It’s Christmas time.
What are you most looking forward to?
Mince pies and mulled wine.
The mistletoe hung just low enough for you to steal a kiss.
The growing mountain of wrapped presents under the tree.
That strange week between Christmas and New Year where time stops making sense any more.
Or… maybe you’re just counting down for the latest instalment of Netflix’s record-breaking megahit: Stranger Things.
Yes, that’s what the intro music was all about – it wasn’t an excuse for me to dance along to Diana Ross!
It was the music from the opening episode of season 5 of Stranger Things.
If you haven’t seen it, the premise of the show is simple.
Normal, everyday life in the quiet backwater of Hawkins, Indiana…
is suddenly ripped open by a gate into another world – an alternative dimension.
And once that gate opens, Stranger Things start to happen in Hawkins, Indiana.
The genius of the show is the contrast.
The beige normality of 1980s American suburbia—bikes, school, arcades, family dinners— is suddenly invaded by the power and excitement of the Stranger Things.
And it’s an interesting theme for Christmas.
Because let’s be honest, Christmas can start to feel a bit… familiar, can’t it?
The John Lewis advert.
The Coca-Cola lorry.
The same arguments with the same relatives.
The same nativity scene with the same baby in the same manger.
It becomes cosy. Predictable. Safe.
But the first Christmas was none of those things.
What we’ve just heard read from Luke 1 is not a cosy Christmas.
It is a Stranger Christmas.
Shocking. Totally unexpected.
And it changed the world forever.
Three big ideas for us this evening:
- The Upside Down
- The Outside In
- The Right-Side Up
- The Upside Down
Firstly, the upside down.
If you’ve watched Stranger Things, you’ll know that the shadow world is called “The Upside Down.”
It looks like Hawkins…
same streets, same houses…
but everything is twisted.
Dark.
Decaying.
Thunder rolling.
Ash drifting through the air.
Vines creeping over everything like it’s being strangled.
It’s the same world—
but broken.
It’s upside down.
Now think about your favourite Christmas music for a moment.
Cliff Richard’s “Mistletoe and wine.”
Vaughn Moore’s “Let it snow.”
Bobby Helm’s “Jingle Bell Rock.”
In our Christmas songs, the world is wonderful.
Love is easy.
Peace is everywhere.
Problems melt away in candlelight.
But that’s not the world of the first Christmas.
Look at how the reading began: “In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee.”
Nazareth was a nobody place.
A backwater.
The Hawkins, Indiana of the ancient world.
And worse than that—it was under military occupation.
The boots of Roman soldiers on the streets.
Heavy taxes.
Violence always close at hand.
This was not “peace on earth” when the angel appeared to teenage Mary.
This was the Upside Down.
And honestly—it still is today.
All around the world today, there’s conflict and oppression.
Yes, Ukraine.
Yes, Gaza.
But also in bedrooms, kitchens, hospital wards, offices, training pitches, school playgrounds.
Christmas shines on the outside—
but many of us feel tension on the inside.
Family fractures.
Financial pressure.
Regret.
Anxiety at work.
That unsettling feeling “I’m just not what I wanted to be.”
There’s an inner conflict going on and we just – we just never feel at ease.
In Stranger Things – Hawkins, Indiana is the safe place – the place of order and goodness and flourishing.
And the stranger things – they all come from the upside-down into Hawkins, bringing chaos, devastation and death.
But here in Luke 1, the angel comes not from the upside-down but into the upside-down.
Because our world is the upside-down
You see, the Bible tells us why we feel the way we do. Why we experience all that sadness, emptiness and conflict.
It’s in those passages we had read at the start of our service. Genesis 1. God made the world and everything in it ; and it was good, it was good, it was very good.
The world as God created it was Christmas-card perfect.
But then Genesis 3 happened – our second reading – and the world got turned upside down.
We decided to run life our way. Running up the hill. Ignoring God. Living as if we are the centre of the universe.
And that turned the world upside down. It twisted it, distorted it, darkened it; made the world an unsafe place, both for us and for others.
We live in the upside-down.
- The Outside In
Which means, secondly, we need the outside to come in.
A few years back, the ultimate Christmas disaster happened in the Cunnington house.
It was Christmas Eve.
House full the next day.
The turkey had been delivered days earlier.
And there was this strange smell in the fridge…
We blamed the blue cheese.
We removed the blue cheese.
But the smell got worse.
Then at last I opened the turkey.
Let’s just say… the turkey had died a second death.
Bin. Outside. Gone.
