So, have you put up your Christmas tree yet? We have the same
debate every year at our house—when to put it up, when to take it down, etc. I
know lots of people have different traditions about the tree.
No matter when you put it up: on Christmas Eve or the day
after Thanksgiving (or, if you’re a department store, sometime around Labor
Day), the Christmas tree is the most simple and recognizable symbol of the
season. It’s been the same for centuries, ever since the Christians adopted the
symbol from Germanic paganism — the evergreen being seen as a symbol of eternal
life because it’s always green even in the dead of winter. Wherever you go
these days, you can expect to see that basic triangular shape, be it artificial
or real — beautiful green boughs narrowing upward to the point where you put
the star.
But wait a second. Before you anchor that tree
in its stand and find a place on it for the those candy canes you’ve kept since
the Nixon administration, consider checking out the hottest trend in Christmas
tree chic — an idea that could flip the whole idea of the Christmas tree on its
ear — literally.
Enter the upside-down, ceiling-mounted Christmas tree. That’s
right, across the country a small revival of an old tradition is growing where
people are actually attaching their Christmas trees upside down with the base
on the ceiling — a holiday stalactite, if you will. It’s an upside-down,
backward approach to the conventional positioning of a Christmas tree.In fact, retailers like Hammacher Schlemmer and
Target are actually manufacturing trees just for this purpose.
Like just about anything these days, though, the
concept isn’t exactly new. Upside-down Christmas trees date all the way back to
12th-century Europe, when they were often used to illustrate the three persons
of the Trinity, though they’ve been out of vogue for nearly a millennium.
What’s the point of sticking your tree on the
ceiling? Well, other than just being different, the upside-down tree has
several practical applications. For one thing, say the marketing experts, you
can put more and larger presents under it, which makes it the perfect option
for big spenders. If you live in a cramped apartment, a ceiling-mounted tree
also takes up less floor space, making it attractive to some city-dwellers.
And, from a stylistic standpoint, you can put your more prized ornaments at eye
level instead of down near the ground where no one can see them except toddlers
and nosy canines.
Of course there are drawbacks. For example,
where do you put the star? And some will wax even more philosophical by
wondering how you water a tree that’s anchored upside down.
Then there is the traditionalist argument: Why
would you be so gauche as to nail a tree to the ceiling? After all, that’s not
Christmas! Some might even argue that the shape of the tree points to
heaven, which would make it a sin to turn it upside down.
There’s nothing like tweaking sacred tradition
to tick people off. One of the things that we pastors have noticed over the
years of doing the Christmas Eve marathon is that Christmas is the ultimate
holiday sacred cow. You just don’t mess with Christmas. For many people the
biggest fear of this season is that Christmas won’t happen according to plan,
that something will go awry and ruin Christmas thoroughly.
The truth is that, especially for us baby
boomers, we’ve been trained to think this way. Remember all your childhood
animated Christmas specials? The Grinch, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer, Charlie Brown — what’s the basis for those stories? Someone
is out to ruin Christmas and to keep it from coming. All must be perfectly
restored to order for the season to be valid.
I found this out immediately after his first Christmas
Eve service I ever preached. It was a packed sanctuary with many new visitors
and a festive atmosphere. I went to the door to greet people after the service,
believing that all was right with the world, when one of the long-time church
members came to the door but refused to shake my hand. Scowling, he said,
“Thanks for ruining my Christmas — we didn’t sing “The First Noel” as the
second carol. We’ve always sung that carol second in the order of worship on
Christmas Eve. Without that, it’s just not Christmas.” Then he stormed out the door.
I felt like I was in my own animated special:
“The Pastor Who Stole Christmas.”
People just seem to get wrapped around the axle
about the smallest things this time of year. Indeed we all have our
expectations, our hopes, our “perfect” scenarios, whether it be for a holiday
or for any other aspect of our lives. It’s interesting that at Christmas
everyone talks about Christmas “magic” and Christmas “miracles,” but a miracle
implies that something out of the ordinary has happened. At Christmas time, people
seem to expect the exact opposite of a miracle, wanting everything to be the
same. For some reason, we don’t like any deviation — no upside-down-ness to our
lives.
The Scriptures that we read during Advent and
Christmas, however, tell us that turning things upside down is exactly what God
is up to.
The prophet Micah wrote about a coming reversal
in fortune for the people of Israel. The nation faced God’s judgment because of
their apostasy — a judgment carried out by enemies who would build a wall of
siege against them and “strike the ruler of Israel upon the cheek” in an open
display of disdain (Micah 5:1). The old patterns of idolatry and corruption
that characterized the reign of many of their kings had made the nation almost
Grinch like in its devotion to self-interest, material gain and oppression of
the weak (Micah 2:1-2).
In the midst of this prophecy of judgment and
tough times ahead, God still offered hope. A new king would arise who would
break this old pattern and, in effect, turn things upside down. His origins
from the lowly town of Bethlehem, “one of the little clans of Judah,” are a
signal that God is interested in overturning the human expectations of power
and prestige in favor of uplifting the weak (5:2).
