An Alcott Advent: Hope

Scripture: Luke 10:25-37
”Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?””

Alcott’s book captured readers from the start when Jo March complained, “Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents” and then invited readers to think more deeply about the meaning of Christmas when Marmee greets her girls on Christmas morning.

“Merry Christmas, little daughters! I'm glad you began at once, and hope you will keep on. But I want to say one word before we sit down. Not far away from here lies a poor woman with a little newborn baby. Six children are huddled into one bed to keep from freezing, for they have no fire. There is nothing to eat over there, and the oldest boy came to tell me they were suffering hunger and cold. My girls, will you give them your breakfast as a Christmas present?”

It was a sensation, a new kind of literature. Critics celebrated it as “fresh, sparkling, natural and full of soul” (Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why it Still Matters by Anne Boyd Rioux, p 48). Everyone was reading it. Not just the audience of young girls that the publisher had intended but everyone. Children, parents, and grandparents—and when they say everyone, they really mean adult men were reading it too. There is even lore that folks asked Alcott if she had read Little Women?   

The only thing I can liken it too is when Harry Potter emerged on the scene and took the world by storm. 

Alcott’s writing was unlike anything else, especially writing for girls. She used the language people actually used and she wrote from real life. It was so real that British critics found the American slang unfit for their proper English young ladies. But the real language and everyday life are probably why the book mattered. If you want to see some of Jo’s literary predecessors, consider Daisy Chain and Faith Gartney’s Girlhood. They are full of morals, preachers, Bible studies, references to the Anglican church calendar, and young women quietly sacrificing themselves for the good of others.

Alcott was not only a literary success. She sold more books than any of her male contemporaries, never went out of print, and in some years sold more copies than the Bible. All of this means that people loved her work, and it also means she was no longer a starving artist.

Of course, not everyone liked it. And who did not like it? Who would want to ban Little Women? It was Good Church People. The Ladies Repository declared, “It is not a Chrisitan book. It is religion without spirituality and salvation without Christ.” Alcott was banned from Sunday school libraries. The Christian Union called it “Wholly Bad.” A young Henry James Jr. warned about its impact on young women and suggested the book came “at the expense of their pastors and masters” (Rioux, p 50).

Henry James met Alcott, and although he may have considered her a friend and she engaged a young and rather arrogant Henry according to her journal, he still wrote his honest review. I think Henry James understood exactly what Alcott was doing, and his critique recognizes her power. The March family may have had a minister for a father, but they are never in church listening to a man preach. Their father is away serving in the Civil War, and the lessons of life and faith come through their adventures, their reading, their mother, their conversations, and their self reflection. When the March sisters return from sharing their Christmas breakfast, it is the oldest sister Meg who names the biblical lesson.

“That's loving our neighbor better than ourselves, and I like it,” said Meg, as they set out their presents while their mother was upstairs collecting clothes for the poor Hummels.

Alcott offers readers agency, voice, learning and mistakes through the four sisters and the boy next door. And if it inspired others at the expense of “their pastors and their masters,” then I think that’s probably why it matters at all. She is offering a very different spirituality and humanity, especially for the 1860’s and sadly for some of us 150 years later.  

Alcott’s spirituality was rooted in the Christian tradition the Puritans brought to New England. Influenced by Calvin, they had some concerns about the churches back home and an intensity when it came to their ELECT community. To put it in Methodist terms they loved scripture, had some questions about reason and tradition and probably didn’t want to talk about experience if it was different. 

They loved Scripture, the Word, so much that they studied the Bible and then journaled and journaled, reflecting on their own words as if they were running a one person writers workshop. Who were they, and how could they be better Puritans, and so on. If you find yourself deeply curious about Puritans, consider The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. It is aptly named and offers a humorous and surprisingly delightful look into this part of our nation’s past. The Puritans loved words so much that when a woman named Anne Hutchinson started leading her own Bible study, drew a crowd, including and most offensively men, and raised questions the local preachers did not care for, they put her on trial, called her an American Jezebel, exiled her from Boston, and then founded Harvard to train men who would not be so easily swayed by a brilliant theological mind on what they considered the wrong side of the argument.

