Upside Down Christmas

Most of you have heard Australia and New Zealand referred to as the land ‘down under.’ Of course, in New Zealand ‘down under’ is up, since, when you’re in New Zealand, you’re up and we, on the wrong side of the world, are down. Everything seems to be reversed there. The people in the cold south speak of the conservatism of their tropical deep north. July and August are the dead of winter. It’s all very upside down.

In New Zealand, Christmas arrives in the middle of summer. It’s a holiday when everyone goes to the beach. You can’t very well sing In the Bleak Midwinter while lying on the sand, soaking up some rays. So the New Zealand Church Hymnal includes some different carols. One is entitled Carol Our Christmas. Listen to the words:

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.
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 gave birth;
hope is the Jesus gift, love is the offering,
everywhere, anywhere here on the earth.

Odd, we come to Christmas thinking of it as the time that sets everything right. Christmas is the time to come home, to return to that time in our memories when all was warm, and good and right, when everything that’s come upside down in our lives is set right side up.

Yet in the Scriptures, Christmas was a time when everything was turned upside down. It wasn’t about a loving, family-value mother caring for a conventional child. It was about Mary, an unwed mother, expectant in a most unconventional, upside down way. The message came not through official government channels; it was delivered in song by angels. The star did not appear to the biblical scholars in Jerusalem, but to magi, pagan astrologers from outside. The baby whose birth we celebrate lay in a smelly cattle feed trough, not an expensive pram. And the good news came not to the learned and powerful; shepherds working the night shift first received the Gospel.

And shepherds were unclean. You see, 2,000 years ago faithful Jews were warned by their rabbis against entering six professions. One of those forbidden professions was that of shepherd.

Conscientious Pharisees would never consider doing business with a shepherd. They’d buy wool and milk, but never directly from a shepherd. Shepherds weren’t allowed to give testimony in court. Not only that, but shepherds were not permitted to enter the temple or the synagogue. Why?

For one thing, shepherds were constantly walking among the droppings of the sheep, and that made them religiously unclean. Secondly, shepherds tended their sheep throughout the countryside, without paying any attention to property lines. In other words, they were always trespassing. And, because they were on other people’s property, shepherds were considered to be thieves. They ran the local black market. Nobody loved a shepherd. Shepherds were thought to be liars and thieves who’d steal you blind. They were dirty, disgusting and despised. And if Willie Nelson had written the song back then it would’ve been: “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be shepherds!”

But God turns things upside down and meets us face to face, and assures us that He has not abandoned us. He enters human life with all its depravity, violence and corruption, and demonstrates that He is determined to deliver us – all of us, even shepherds.

When God looked down and saw a world devastated by sin, He did not go away. He didn’t turn His back on us. He did something about it. God’s gift to us at Christmas is His very self: the Incarnation, God incarnate in Jesus Christ, God embodied and enfleshed among us. God was willing to stoop down to our level in order to bring us up to his level.

When Mary heard the news from the angel, telling her that she was going to have a baby, Immanuel, God with us, she sang a Christmas carol. You might call it An Upside Down Christmas.

Mary said, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For He has looked with favor on His lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name.

“He has mercy on those who fear Him in every generation.

“He has shown the strength of His arm, He has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.”

Mary sings of a world turned upside down, of those who are high and exalted being brought low, of those who are poor and hungry being filled, all by the advent of a baby. Mary had her life turned upside down by that angel Gabriel. And then she sang of a child in her womb who was going to dislodge, disrupt, and disturb. Later, one of the charges against the Christian followers of the baby was, “These people are turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).

Are we willing to ‘prepare him room’ – to meet a God like that?

A distant God is a safe God, isn’t it? It’s so much more comfortable and certain to keep our lives right side up. But the Christmas message is that God is not safe. God will not stay out there, somewhere distant, untouched and untouchable. In the Christ child God came near to be with us, to be for us, to bless us, to get in the same room with us, to remain with us, and to disturb us.

So think of Christmas as a time when God began turning things upside down. And consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, that’s why you are here tonight – because your world, right side up, may not be all that it could be. And consider the risk that you take by coming before the babe at Bethlehem. Consider the risk of a right side up world being turned upside down. Scripture is full of stories of folk, people like Mary, who had their world turned upside down, inside out when they came face-to-face with God.

So take care as you gaze into the manger. Beware coming too close to the Savior. Think, before you hold out your hands to receive the bread and wine; you don’t know what He might hand you. There is a risk. Merry upside down Christmas.