"Christmas Upside Down"

     Maybe the reason I like the movie so much is that it turns on its head my traditional understanding of how Christmas is supposed to be; it takes that Hallmark card version of the Christmas holiday, the one we all hope for, where all is calm and all is bright, and gives it a big kick right in the rear end. And not only that, in doing so I think it comes closer to the truth of what Christmas is really all about.

            The movie I am talking about dates from 1983, and has since becomes something of a Christmas season classic, right up there with “Miracle on 34^th Street”, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and the like. Its name is “A Christmas Story.” For those who have not seen it, a quick summary: Set in a small town in the late 1940s, it is almost Christmas, and little Ralphie Parker, a 6^th grader at best, has his heart set on a Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Action Range Model Air Rifle. When he tells his mom of this Christmas wish, with a gasp of horror she dismisses the idea, saying "You'll shoot your eye out" -- which is the same response every adult has to subsequent requests, including the Santa at the mall. While the main plot revolves around Ralphie’s hope of getting the air rifle, what makes the film really interesting is the way everything in the Parker family falls apart as they try to get ready for Christmas. Ralphie’s father wins an award, which turns out to be a gaudy table lamp in the form of a woman’s shapely leg, which Ralphie’s mother abhors and “accidently” breaks; the furnace keeps breaking down; the car gets a flat on the way to buy the Christmas tree; Ralphie says the “f-word” in front of his father with predictable consequences; the neighbor’s dogs rampage through the kitchen and eat the Christmas turkey; and the movie ends with the family celebrating Christmas at the only place open in town, a Chinese restaurant.

             Many of the Christmas cards we get each year proclaim “Peace”, which is fitting since we know Jesus as the Prince of Peace, but in “A Christmas Story”, Christmas comes in with anything but peace – instead, Christmas comes in with chaos and disruption, and the family’s settled, everyday life is turned upside down. Looking back on that time, the narrator, now an adult, says, “Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.”

            But isn’t that the real story of the first Christmas?

            Look at Joseph. Life was going quite smoothly, thank you very much. A young man making his way in the world, so much so that he was in position to get married and move out of the family house. A favorable match is made with an attractive local girl, and they are engaged to be married. He likely has found a house, made plans to make some improvements, is looking forward to the wedding night. And then his fiancée tells Joseph that she is carrying a child, a child that cannot be and is not his. He is, of course, devastated, but figures that he can salvage his situation by quietly breaking off the engagement and getting on with his life. But then God breaks in, a heavenly messenger comes to Joseph in a dream, telling him that the child was of the Holy Spirit, and that he ought not be afraid to take Mary as his wife.

            When Christmas comes to Joseph, it does not bring a sweetened, easier life – it brings disruption, it brings change, it turns his world upside down.

            When Christmas came to Mary, it does not make life easier, it makes it more complicated, more difficult, more challenging, it turns her world upside down.

            No wonder their reaction, when each are told by an angel of the impending birth, is one of fear.

            Six months later Jesus is born, not at a local hospital, not at their home, not at the parents’ home – but in far off Bethlehem, in a stable, among the farm animals, with a feedbox for a crib. And next thing you know the ICU turns into Grand Central station with the arrival of a gang of grubby shepherds and, hard on their heels, some suspicious looking characters from the East.

            In the Incarnation, in God becoming one of us, in taking on our human flesh and our common lot, God began to set things right with us, to fix what we so badly messed up and were unable to fix on our own.  But it seems that could not be done in a business-as-usual, all-is-calm-all-is-bright fashion – it took some serious disruption, some serious chaos, some serious I’m-going-to-turn-your-world-upside-down stuff. The gifts of God which we celebrate on the Sundays of Advent – hope, peace, joy, and love – they come through God’s disrupting intrusion.

            I sometimes wonder if we have Christmas all wrong.  At Christmas, we seem to want to go back, back to the good old days, back to the days of Currier and Ives prints of sleighs jingling their way through a quiet snowfall, back to remembered cozy times around the fireplace, back to the happiness of children attacking a pile of presents jumbled under a gaily decorated Christmas tree, back to an imagined healthy, happy, peaceful nuclear family sharing a feast together.

