Upside Down. The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring Eden United Church of Christ Hayward, California. Third Sunday in Advent Dec. 14, 2014 Luke 1:47-55 (NRSV)

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1 Upside Down The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring Eden United Church of Christ Hayward, California Third Sunday in Advent Dec. 14, 2014 Luke 1:47-55 (NRSV) Years ago when I was in college, I was frequently asked by one of my English professors, Carl Stack, to babysit for his son, Benjamin. Dr. Stack and I had an interesting relationship. He was probably the best English teacher I have ever had. He taught me the intricacies of Aristotelian argumentation, and how to detect and name the seven informal fallacies. He was a brilliant poet, a gifted teacher, and a hysterically entertaining lecturer. Carl Stack was also a card-carrying, self-avowed agnostic. I thought it ironic that Carl taught English at a church-related liberal arts college, and even more ironic that he made a point of telling all of his students that he was an agnostic. (I later learned that Carl was also married to the daughter of a Lutheran pastor. Go figure! I m sure that made for some interesting family gatherings.) Carl had fundamentalist students for lunch, so to speak. He behaved with them like a cat that had just gotten a new toy. Carl peppered these students with questions that most of them had never contemplated before, much less fully explored, so most of them flamed out under the stress of trying to figure out what to say and to respond to him. Those of us from mainstream traditions, by contrast, didn t always have a comeback for Carl, but we weren t as easily baited or frustrated by his taunts because we never expected to have all of the answers. Given this background on Professor Stack, you may, like me, be surprised to learn that Carl s best friend on the faculty was the campus chaplain, and that I was Carl s leading candidate for babysitter for his son Benjamin. The first time that Carl asked me to take care of Benjamin, I was hesitant to say yes. I remember discussing the invitation with the chaplain, Rev. Lauer, and asking, Why does Carl even want me near his kid, much less babysitting for him? Isn t Carl afraid that some of my faith is going to rub off on his son? On a different note, I mused, What if Benjamin hates me? Will this have a negative impact on my grade in his English class? I really needed to stay on the Dean s List to keep my scholarship. I can t afford a misunderstanding.

2 The whole idea of babysitting for Benjamin seemed ironic to me, and antithetical to everything I knew about Carl Stack. But ultimately, I decided to accept the work, because Rev. Lauer encouraged me to give it a try, because I needed the money, and because the kid was pretty darn cute. The babysitting gig turned out to be a lot of fun, and a comic relief from the rigors of my academic studies. Benjamin was 2½ at the time I started taking care of him. (He s probably married with children of his own now.) Back then, I remember Ben as a very bright and imaginative child. He had a rich and interesting vocabulary, and, for whatever reason, he seemed to adore me and it was nice to be adored. I taught Benjamin how to sing church camp songs. (His father loved me for that.) I showed him how to drink milk through a red licorice vine. (His mother loved me for that.) I also taught him how to hang upside down, and he loved me for that. Fairly soon after I started taking care of Ben, he would run up to me each time I came to the house to care for him, and shout my name, Arnene, and jump up and down as though he were on a pogo stick, and say, Upside down! Upside down, Arnene! (Benjamin called me Arnene, because L s were difficult for him at that age.) From early on in our relationship until I graduated college, Upside Down was a routine part of our greetings. In hindsight, I ve thought that upside down was the perfect metaphor for my relationship with Ben s father, an avowed agnostic, who taught at a church-related colleague, and chose to hire a pre-seminary student to care for his son. II Upside down is not only a good metaphor for my relationship with Carl Stack, it is also an excellent metaphor for describing today s gospel lesson, which is commonly known as the Magnificat. This passage provides a window on how Luke s author saw the world he saw it as upside down. In Luke s day, perhaps even more so than our own, the poor were trampled by the rich. The kings were crooked. The priests and prophets were hypocrites. And the world, as a whole, seemed to be going to hell in a handbasket. To Luke, everything about the world as he knew it was upside down; yet in his heart of hearts, he knew that this was not the way the world should be, and it was not the way that God wanted it to be. This is why, in Luke s view, God sent Jesus into the world. God sent Jesus into our upside down world in order to fulfill the ancient prophecies about peace with justice, about the poor becoming rich, about the sick being healed, about the captives being The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring, Upside Down, Dec. 14, 2014, p. 2 of 5.

