Everything Turned Upside Down
David C. Myers
December 21, 2008
Advent 4th Sunday
Luke 1:26 - 55
Text: "You have brought down rulers from their rank, and lifted the lowly. The hungry You have filled with good things, the rich You have sent empty away." . . . Luke 1:52 - 53
When perusing through the Halford Luccock Treasury, I came across the story that helps us understand, on this last Sunday of Advent, more about the nature of God for Whom we are preparing.
The story tells of the time that Hal Luccock bumped into a woman carrying many bundles during the Christmas Season. As she bent over to pick up the packages she commented in frustration, "Oh, I hate Christmas! It turns everything upside down!"
To which Luccock responded, "That is just what Christmas is for!"
Christmas is the story of a baby, and that is a baby's chief business - turning everything upside down. Anyone who has had children as infants knows how life is turned upside down; how time, energy, emotion, and money gets spent and focused in radically different ways - A. B. (after baby).
It is even more so in the Christmas story. The Christ child does turn everything upside down - this Word made flesh, the Emmanuel, the "God with us". It's a special time when God has made abundantly clear that each person is special. And by coming to a poor peasant family, God further makes it clear that real wealth and power maybe considerably different than our usual culturally enriched understandings.
And no where is that clearer than in the story of Mary that culminates in her great soliloquy known as the Magnificat. Last week the Sanctuary Choir and the Chevy Chase Orchestra sang it; this week we examine it.
Perhaps we are not really prepared for Christ's coming. Mary certainly wasn't. Mary, a virgin, was just beginning her adolescent years, recently Betrothed (engaged) - but not married to - Joseph, a peasant carpenter from a very small, insignificant town we would today refer to as East Podunk.
Lo and behold, one day God just seemed to enter Mary's life through the angel Gabriel. God was "calling" Mary to something very special.
But unexpected babies, whether they come when you are too old or too young, can create social havoc - no matter how great a blessing they can turn out to be.
When Debbie and I decided to get married we first set a date for July. We made all the family phone calls, telling people to reserve the date. About a month later, we said to ourselves, "Why wait until July? We know we are going to get married, why not get married on May 17th?" There really was nothing more to it than two young people in love wanting to move up their wedding date. Well, as we called the family again, Debbie's grandmother - a veteran of such announcements - greeted the news with a moment of silence, and then added the words only a loving grandmother could, "And is there anything else I should know?"
Well, babies, even the thought of unexpected babies, can create quite a stir - especially when one of the potential parents is serving as a minister in a church!
And as much work as needed to be done with Mary, more work - in another part of the Nativity story needed to be done with Joseph - and the rest of us - to reduce the scandal of a baby born to a woman too young.
Heavenly spin control, if you will.
Indeed, central to the Nativity Story in Luke's Gospel is the length to which Luke goes to show just how upsetting the birth of a baby can be. The story of God's sending a baby turns everything upside down. It is a great reversal of everything that was high and low, and of a new beginning for humanity. And it is so overwhelming that we are never really ready - even though we have rehearsed this story for about 2,000 years.
And so here we are today, and we find that like with any other baby, Jesus is about to arrive - already on His way - already here . . . whether we are ready or not.
Mary's call is no different. As in other Biblical "call" stories, first there is the word of the Lord. In Mary's case it is followed by a startled response, then a divine "fear not." And then eventually Mary adopts God's vision as her own. This is not unusual. Sometimes we know very clearly what the Scripture says to us and what we should do, but it is so startling to us, so jarring to our culture, that we never move on to the dialogue with God that allows us to adopt God's vision as our own.
You know, we preachers from time to time present Jesus as the solution to all our problems, the one who will bring stability to our lives. All this is true - at least eventually. But this Sunday, with the intrusion of the angel Gabriel and his shocking message to Mary, let us be aware that the nativity is far from being a stable and serene affair. The child Who is born in a stable, laid to rest in a manger is born to reign, to rule, and to establish a new realm that shall destabilize all the world's kingdoms. This new Messiah, this Prince of Peace shall disrupt and disorder in order to bring new healing. And like a wound that doesn't heal, sometimes to bring complete healing it has to be lanced, opened up, and painfully cleansed, so real healing can occur.
And so Mary delivers her Magnificat. It is filled with words that fulfill the prophets' promise, it is filled with words that announce God's judgment and God's grace. And it is filled with words that turn everything upside down.
Everything.
Mary's Magnificat announces the turning upside down that which in any society is considered high and low, powerful and powerless. God cuts down the arrogant people and offers the powerless a future, bringing them human dignity.
Jascha Heifitz, one of the world's great violinists understands about how things can get turned upside down. He once played a concert in Cleveland when a violent rain storm shut down everything. Only one couple showed up. The concert was delayed 30 minutes, and still no one else appeared. So the great violinist stepped out from behind the curtain to say the concert had been cancelled.