            And yet the original Christmas story at heart wants to break us of this addiction of imagining that safety and salvation lie in going back to some sort of mythic haven, in pretending that everything is really all calm and bright. The original Christmas story tells us that God’s salvation for us comes to disrupt our world and to call us to get up off our duffs and take our part in God’s sweeping, world-changing purposes. The original Christmas story tells us to not be afraid to say yes to God, to take on what the world might consider to be too risky, to stand up for someone in need, to bear love into the world.

            What would it mean if we allowed Christmas to turn our world upside down? 

What would it mean if it turned on its head our understanding of Christmas as a time to give in to the consumer culture which tells us to spend ourselves into debt for months so that we can buy others lots and lots of gifts, while at the same time we live in a culture awash in more stuff than we know what to do with?

At a time when much of the world suffers from lack of safe water and malnutrition, from diseases such as cholera and typhoid and typhus and intestinal parasites, while we on the other hand suffer from diseases of affluence like obesity and lung cancer and alcoholism and drug addiction, what would it mean if we let Christmas turn our world upside down?

Could we imagine saying to our loved ones, “This Christmas, one of my gifts to you is a contribution to the Heifer Project, so a family in Central America might have a flock of geese, or impoverished farmers in Arkansas might be helped to develop markets for locally grown food”?

Could you imagine, amidst all the giving that you will do, adding one more, a gift to your local church, to support its ministries in a time when we have a severe budget shortfall?

Can you imagine saying to your family, “Please honor me this year by giving a gift to charity in my name”?

What would it mean if we allowed Christmas to turn our world upside down, but not only in how we think about gift giving, but also in how we think about the ways in which God might be working in our lives?

What would it mean if, when disaster strikes, when we lose a spouse or an unforeseen illness strikes or that pink notice lands in your in-box at work or you have up and move from your single-family home to a retirement community or an assisted living facility, you could imagine that this disruption was not the end of the world, but the beginning of God’s new start in your life?  How often it is that, when our ordinary routine is upset, when our settled expectations of how life should be are upended, that our reaction is to say, “God, where are you?!” What we mean is, “God, why have you abandoned me?”  Maybe we have the right question, but the wrong assumption behind it, that God’s desire for our lives is that same as ours!  But what if we allowed Christmas to turn our world upside down, and could imagine that this disruption, this time of chaos, might be the birth pangs of something unexpected and wonderful?

This is Ralphie’s wisdom from “A Christmas Story”: “Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.”

            Friends, I believe the challenge for us is to imagine the Christmas story, the gospel Christmas story, as our story, and to imagine responding to it, in all its awesome and even fearful potential, in trust, as did Joseph, and in faith, as did Mary. Our challenge is to look at that disruption square in the face, and then say, as did Mary, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word”

Long ago, Christmas turned their world upside down. My prayer for you is that this year, you will let Christmas turn your world upside down as well.

“Addicted to Happiness”

(Based on Luke 1: 46-55)

      Today has been a special day for all of us here, and especially for Davey and Carrie, as we baptized into the Christian faith their daughter Mia.  And so my words today are for you, Mia, although it would be just fine if the rest of the congregation listens in as well.

            Mia, you are so blessed to have been born to your parents, and in this time, and in this great nation. And as you go through life, your parents are going to do everything in their power to not only keep you safe and provide for your needs, but also to make you happy. Trying to make you happy is something that they want to do, because they love you, but it is also something that seems to be wired into our DNA, and, more than that, it seems to be in the air that surrounds us. After all, you will grow to learn that the very Founders of this country believed that our inalienable rights include not only life and liberty, but also the pursuit of happiness.

            Mia, you will learn that there are many paths towards achieving happiness.  For instance, we know that material things can make us happy, and that is why we give presents of material things to those we love at Christmas time.  We find happiness through a neat toy or stuffed animal, through some fashionable clothes, through a large, flat-screen TV, or maybe through a new smart phone that can not only allow us to talk to others at great distances but also text, surf the web, send email, update Facebook status, take photographs, and even make double decaf iced frappacinnos on the go. (Okay, maybe not the frappacinnos, at least not yet!).

            But we also find that we can be made happy by enjoying a sporting event, such as a convincing blow-out by of the New York Jets by Tom Brady and the Patriots, or by going to a movie or watching Dancing with the Stars on the television.

