What if the Christmas Tree Got Turned Upside Down This Year?
The Chaotic Christmas Miracle at Hand
The bottom of the Christmas tree is for the durable ornaments, right?
The ones we don’t mind getting chewed up by the dog…
or toppled by wrestling children…
or bumped by the feet of adults passing by.
The top is for the beautiful ones.
Delicate.
Costly.
Pleasing to the eye.
But Mary’s Magnificat1 - the words Mary speaks while pregnant with Jesus - they invite an idea that sits at the heart of the Christian faith: What if you turned the tree upside down?
What if…
The ones society too easily or too often chews up or topples over or bumps around…were raised high?
Our weaknesses, bumps and wounds… were raised high as the locus of real strength?
The people and things beholden to the resources of front-page power - were brought low?
Can you imagine?
The thought of turning the tree upside down can play on our imagination (and perhaps anxiety) for some time - no doubt part of why Mary’s words have endured so memorably.
Eventually, though, I imagine we might say, “If you turn the tree upside down, it won’t stand. It just doesn’t work that way.”
But you know…
…When we hear the words of the Magnificat, it doesn’t seem Jesus came to stand the tree of this world just a little bit better. As if his goal were to take something a little crooked and straighten it just so.
He came to turn the world – and our hearts – upside down in the name of love.
It’s a holy miracle we’d never believe could stand on its own…until he walked the earth and gave us a picture of…
the outcast raised high,
weakness made strength,
the proud tumbled low,
and death raised to life.
The Bible has a name for the place where the trees stand upside down: it’s called the Kingdom of God.
It’s the spaces within and and spaces without where the trees get turned upside down by the relentless pursuit of love.
Eventually, what you have is a whole forest,
upside down,
rooted in Love.
—
If this holiday season everything seems…
chaotic and upsetting…
breaking and falling…
disheveled and wrong…
…consider this thought: what if the Spirit of the One born in Bethlehem those many years ago is still at work? What if a tree (or two or three) is in the process of being turned upside down - which is to say, right side up?
I guess what I am asking as the ornaments are falling all over your head is this: what if you’re in the midst of a Christmas miracle?
(Enjoy our congregation's Cantata - a beautiful rendition and proclamation of Mary’s upside down words)
Magnificat is from the Latin of the first line, “Magnificat anima mea Dominum,” or “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Luke 1:46-55.
“What if you’re in the midst of a Christmas Miracle.” You comment on the travails of this life and yet always points us toward the real eternal Truth and Love. Bless you!