to be a union with her elder and less desirable sister Leah. And throughout all this, there is no hint, absolutely no mention that the sun ever rises, and Jacob labors long and hard far, far away from his home. And even when Jacob finally gets to head back two decades later, his journey is still far from easy. Laban pursues him with anger much of the way to his homeland. And when their issues are finally resolved, Jacob has a rather bigger problem awaiting him - his elder brother, whose fury had been the clause of Jacob’s flight in the first place. His elder brother, whom he discovers is coming out to meet him with four hundred men. At which point Jacob sends his family and possessions to safety, and in the darkness of the night awaits his destiny, alone. For the hour is late, and Jacob is in a deserted place. But this time, instead of wrestling with his brother and showing himself to be a heel, this time Jacob finds himself wrestling with God - who is not a heel.

Jacob wrestles with God; Jacob strives with God; you might say Jacob finally brings his issues into dialog with God - and as a result, he is given a new beginning and a new name. He is no longer Ya’aqov, ‘the heel’, but the ‘one who has contended with God’. He has become Israel. And thus - with God brought into the picture - the evils of the past are finally put right, and finally, finally, we are told that “the sun rose upon him”. And - by the light of the sun at the start of a brand new day - in the very next verse Jacob, sees Esau approaching him… only to find that decades of fury have also been set aside. His older brother runs towards him - not to attack him, not to harm him, not to kill him, but to embrace him, to fall on his neck, and to kiss him. And so it is that these twin brothers, reconciled at last, weep together in the light of the remarkable new day that has dawned.

For during that long exile in Haran, Jacob had heard the song they were singing, and, he had had time to look at himself and to look into himself, and he had realized how just true that song was - just how true his name was. And that self-knowledge had brought him to a deserted place when the hour was late, wondering if anyone or anything could ever bring him to a new dawn and a new beginning.

For it took Jacob a long time - a very long time indeed - to discover the most important truth about being in a deserted place. He discovers that even out there in that place of isolation, heel though he is, he is not alone. For God is with him, and - quite remarkably - God does not subdue him. God does not dominate him. Instead, God gives him and gives us a lesson that we should learn well.

Last Sunday, the BBC was privileged to interview Michael Curry on its weekly religious affairs program. And, although he did not use the literal turn of phrase, the Presiding Bishop was nevertheless speaking about the challenges that we experience in a deserted place, when the hour is late. For he spoke of how America today is - in his opinion - dealing with ‘multiple pandemics’. “My instinct,” he said, “my instinct tells me that the fact that we’ve all had to shelter in place and had to live differently has made us more vulnerable.” And in this time of vulnerability, Bishop Curry reflected about the soul of this great nation, and the challenge which seems so very hard at present, the challenge of making real the great aspiration that jingles on the coins in our pockets - E pluribus unum. And he reminded his listeners in Britain that, “Honoring the diversity and honoring the variety - that’s not possible as long as somebody dominates somebody else. It’s only possible when there’s reciprocity, equality and mutuality between people - when we treat each other as children of God.”

Which is exactly what happens when Jacob encounters God at the end of a twenty-year night in a deserted place. For God the all powerful, God the all-good - this God does not dominate Jacob, even he surely could. Instead, although Jacob has been ‘a mean one’ and behaved like a heel, God still treats him as one of his children. Which is how God redeems him, which is how God makes it possible for the sun to rise on a scene of reconciliation with his long-estranged brother - that is how God deals with God’s children when they are in a deserted place. Because the truth is that God’s love is universal, and that nothing we can do can ever really separate them from God’s presence, God’s sustenance and God’s love. 

Charles Wesley, that great hymn-writer and poet - he’d heard the old song. There were times he heard it all too clearly: You’re a mean one, Mr Wesley, you really are a heel…

He wrote about 6,500 hymns, some of which are famous and deeply loved, without which no hymnal would be complete. But put to one side Hark the herald angels sing, or Love’s redeeming work is done, or O thou who camest from above. Because his elder brother John,
who outlived him, thought the greatest of all those remarkable hymns was the one we heard earlier in this service. It’s not a hymn that has ever become well known, partly because it is not often that we hear Genesis 32 read in church on a Sunday morning. But the words are a deeply profound reflection on Jacob’s wrestling match - a reflection which recasts the old song into Wesley’s own words, as he admitted, fully and clearly, that he was, indeed, a heel: I need not tell thee who I am, my misery and sin declare. Like any honest person, he knew the song well, but he also knew that no matter how late and dark the hour, God’s sun would still rise, and that the darkest night would always turn to dawn. But, unlike Jacob, Wesley did not need to ask the name of the man with whom he wrestled, for, in a verse sadly excised from the abbreviated version in our hymnal he wrote:

I know thee, Saviour, who thou art,
Jesus, the feeble sinner's friend;
Nor wilt thou with the night depart,
But stay and love me to the end;

For Christ is there in the deserted place, and he can deal not just with Jacob, not just with Charles Wesley, and not just with you or me. He can deal with five thousand people at a time, for Christ sends nobody away - Christ has compassion on the hurts and griefs of God’s children, and offers food in abundance. Which, of course, is just what the Grinch discovers in Whoville. For he has stolen from all those
lovely people what he mistakenly thinks are the real blessings of Christmas, just as Jacob steals his brother’s birthright and blessing. The Grinch thinks the dawning of the day will bring misery:

They’re just waking up! I know just what they’ll do!
Their mouths will hang open in a minute or two
Then the Whos down in Who-ville will all cry BOO-HOO…
But of course, he’s wrong! Because
He HADN’T stopped Christmas from coming!
It CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!
And what happened then….?
Well… in Who-ville they say
That the Grinch’s small heart
Grew three sizes that day!

And thus it was that the Grinch - who certainly was a mean one, who certainly was a heel, and who certainly was in a deserted place by himself - the Grinch ends up feasting on the grace of God in the heart of a beloved community that accepts him. Because, as he discovers, Christmas - the real Christmas that celebrates the coming of God into a dark place at a late hour - the Christmas that he realizes doesn’t come from a store - the real Christmas could not be stopped. Christmas could not be stopped, because Christ could not be stopped, and will not be stopped. For in the deserted places of the world, God in Christ also comes just the same. For the Grinch was a heel, and Mr Jacob was (literally) a heel, and Mr Wesley was a heel, and this Mr Dean is a heel. Go look in the mirror - there are times when we are all heels.

But we are God’s heels, all the same, and God comes to us in the desert not to dominate or subdue us, but to forgive us, to feed us and to love us, until even our too small hearts can grow three sizes bigger, and all that is broken is gathered up, and all have sat down to eat with and of the God of love. Even the Grinch! Amen.