"Please, sir," the man in the audience said, "We've driven four hours from Dayton to get here. Won't you at least sing one song?"
Everything turned upside down.
Mary wasn't ready for all this, any more than we are when we read the words of today's Scriptures carefully.
Some of us may not be sure that we want to prepare for Christ's coming by joining Mary and singing the Magnificat. For so long our society has disassociated ourselves from the oppressed and from those who long for deliverance. Our nation, our churches, and our own lifestyles have often been associated with those of the mighty and to at least to the rest of the world, the wealthy; if not intentionally, than at least guilt by association. And as hard as it may be to face it, while there is poverty in the Chevy Chase, Bethesda, Potomac, many people, even within a 5 mile radius of our church, would say, "Ahhh, to be poor in Chevy Chase!" God's coming and God's turning everything upside down may come close to home as we hear that Christmas is about lifting up the "lowly," filling "the hungry with good things" and "sending the rich empty away."
In an interview for the Questions of Faith Video Series, Letty Russell recounts an occasion when she was a pastor in East Harlem about what conversion meant to members of her parish, one located in a community of poverty and despair. In talking to people about words that would best express their desire for new life and wholeness, she found that one word was on their lips - freedom. They wanted to be free to work, to eat, to enjoy life and to be somebody. As one member of the East Harlem Protestant Parish put it, "Conversion means that I'm more free, in spite of everything!" This woman was pointing to the beginning of the great reversal in her life. God had begun to set her free and she could celebrate that new freedom with her sister Mary.
Mary sings about her child, the child of God, Who will be a liberator of those who have nothing for which to hope. "Beware, you powerful! Hope and rejoice, you powerless!" "Jesus the liberator is already on His way!"
But before we, as residents of the one of the richest communities in one of the wealthiest and the most powerful nation in the world get too intimidated and threatened by these overwhelming words of Mary; let me share a story that helped me understand what true liberation, true freedom is all about.
It happened during my second year in Seminary in 1972. I was taking a course entitled, The Minister and Contemporary Human Crisis". One of the contemporary human crises with which we were (and still are) dealing was white racism; and for that segment of the course we had to attend a "Consultation on White Racism" for a weekend. As the weekend reached its half-way point the leaders and consultants were getting extraordinarily angry at us - a group of about 35 mostly white, mostly young, mostly liberal, mostly idealist, mostly male clergy student types who were refusing to admit feelings and not able to acknowledge that we were part of a society that favored one racial ethnic group. (I have since come to know that there is no group quite so resistant to truth breaking into its midst than young, . . . white, . . . male, . . . clergy types.)
At any rate, one of the leaders of the Consultation, a black woman, asked me and 4 other husky types to get into the center of the room and form a circle. Without knowing what was coming we did. Then she asked one of the black students to get in the middle of the circle. Then she instructed us to hold him down, physically! It took quite a bit of effort because this black student clearly did not want to be held down by a bunch of white men. But with four to one odds, we were able to restrain him. Then the leader asked me to go over to a friend of mine to talk; but under no circumstances was the black man allowed to get up.
As soon as I started to move, he was able to break free.
What a powerful lesson in liberation. We were not able to hold another down without sacrificing our own freedom. Only as we spent our energies restraining him, could he be held down. When we wanted to exert our freedom, he gained his freedom as well. As long as one is oppressed, so too is the oppressor. Indeed, for all of us white, male, young, liberal, clergy types who represented the powerful in American society, we were those of whom Mary sings, "He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree."
But . . . we were also on the road to liberation. We, too, were in the process of being freed. We too had been turned upside down, by the gift of the One Who comes in the birth of a baby and bring liberation to all. As I preached in the sermon two weeks ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that we are all tied together,
" . . . in a single garment of destiny. Whatever effects one directly affects all immediately. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be." [ Strength to Love, p. 70]
Ahhhh, a baby!! I need just one little moment to underscore why our faith needs a baby. That's a unique thing about our faith. It's not some abstraction. It's not some wonderful treatise. Our faith is real flesh and blood. Our faith contends that our God has come as one of us and identifies with our need.
Some years ago, in a plea for financial support for a program providing for exchange students between nations, the tag line was, "The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up and send it as a person." That was what God did at Christmas! Love came down at Christmas, wrapped up in a person . . . turning the world upside down.
Are we ready to sing with Mary this Christmas day:
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
God has shown strength with His arm;
God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich empty away.
God has helped His servant Israel,
in remembrance of His mercy,
"In remembrance of God's mercy, . . ." Everything is turned upside down. This is the God for Whose coming we prepare and for Whom we await. May your Christmas be one of great liberation, of great freedom, . . . indeed, a Christmas of great joy!