December 24, 2012(Christmas Eve Services)An Upside Down Christmas

Scripture Reading: Luke 1:39-45

I.

  1. I want you to imagine for a moment a Christmas winter scene. I don’t know what flashed through your mind, but most of us probably imagined a scene something like this one… (winter scene of a home in the woods with snow falling). It’s a northern hemisphere type of scene with snow and trees, smoke rising from chimneys and maybe a sleigh passing by. In Oregon, we occasionally get a white Christmas, but most of the time it’s like this… wet. We may be dreaming of a “white” Christmas, but much more typically, we get a “wet” Christmas”!

It’s even more rare and remarkable to have a late December dayhere that is clear and warm.

  1. But what’s remarkable in Oregon isn’t so unusual down south, where they celebrate Christmas in warmer weather. My mom lives in Phoenix, Arizona and she always brags about how warm it is down there this time of year. I recall many a Christmas as a kid visiting our relatives in Arizona and once we opened our presents being outside in our shorts and tee shirts playing with our new toys. In fact, I checked the forecast for Phoenix on Christmas Day and it’s supposed to be in the mid-sixties. For a holiday wrapped around images of snow and songs of the bleak mid-winter, it’s kind of weird celebrating Christmas in hot sunshine amidst the cactus and palm trees!
  2. Of course, really “Down Under” in places like Australia or New Zealand, Christmas comes in the summer season. Janet and Gary Kitzrow have just moved back to Oregon from “Down Under,” which, of course, in that part of the world seems right-side-up. But it’s strange I tell you to celebrate Christmas by swimming at the beach, which I hear everyone does down there. How can you sing “In the Bleak Midwinter” lying on a bright beach in Aukland?
  3. But they do sing another Christmas carol in that part of the world that I think is beautiful. It’s called “Carol Our Christmas.” Listen as our trio sings it to us…

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.

Sing of the gold and the green and the sparkle,

water and river and lure of the beach.

Sing the in the happiness of open spaces,

sing a nativity summer can reach!

Shepherds and musterers move over hillsides,

finding, not angels, but sheep to be shorn;

wise ones make journeys whatever the season,

searching for signs of the truth to be born.

Right side up Christmas belongs to the universe,

made in the moment a woman gives birth;

hope is the Jesus gift, love is the offering,

everywhere, anywhere here on the earth.

II.

  1. It’s odd, when you think about it, that we come to Christmas thinking of it as the time that sets everything right. Christmas is the time to come home, if only in our memories of Christmases past when all was warm, and good and right -- when everything that’s come upside down in our lives is set, at least for a couple of days in December, right side up.
  2. It’s odd because in the Bible, Christmas was that time when everything was turned upside down! It is not a story about a loving, family-value mother caring for a conventional child. No. Think about it. In this story Mary is an unwed mother, expectant in a most unconventional, upside down way. And word of the birth did not come through the official, AP news service; it was delivered in song by angels. And the good news did not come to the learned and the powerful and the wealthy. No! Bottom-of-the-barrel shepherds working the night shift first got the gospel. And not to the biblical scholars pouring over the sacred texts in Jerusalem, but to magi, Gentile outsiders, pagan astrologers appeared the star. This babe whose birth this evening we sing, the one we greet with our adoration and devotion, lay not in a princely bed-chamber, but a cattle feed trough.

Even after hearing this story over and over and over again, doesn’t this all seem at least a little upside down to you?

  1. When Mary got the news from the angel telling her that she was going to have a baby -- Immanuel: “God With Us,” Messiah to bless the world -- she sang a Christmas carol. I suppose we couldalso call this carol “An Upside Down Christmas.” Listen to the words:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior,

for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

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 the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

  1. Look at the world Mary sings of -- a world turned upside down; where those who are high and exalted are brought low and those who are poor and hungry are filled -- all by the arrival of a baby. Mary got her life turned upside down by that angel Gabriel. And then she sang of a child in her womb that was going to disrupt, disturb and dislodge. In fact, some years later, one of the charges brought against the Christians, followers of the babe, was…

“These people are turning the whole world upside down.” (Acts 17:6)

III.

  1. So whether we’re “Down Under” or “Up Top,” we should think of Christmas as a time when God began turning things topsy turvy. And consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, that’s why you’re here tonight -- because your world, right side up as it is, may not be all that it could be. And consider the risk you and I take by coming before the babe at Bethlehem. Consider the risk of a right-side-up world being turned upside down. You can read about it in the Bible, which is chocked full of stories of folk – folk like Mary – having their world turned upside down and inside out when they came face to face with God. Our holy writings are full of stories about “inversions”… story after story of those who are lowly becoming great and those who are great becoming lowly. God taps some unexpected person to do God’s will. There is a great deal of coming up and going down.

Inversion...

  1. The young couple met their sophomore year at an information meeting about the Spring Student Mission Team to Honduras. Many such student mission teams had gone down to the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Few of the students had gone down to Honduras on one of these missions and came back the same person.

The young man was quite attracted to the young woman and after the night they met, they started going out together. Seemed like there was a wonderful relationship ahead of them. “We’re going to Honduras together, he explained to the campus minister, and who knows where it might lead for the two of us.”

One day, around Christmas time, the minister saw the young man walking across the campus with his head down and looking quite dejected. “What gives?” the minister asked the student.

“Marianne isn’t going to Honduras,” he replied gloomily.

“I’m sorry,” said the minister. “But why? Is it because she can’t afford the time?”

“No,” he responded. “Marianne said that her older sister, Clarinda, went down there on one of the student mission teams, and it changed her. It may have put a smile on Jesus’ face, but it made her mom and dad furious. There girl was changed down there. Clarinda said she got born again down there. Marianne said her sister got turned upside down!”…

Smart young woman to know that getting close to this manger is a dangerous place to be. It just might turn you upside down. Here’s a God who loves to invert!

  1. At Christmas we sing an old familiar carol: “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

“O come let us adore him, O come let us adore him, O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord,” we sing.

So we come… expecting to meet here what we always expectto meet. We come, expecting the fulfillment of all our desires…the blessing of all our biases… the confirmation of all our preconceptions.

After all, we see here the baby Jesus and he has a face just like our face. He is cuddly and cute. What harm can there be in a baby?

  1. But be careful as you gaze in the manger. Be careful coming too close to this savior. Consider before you hold out your hands to receive his bread and wine -- we don’t always know what he is going to hand us! Mary will tell you, when God enters this world in the flesh and blood, in the babe at Bethlehem… well, our world is turned upside down. I just thought you ought to know there is a risk being here tonight. Our world will be turned upside down and inside out if we get too close.
  2. But it needs to be. And I hope you will! Merry upside down Christmas!

Let us pray…

Eternal God, Ruler of all worlds and Shepherd of the stars, whose glory is revealed in vastness and in power, yet whose secret name is Love; this is the time when we remember your gentleness, hidden in a mother’s hope and in the joy of a birth. This is the time when we believe again, if only for a season, that love is stronger than fear, peace more enduring than enmity, and that the darkness will never put out the light. And so, in this the season of midwinter spring, we offer to you the joy, the hopes, the dreams of our children. We offer to you your gift of gratitude, and we make bold to believe that you have graced us with your presence, for we are gathered in the name of Love. Amen.

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