Christmas Is Not What We Think

Listen to the hymn Mary proclaimed when her world was turned upside down; listen for the Word in the words when she was told, by an angel, she would bear a child out of wedlock:

Μεγαλύνει ἡ ψυχή μου τὸν Κύριον
My soul doth magnify the Lord,

καὶ ἠγαλλίασεν τὸ πνεῦμά μου ἐπὶ τῷ Θεῷ τῷ σωτῆρί μου
and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.

He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

Did you listen? Did you hear those subversive words in there? Do you realize how much challenge is in those words to our well ordered world, and how it would change business as usual? Why, they would turn it upside down. Upside down! Oh sure, we celebrate the warm and fuzzy feelings we get at Christmas, but listen to Mary‘s hymn, and then think about how Jesus was received by the world once he came into his maturity. This same baby, this same love incarnate, this same one who makes us feel all warm and good inside is the One who got nailed to a tree because his teaching was turning everything upside down. In fact, this is the very charge that society brought against the early church because it was trying concretely to live the teachings of Jesus. In the book of Acts, as they were dragging Jason off to prison his accusers
said, and I quote, "These people have been turning the world upside down." What kind of church is THAT, I ask you? Scripture is filled with some mighty upside down thinking.

One of the remarkable messages of incarnational theology is the startling reminder that we are created in the image of God, and if that doesn‘t turn our image of ourselves, and each other, upside down, I don‘t know what will. You, and the person you like least in this world, are both created in the image and likeness of God. And God is love. We are created in the image of love: that is our deepest humanity, our deepest identity, and THAT is why Christmas turns us upside down because it reminds us that that is who we are expected be, how we are supposed to behave.

Incarnational theology changes us, everyone, it changes us. It scatters our pride in the imaginations of our hearts and it exalts our humility. Christmas fills our hungry souls with good things as it starves those areas that we mistakenly think should be right side up. We come to the manger expecting to find what we think we are going to find, what we think we always find, only to discover that this cute little baby can, and does, turn our well ordered world upside down.