In a sense, the Puritans cared so much about words and community that they set the course for their own correction. The same culture that produced the witch trials also created the institutions that later paved the way for theological transformation.

A hundred years later, people were exploring freedom and revolution. Alcott’s grandfather, Colonel May, was among the church members who left the Old South Church for King’s Chapel, where the minister emphasized the humanity of Jesus and loosened up the Christology a bit. These pioneering theological progressives rejected “the Creed, the Trinity, the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, and the prehuman existence of Jesus…The Puritan’s Congregational Church, founded on John Calvin’s theology, had taught that God is all-powerful, humanity is depraved, and individuals are predestined for salvation or damnation. Unitarians rejected these beliefs, praying instead to a kindly God who promotes the welfare of humans, each one virtuous and worthy of salvation” (Marmee & Louisa: The Untold Story of Lousia May Alcott and Her Mother by Eve LaPlante, p 23). 

By 1820, Alcott’s uncle, the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, graduated from Harvard and put this theology into action as an activist clergy leader working for every kind of reform. If everyone is worthy and sacred, then everyone deserves to be treated as such. His theology shaped Alcott’s world, and through his life she witnessed the risks of working for justice. Her uncle was loved and loathed, heckled, fired, hung in effigy, and even had to navigate mob violence. And she also saw his beautiful, generous, compassionate, and courageous life. There was always plenty to eat in his home, an abundance of friends, and although the work was difficult, he was filled with joy.

This emerging New England theology sat alongside another influence in Alcott’s life. She grew up among the transcendentalists, sometimes neighbors and even occasional housemates, thinkers like Fuller, Emerson, and Thoreau, who sought wisdom in nature, trusted the goodness of humanity, and leaned on experience and intuition to guide them.

In a sense, some of New England kept the best of its religious foundation, the love of words and the community connectedness of Puritan spirituality, but without the witch hunts. Theology and philosophy only matter when they have legs. Good, loving, and uplifting words only matter if they make it out of the ivy tower and into sermons, songs, and prayer. They only matter if we can see them, sing them, tell them in story, and live them in practice. Philosophy is nothing without action and practice. 

Faith is a practice, and you can see this in Alcott’s writing. Her understanding of faith shows her roots, the Puritan value of words, and the practice of journaling. And most of all, Little Women shows this spirituality in action and invites readers to explore it and see it in dialogue and daily life.

The March sisters understood the many shades of poverty and wealth, as did Louisa May Alcott herself. The Alcotts lived on the edge of poverty and depended on the kindness of family and friends. Louisa and her sisters knew firsthand what it meant to ‘earn the bread’ that keeps a family warm and fed. She experienced hunger and the despair of poverty, and she also understood that true security came from community, especially circles of women. These networks were the equivalents of modern support programs—SNAP, WIC, CHIP, and Social Security. Alcott’s mother was always at the center of these circles, and Louisa wove her faith into Marmee and the March sisters, showing love for their neighbors in practical, tangible ways.

The greatest commandment to love God and neighbor appears again and again in conversations attributed to Jesus. Often Jesus is responding to religious and political leaders who are trying to entrap him. Look at Luke 10, Matthew 22, and Mark 12. The saying is not unique to Jesus. It belongs to the Hebrew tradition. It combines Deuteronomy 6:4 and Leviticus 18:19, and it must have been essential because it rolls off the ancient tongue whenever Jesus asks. It is everyday, ordinary, familiar, and yet when Jesus highlights it, people are forced to think about what it truly means.

In Mark 12, the religious leaders have run out of strategies, so they try to trap him with a question about taxes. Jesus replies that they should look at the name on the coin, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God.

And then they try a wild question, like a real deep cut that they all must have written papers about in grad school.

“Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first married and, when he died, left no children; and the second married the widow and died, leaving no children; and the third likewise; none of the seven left children. Last of all the woman herself died. In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had married her."

This is the EXPLITIVE question! Whose wife is she after marrying seven brothers. People are starving. Violence is everywhere. Rome is oppressing their neighbors. And these leaders want to clarify eternal marriage logistics. Plus no one seems concerned about this woman’s grief, her voice, or the wedding bills.

