Turning Christmas Upside Down by Jason Edwards

Turning Christmas Upside Down

This is an invitation for you to pause and consider what it would mean for you to move through this Advent with greater intentionality by choosing to embody the season in a way that might nurture healing and spiritual growth, impact the world in positive ways, and, first and foremost, be worshipful.

Let’s be honest. This season can be incredibly stressful. We’re already living life at a pretty good clip, and the pace often seems to pick up at year’s end. Life can be pressure-packed with responsibilities, and the demands on our time often increase during December. Life can be expensive. It’s often in the run-up to celebrating our Savior that credit card bills get run-up as well. Does it have to be this way?

This is the reality that prompted three pastors to start a movement ten years ago known as Advent Conspiracy. The essence of this movement is an invitation to focus Christmas on Christ by spending less, giving more, worshipping fully, and loving all. Those pastors attempted to capture all of this with the simple exhortation to “turn Christmas upside down,” an idea we find at the heart of Jesus’ life and teaching.

Biblical scholars often refer to God’s Kingdom as the Upside-Down Kingdom. This is one way of describing Jesus’ vision of a world where the first will be last, and the last will be first. In so many ways, God’s Kingdom seems upside down to us, because when we glimpse it, we’re actually beholding what the world will be like when all things are right side up.

Our lives are supposed to serve as catalysts of that upside down/right side up Kingdom, so that others might see it, long for it, experience it and even, enter into it. The Advent Conspiracy movement has asked Christians to use our Christmas preparation to live into the countercultural ways of God’s Kingdom during Advent (at least!), so that maybe … just maybe … Christmas will once again change our world.

We actually reflected on these Advent themes once before in 2012. That was the genesis of the upside-down Christmas tree that hangs from our Social Room ceiling during Advent. That was also the first year of our church’s Christmas Store — one thoughtful, creative way our church decided to spend less, give more, worship fully, and love all. Our Christmas store has endured — changing our world in ways known and unknown to us. Individuals, families, and small groups conspired in other creative, generous ways as well. What new traditions might you and yours enact as you attempt to embody the Spirit of Christ this Christmas?

In advance of this year’s Advent planning, I was encouraged to consider revisiting these themes. “This seems timely,” I was told. It seems we, as American Christians, struggle as much as ever to (as Ebenezer Scrooge said), “honor Christmas in our hearts and to keep it all year long.” As a church, we’ll spend this Advent renewing our commitment to this, with the hope of bearing witness to a truth born into our world over 2000 years ago: Christmas really can change the world.

With hope, peace, joy, and love….