3 freed, about the strangers being welcomed, about the sorrowful being soothed, and about the dead being raised. In Luke s view, God sent Jesus into the world to turn the upside-down world right-side up. So this is what the Magnificat is ultimately about. It is about Mary magnifying which means expounding on, drawing attention to, and putting an explanation mark on the news that she would give birth to Messiah, the one who would turn the world right-side up. III God knows, the world is still in need of this good news. God knows indeed we know that we must cling to Christ s vision and follow his example, now more than ever, because there are many situations in our world that are upside down. And the approach of Christmas tends to heighten our sense of what is upside down, particularly in our personal lives. Anyone who has ever gone through the holiday season with a loved one deployed in a war zone, or with a primary relationship unraveling at the seams, or with a loved one missing at the dinner table knows what I m talking about. Anyone who is struggling to pay the rent, anyone who is finding it hard to put food on the table, and anyone who wonders whether there will be presents under the tree this Christmas, knows that the holidays have a way of reminding us of magnifying for us what is upside down in our lives. Looking at the headlines in the news lately reminds us further of how upside down the social structures in our society continue to be, as evidenced by the recent law enforcement and judicial debacles in Ferguson, New York City, and Cleveland have revealed. Meanwhile, many people of privilege insist that racism is a thing of the past and that affirmative action policies designed to right wrongs are themselves unjust. All of these examples and more remind us of how upside down our nation is on matters of race, and other disparities that divide and oppress. On a global level, the negative effects of US foreign policies, like NAFTA, continue to unfurl as the Mexican and Central American economies flounder and tank, and as civil war, terrorism, and torture commence, as a result of the illicit drug economy being fed by U.S. consumers demands for marijuana and crack cocaine. To be sure, plenty of evidence abounds in our time illustrating how upside down the world still is, and how desperately we and the whole world need a reversal of these circumstances. In times like these, it is more than a little ironic that we come to church on the Third Sunday in Advent to light the candle of Joy. Surely some maybe all of us ask the The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring, Upside Down, Dec. 14, 2014, p. 3 of 5.

4 question: How can we find joy in this season, much less sing Joy to the World with any integrity? IV I don t think answers to questions like these come easily or at least they shouldn t. Platitudes will not sooth the grief of those who are suffering, especially not during the holidays. Rather than grasping for platitudes, pretending that the pain isn t real, or trying to drown our grief in yet another cocktail, we would do well to look to the people and the places who have experienced deep suffering and terrible tragedy, and learn from them how to frame our tragedies in a way that honors the depth and breadth of our challenges. By doing so, we honor the truth of our experiences, and we begin to progress down the long, circuitous path from suffering to healing. Where do we go from here? To whom do we look for guidance and solace? I suggest that we look to prophets like Isaiah, whose words we have read and reflected on during the previous two weeks of this Advent season. I suggest that we probe the imagery of Mary s Magnificat, in which the mother of Jesus envisions the upside down turned right side up by the life and ministry of her son. I also suggest that we turn our attention to the poetry of musicians like Isaac Watts, whose own profound suffering and grief prompted him to write the lyrics of the Christmas carol, Joy to the World. Who was Isaac Watts? you ask. Isaac Watts was the son of a deacon at the Congregational Church in Southampton, England, who was forbidden admission to Oxford and Cambridge, twice imprisoned for his non-conformist religious views, and suffered with chronic health problems. 1 Despite these several challenges, Isaac Watts was one of the most prolific hymn writers in the English language. Among the 600-plus hymns that he authored in the early 18 th century is one of the most familiar Christmas carols that we still sing each year: Joy to the World. It s important to note that Isaac Watts did not write this song at the pinnacle of his health or when he was at the top of his professional career. No, he wrote Joy to the World at 1 Whitney J. Dough, The Hymnwriters Our Unknown Friends. Franklin, TN: Providence House Publishers, 1983, 18 20, and The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring, Upside Down, Dec. 14, 2014, p. 4 of 5.

5 the age of 45 seven years after his health had collapsed and he was forced into early retirement. Isaac Watts wrote Joy to the World not because he had so much to rejoice about, but because he knew in his heart of hearts that the message of Christmas was less about the way that things were, and more about the way that God wanted them to be. Watts knew that Christmas was about God s deep desire for all people to experience joy rather than sorrow. Watts knew that through Christ s birth God was proclaiming a radically different message than the reality he was experiencing in his world. Watts knew that through Christ through Christmas God was proclaiming the good news that deprivation is not God s intention, that suffering is not our purpose, and that death is not the end. Instead, Joy has been the vision all along. Joy was God s impetus at creation. Joy was God s plan for Israel. And Joy is the destination that God envisioned for all people on that first Christmas, and every Christmas! V So we ask, How can we sing Joy to the World this Christmas? How can we sing Joy to the World at a time like this? The answer, I suggest, is an answer borrowed from the words of Mary s Magnificat, the lyrics of Isaac Watts s classic carol, and the witness of Jesus Christ. We sing Joy to the World because we must! We sing because we must protest things as they are, and proclaim how God envisions them to be. We sing because we must affirm the good news of the gospel and move beyond despair to hope, and beyond sorrow to joy. As we do, we find the Spirit of God at work in us like the spirit was at work in Mary and we experience the comfort and encouragement we need to join Jesus in turning everything that is upside down, rightside up. Amen. The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring, Upside Down, Dec. 14, 2014, p. 5 of 5.