            And when we cannot find happiness elsewhere or though other means, at times we can find happiness of a sort through alcohol or drugs.

            Mia, don’t get me wrong. I like to be happy. I like it when something I do seems to make others happy. But the truth is, you have been born into a world where we have become addicted to happiness.  And the reason that is something to be worried about, is that this addiction can rob you of the fullness of life we want for you, that Jesus came to give you, that God desires above all for you. Because happiness addiction can lead to sad lives.

            You see Mia, happiness is always dependent on circumstances, on externalities, on the situation one finds oneself in. Happiness is conditional, it depends on good health, on achievement, on what others think of us, on the material good we covet, on the experience we desire to have. Patriots fans were happy Monday night, Jets fans were sad – the difference was the outcome of a professional football contest. On Christmas morning, some kids will be happy, and some will be sad, and that may in part depend on whether Santa delivers the goods they hoped for. December 15 is the day high school students across the country will learn whether or not they got into the Early Decision college choice, and you can bet that is a day many will, depending on the contents of those letters, be happy or sad. Tomorrow morning, some folk will visit their doctor and get the test results back, and you know that, depending on what the x-ray or CT scan or blood results say, some will be happy, and some will be sad.

            Happiness depends on circumstances, but even when everything is going our way, happiness can still be not enough. Even with health, with security, with enough material goods to satisfy our desires, with everything that all totaled up should make for happiness, we can still fall prey to an emptiness, a sin-sickness, a wondering if there is anything more to life.

            So Mia, bottom line, we want you to be happy, but we also don’t want you to settle for mere happiness. What we want for you is joy.

            We want for you joy, because happiness is, at base, a mere echo of joy, bearing some of its marks, but just as an echo is a reflection of a human voice, happiness wears the mark of joy but cannot last. Joy, you see, is an inner quality that exists irrespective of external circumstances. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “The only condition for joy is the presence of God. Joy happens when God is present and people know it, which means that it can erupt in a depressed economy, in the middle of a war, in an intensive care waiting room.” (The Living Pulpit, Oct./Dec. 1996, p. 16).

            Look at Mary, in our reading for today. With little reason to be happy, joy erupts as she greets her cousin Elizabeth, as she embraces the idea that God has chosen to turn the world upside down, and that great newness was going to begin with her, but not end there, that it was going to start the ball rolling towards the day when no one will lord it over anyone else, when no one will feast while others starve, when no longer will there be the lowly, the oppressed, the marginalized.

            Happiness has nothing to do with denying one’s self, but joy is impossible without it. Happiness is about the pursuit of some thing; joy is about a depth of life that is all about serving and helping others. Jesus told those who would follow him, those who desired abundant life, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life from my sake will find it.” (Matt. 16:24-25)

            Joy doesn’t happen when we get what we want, and it usually has nothing to do with what we want. Mary certainly did not want to be an unwed mother, and Mary certainly did not want to be the one to birth God into this world, and endure whatever that might come to mean. And yet she came to rejoice.  And few among us want to grow old, and yet how many of us know folk who nevertheless exude joy, carrying with them a sparkle of delight in the blessings they have known and still known, and through that joy being a blessing to others, to family, to friends, and to the inevitable health care workers.

Joy happens when we finally figure out that God’s plans are so much better than our plans, that God has an uncanny way of opening doors when it seems all our paths are closed off to us, that even when it is clear as day that all our hopes are dead and buried, God will raise them, and us, to new life.

Mia, in the not too distant future, your parents will try to teach you this lesson by reading you a book, one which has come to be one of my favorites. It is called “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, by Dr. Seuss. Its principal character, the Grinch, wrongly believes that Christmas is all about happiness, and he thinks he knows just how to ruin Christmas – he will make all the Whos down in Whoville sad by stealing all their Christmas presents and all the food for the Christmas feast. And yet Christmas comes all the same, and the Whos greet Christmas by joining hands and singing out in joy.

Mia, on this festive day of celebration, on this day when you have been washed by the cleansing, renewing waters of baptism, we wish you all the happiness in the world, and hope that your pursuit of happiness will be a successful one.

But more than that, we pray that you will always be open to being surprised by joy.