A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, December 20, 2009
Luke 1:46-56
What if you took almost everything you know about Christmas and turned it upside down? That’s what it would feel like if you and I spent Christmas in Australia or New Zealand.
It’s summer time in Sydney as the shoppers rush home with their treasures. The forecast for Christmas Day is 76° and light showers. Brave souls will still enjoy the typical celebrations of beach parties and cook outs. Sleigh bells (if they have any) will be dragged out in July – mid-winter.
Tomorrow is the solstice in the southern hemisphere just as it is for us. But there it’s summer-solstice – the longest DAY of the year precisely when we observe the longest NIGHT.
Since Northern hemisphere weather, and Currier & Ives pictures, are so often associated with true Christmas those in the southern hemisphere are pushing back. The hymnal from the United Church of New Zealand has a song that goes like this:
Carol our Christmas, an upside down Christmas;
snow is not falling and trees are not bare.
Carol the summer, and welcome the Christ Child,
warm in our sunshine and sweetness of air.
Sign of the gold and the green and the sparkle,
water and river and lure of the beach.
Sing in the happiness of open spaces,
sing a nativity summer can reach!
Right side up Christmas belongs to the universe,
made in the moment a woman give birth;
hope is the Jesus gift, love is the offering,
everywhere, anywhere here on the earth.
It’s good to remember that God’s Christian people CAN celebrate the joy of Christmas everywhere and anywhere, but there’s always a risk that we’re celebrating what we have done and overlooking what God has done.
What would we celebrate if we turned Christmas upside down: stripping away the colorful lights and pretty packages and busted credit cards and Uncle Charlie getting sloshed on the eggnog again this year?
If we dare to read the whole account in the Gospels — and not just the air-brushed collage of the best known bits and pieces we’ve strung together in our memories – we realize that scripture itself turns our Christmas upside down.
If we’re serious about Christmas we have to be ready to risk everything on our conviction that God’s astounding action there and then, began a new chapter in history that will someday turn our Christmas upside down. When you read the whole story in scripture you really can’t miss the truth that the birth of Jesus was a radical event – not just a religious turning point for a rag-tag bunch of shepherds, but a social and political watershed that literally turned the world upside down.
Carl Braaten, a Lutheran pastor and author said in a Christmas sermon years ago:
Jesus gave us a new and paradoxical definition of God, a definition of the humility of God. Many people were offended. They wanted a God of glory, not entering the world at the bottom, not from a despised place like Nazareth in Galilee, but he must come in from the top. He must be properly introduced, by the right people and with the appropriate protocol. But instead, the people got the Man from Nazareth, and he was only prepared to give them a message of the humility of God, of the identification of God with the people and things that don’t count for very much in this world. He carried his message of God to the extreme, driving the humility of God all the way to the cross.
After 2,000 years of Christian discipleship, most of us still edit out this fundamental truth. We’ve sanded the roughness off the stable and manger; we’ve domesticated the shepherds, the sheep and angels so they’ll walk on stage right on cue.
We’re so accustomed to Christianity and Christmas being mainstream that we forget it all began as a revolutionary threat against the powers of Rome and the authority of the temple. The birth of Jesus turned our world upside down. But most of us are still acting as though the world is right-side-up.
The Children of Israel knew the prophecies and had heard the promise. They waited and they waited. They watched for signs that God would invest great power and wisdom in the new Son of David. This charismatic warrior King would seize the imaginations and the devotion of the all the people. He would make the enemies of Israel tremble. This promised one, the “Anointed One,” would sweep into human history and knock down all the competing powers and win back the land from the enemy invader.
No wonder the ancient Jews didn’t think this child who was born on the margins of his society could possibly be Messiah.
• He grew up on the fringes as he ministered among the lepers and beggars, as he empowered women and welcomed children.
• He gave voice to the outcasts and forgave the adulterer.
• He broke bread with tax collectors and taught eternal lessons using foreigners as the central characters.
Our images of Jesus as a Sunday school stick figure are blown away when we really get into the story and see the intrigue and the political posturing that were going on.
We get some clue when we listen carefully to the poignant song of Mary – the young peasant woman who was made pregnant by the power of God’s Spirit and who somehow managed to trust utterly in what God intended. We call this section the Magnificat from the Latin when Mary sang “my soul magnifies the Lord.” And what did she sing?
After just a few words about herself she turned her eyes to God, speaking of what God has already done:
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.
Mary sings because God has planted in her womb the very one who will confirm what God has always said: if we bow down and worship anything else, any ONE else, save the one true God, we are surely lost. Nothing we build, accumulate, invest or create can save us – or even make us happy. For the only place we can rest completely is in the arms of God.
God turned the world upside down, all right. It says so right here in the Gospels. And if we approach Christmas as though it were some sentimental holiday that celebrates how hard we’ve worked and how carefully we’ve decorated, we’ve missed the mystery and the wonder of it all. For by coming to live among us through this “lowly handmaiden” God conspicuously came to dwell at the fringes.
Now the dilemma: if God came to dwell among the lowly and outcast, what about me? I’m not oppressed. I’m not poor. I’m not a foreigner, a peasant, or even a woman. Does that mean that since God has turned the world upside down, I’m now the bad guy? Many hungry, poor, marginalized people would say so. They’d say it right to my face. But God doesn’t say that. God says the Way – a new Way, a better Way is a way for all of us to be part of turning the world right-side-up – the way it’s supposed to be; as one of my favorite carols of the season says:
“When God is a child there’s joy in our song; the last shall be first and the weak shall be strong… and none shall be afraid.”
That’s the world that God wants us to envision.
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I’d bet most of you would agree: receiving the perfect gift – just what you always wanted, is only a tiny bit as satisfying as giving the perfect gift – just what someone else always wanted. Parents – don’t we delight in delighting our children? And children, don’t we delight in giving mom and dad a hand-crafted what-not or a coupon for doing the dishes without complaining?
Absolutely true: Christmas turned the world upside down by showing us that giving is infinitely more dear than receiving. So I – a white, straight, middle-aged, relatively rich male — am not cast out, but am called by Christ to welcome others in – specifically by the giving of gifts in Christ’s name.
Just as Mary’s song speaks of what God has already done, Christmas speaks of what God has already done – and what we as Christ’s disciples are instructed to do. And there are signs all around us:
• Thank you, dear friends, for generously bringing gifts for teen residents at the Long Creek Youth Development Center;
• Thank you for direct support to hundreds of our neighbors through our Community Crisis Ministries, with your dollars and your time
• Thank you for your generous commitment to our annual budget so we can join with each other in giving back to the community;
• Thank you for singing in the choir ushering at our services, teaching our children, serving at the soup kitchen, putting on a terrific Holidaze Bazaar, and amazing rummage sales and countless kinds of service.
Thank you for being the visible presence of God in the world: loving, serving, and giving in the name and Spirit of this tiny, child born so long ago.
Merry Upside Down Christmas to you all.