This king will be a shepherd who will “feed his
flock in the strength of the Lord” (5:4). Shepherding is a common metaphor for
leadership throughout the Bible and this image calls to mind the choosing of
David over Saul as the king of Israel back in I Samuel. It is the humble,
compassionate servant whom God chooses over mighty warriors and handsome
princes.
The word “Messiah” is not mentioned by Micah in
this passage, but Christians have long read this as a messianic prophecy,
naturally applying it to Jesus as the one who would secure his people and “be
the one of peace” (5:4-5).
Jesus came amidst a swirl of expectations about
a messiah who would save his people and do it according to a preconceived,
religiously approved, and non-miraculous plan. He was expected to wield a sword
instead of a shepherd’s crook and make peace by eliminating the enemies of
Israel, particularly the minions of Rome who occupied their land. The Messiah
was to make a list, check it twice, determine who was naughty and nice and make
sure that the ultimate holiday — the restoration of Israel — would come
according to the script, complete with happy ending and roll the credits.
Instead, Jesus does nothing less than turn their
expectations upside down and hang them from the spiritual ceiling as a way of
making room for everyone. He preached love over and against vengeance for
enemies. He spent time with the outcasts and proclaimed that they would be the
new “in” crowd. He was a great teacher but performed as a lowly servant, even washing
feet. For Jesus the categories of rich and poor, in and out, great and humble,
even life and death were all reversed. It’s no wonder that traditionalists
would argue that he was ruining everything and want him out of the picture.
We’re happy with the idea of a baby in a manger, so long as he stays there.
Think of some of the ways miss the miracle because we’re
expecting the same old thing:
We expect to fight the crowds on Black Friday and to go into
debt making sure that everyone gets the gift that they want—the real miracle is
that Jesus and his grace are the only gifts we really need.
We expect that Christmas is all about being happy. It isn’t.
It’s about being obedient and preparing the way for Christ and his kingdom—As
Jesus comes into the world on a mission, he sends us out on one as well. The
miracle is that we find Jesus in all the unexpected places we will go because
he sends us there. It’s not our own happiness that makes Christmas—it is
bringing peace to those who need it.
We expect to see a radiant baby Jesus in a quiet stable—no
crying he makes, like we expect to sing in “Away in a Manger.” But the miracle
and the reality is that this Jesus is anything but silent. He cries out for
justice, for mercy, for compassion, and for a completely new order of life in
God’s kingdom. This baby is the one who turns the whole world upside down and
he calls us to join him.
Instead of celebrating sameness and traditional
uniformity during the Christmas season, we should be celebrating the upside
down and backward nature of the gospel that Jesus ushers into the world. A
manger-born Messiah, a counterintuitive teacher, a religious rebel to the
establishment, a crucified King and a resurrected Redeemer — nobody expected
this at the time. It would’ve been too much, too off-the-map, making
upside-down Christmas trees look normal by comparison.
Jesus worked miracles because he
was focused on not seeing the world as it is, expecting the same old patterns
of greed and poverty and brokenness to continue. Rather, Jesus saw the world as
God intended it to be—a place of peace and justice, a place of wholeness and
healing, a place where Black Fridays are abolished in favor of Easter Sundays.
Jesus’ miracles—his healings, his feeding of large numbers of people with
nothing but five loaves and two fish, his casting out of demons, his mastery of
the wind and waves, even his victory over death—were all signs that things will
be radically different in his kingdom.
I wonder what would happen if
Jesus’ followers chose to not continue trying to meet the usual expectations of
Christmas and, instead, decided to bring the miracle of Christ and his kingdom
into the world? What if instead of buying stuff we want and don’t need we gave our
money to serve people who need and don’t have? What if instead of trying to
make ourselves happy we instead made it our sole desire to give ourselves to
the work of the kingdom by serving someone else? What if instead of settling
for a silent night, we instead joined Jesus and cried out for justice for
people who have no voice because they are too poor, too young, too strange, too
out of the way for the world to notice?
It was to one of these people that
the angel Gabriel came. Mary was just a poor teenage girl in an out of the way
town in the middle of nowhere when the angel came and offered her the chance to
bear God’s ultimate miracle to the world. It wasn’t an offer of piles of
presents, soft lights, and silent nights, but one that offered the likelihood
of ridicule as an unmarried pregnant girl, the pain of childbirth, and the pain
of watching her son stagger up a hill toward death on a cross. Mary was invited
to bear a miracle that would change the world, and it would cost her
everything.
I think Christmas invites us to
consider the same offer. Are we willing to bear the miracle of Christ to the
world, even if it costs us something? Are we willing to endure the sacrifice it
takes to be one of his followers and live the life of his kingdom? Are we
willing to forgo fewer presents under the tree in order to bring God’s presence
to those who are in need? Are we willing to change someone else’s
circumstances—to be their miracle? In this series, Joe and I will be challenging
you, and ourselves, to think about a different kind of Christmas—one that
confronts us with the coming of a Savior who will turn the world upside down.
We’ll be looking at some ways you can be God’s miracle for someone else.
You know, maybe stapling our trees to the
ceiling isn’t such a bad idea after all if it causes us to think differently
about the flip side of Christian faith. Perhaps we could all use a little
upside-down Christmas this year — and see the world from the perspective of Jesus,
the best miracle and gift we will ever receive.