When Jesus is done with what I imagine to be the biggest eye roll in history he speaks.

 "Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?”

I love this line. Then Jesus drops the mic.

“He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

This is when Jesus closes the chat with a question that makes this chorus of little men remember the greatest commandment; he even makes them say it outloud. This seems to wrap things up in Matthew and Mark but in the Gospel of Luke there is one guy that just has to push it a little further. 

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”   -Scripture: Luke 10:25-37

And Jesus gives him a story. He does not give a list of who qualifies. He does not say only the good people, only the people compatible with Jewish teaching, only the people with proper documentation, only people who speak Greek, or people with a diploma.

Lists are easy and they are easy ways to exclude others. So Jesus offers a story. You probably know it, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. He offers a story where the good guy wouldn’t have been high on the lawyer’s list of neighbors to love. 

A man is overcome by criminals on the road, he is left for dead. The political religious leaders, probably the same kinds of folks who have just been trying to trap in or trick Jesus in conversations, pass by. The community leaders, with holy jobs walk on past this vulnerable man. Then Jesus takes the story to the place nobody around him is really going to like. A Samaritan shows up, he is on the wrong side of a long and abiding grudge. The Samaritan helps the man, tends to his wounds with ancient mediterranean first aid (wine and oil) then he takes him to an inn, pays for his care and promises to come back to pay the rest of the bill. Jesus closes the chat, not with a lecture or a pamphlet but with a question; Who acted like a neighbor? 

Now go and be a neighbor. That is the hard ask of faith. It has real costs—your time, your money, and in this story, even your wine. Today, we are asked the same question as we watch people who wear a cross to press conferences or claim to “speak in Jesus’ name” build walls, raid communities, cut funding for schools, strip away social supports, block access to healthcare, pile burden on the vulnerable, and commit acts of violence.

What does it really mean to be a Christian?

When Alcott hears that people don’t think she is Christian enough, she reminds everyone that her Little Women gave away their Christmas breakfast. She keeps pressing the question: What does it mean to be a Christian? She weaves this question into the second half of Little Women—that’s right, it was published in two volumes, and some readers in Britain don’t realize that Beth dies. 

In Chapter 34, Jo tries to write something the Sunday School boards would approve of, only to discover:

“The only person who offered enough to make it worth her while to try juvenile literature was a worthy gentleman who felt it his mission to convert all the world to his particular belief. But much as she liked to write for children, Jo could not consent to depict all her naughty boys as being eaten by bears or tossed by mad bulls because they did not go to a particular Sabbath school, nor all the good infants who did go as rewarded by every kind of bliss, from gilded gingerbread to escorts of angels when they departed this life with psalms or sermons on their lisping tongues.”

It was a solid burn in the 1860s, and Alcott would continue this critique in her later novels. In Work (1873), Rachel, a former sex worker, challenges Alcott’s adult audience to reflect on their “Christian values”:

“It’s no use for such as me to try. Better go back to the old life, for there are kinder hearts among the sinners than the saints and no one can live without a bit of love. Your piety isn't worth much, for though you read in your Bible how the Lord treated a poor soul like me, yet when I stretch out my hand to you for help, not one of all you virtuous Christian women dare take it and keep me from a life that's worse than hell.”

In the novel, Christie and Rachel help each other, and the turning point for Rachel comes when she says, “It came into my mind to do for others what you have done for me.” No matter the age of the audience, Alcott always places healing and salvation in the community—the circles of people who care and act like a neighbor. Her community taught her this. Her challenges taught her this. Her Marmee taught her this. And in the end, she writes what she knows.

Advent is a season of preparation and practice. We think of it as the quiet pause before the story of Jesus’ birth, the tiny baby, shepherds with fluffy sheep, twinkling lights, and big bows. But the hope of Advent is not in the adorable or the spectacle. The hope of Advent is in the waiting, in the longing, in the deep work of preparing our hearts for the life of faith.

This is the season to ask ourselves how we will love our neighbor in practice, in policy, and perhaps even by sharing our Christmas breakfast.

May we have the courage.