And we were just eight hours before Christmas Day.
Twelve people coming round.
No turkey. No dinner.
What did I do?
I jumped in the car and drove to every supermarket in Greater Manchester like a man on a mission.
That’s instinct, isn’t it?
When disaster strikes—
we look inside for the solution.
We see that globally with the West acting like the world’s police force.
We see it personally with self-help books flying off the shelves and into Christmas stockings.
Our reflex action - when something goes wrong in our health, our finances, our relationships – is to think: “How can I fix this?”
Truth be told, it’s even the reason why some people go to church. They sense something’s wrong and reason: “Well I better go to church so that I can be a better version of myself.”
The hero is within. You just need to dig deep and unleash it.
Even Stranger Things says the same thing.
There’s this scene in the most recent episode. Have you seen it? Don’t worry, I won’t give any spoilers.
But there’s this scene where two of the main characters are in a tunnel together.
Will – he’s the secret hero. He’s a weak, shy, unassuming boy, but for the past few seasons, everyone’s suspected there’s something more to him.
Robin is the quirky girl. And she takes Will aside to try to boost his courage.
She tells him about how her first love – Tammy - fell for someone else, leaving Robin heartbroken. And then she says this:
“But then one day, I was cleaning bat poo out of my parents’ garage, and I found this 8-millimeter film reel. You know? And it was just from this silly movie that I made in fourth grade, but I got it up on the projector, and all of a sudden, I was looking at this little version of myself.
And that little me, I could hardly recognise her. You know, she was so carefree and, like, fearless.
She just loved every part of herself. And that’s when it hit me. It was never about Tone-deaf Tammy. It was always just about me. I was looking for answers in somebody else, but… I had all the answers.
I just needed to stop being so goddamn scared. Scared of… who I really was. Once I did that, oh, I felt so free. It’s like I could fly, you know? Like, I could finally be … Rockin’ Robin”
The hero is within. From the inside out.
That’s the message of Stranger Things. Of the books we read. It’s the message we tell ourselves again and again.
But Luke 1 says something very different.
We meet another teenage girl.
Mary this time, not Robin.
And the angel says to her:
“Do not be afraid, Mary… you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.”
Now “Jesus” is a Hebrew name which means: God saves.
Mary asks the obvious question:
“How can this be, I’m a virgin?”
And the angel replies:
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”
Friends, the first Christmas tells us something radically different from what our world keeps saying.
The hero is not buried inside us, waiting to be discovered. This broken, upside-down world cannot be fixed from the inside out.
It needs rescue from the outside in. And that is exactly what happened on that first Christmas: God stepped into our world.
The author CS Lewis, called it the Grand Miracle.
God didn’t send advice.
He didn’t send motivation.
He didn’t send a philosophy.
He sent Himself.
God stepped through the gate.
Into our dark, sin-distorted world.
Into fear.
Into flesh.
The baby in the manger was none other than God Most High.
The hero entered the Upside Down.
He came from the outside in.
God stepped through the gate into this upside-down world distorted by sin and death.
That’s what was going on in the crib scene. The baby in the manger was God most high.
He’s the hero – not just of this story but of every story. And He came from the outside in.
- The Right-side Up
And he did it so that he could turn the world right side up. That’s our final point today.
And it’s the title of the last ever episode of Stranger Things coming out on New Year’s Day.
…
Are you feeling Christmassy? We sometimes ask that don’t we?
Maybe it’s the reason you’re here today at the carol service – to get in the Christmas spirit.
But what does that actually mean?
I think it means something more than happy memories of Christmas past;
something more than gorging ourselves on Turkey, yule log and mince pies;
something more than having an excuse to buy yourself the latest gadget and sit in front of the TV for a week.
The Christmas spirit is knowing that, because Jesus came from the outside in, this upside-down world really can be put back the right side up.
And that means you and I can be put right too.
You see, the baby laid in a manger grew up to become the man nailed to a cross.
And the claim of this book – the Bible - is that in that very moment, Jesus did exactly what his name means – he saved.
He took the punishment we deserve for our sin and rebellion against God.
He experienced the upside-down world in our place – in all its brokenness, corruption, injustice and evil.
And he came out the other end. You see, on the third day he rose again – meaning that our sins can be forgiven; our distorted, dark, broken world can be made right.
Jesus came into the upside down so that the upside doesn’t have the last word.
So that through his resurrection it can be turned right-side up.
That is the stranger truth this Christmas.
As we close, would you just notice something we read at the start of our passage? The initial response of Mary to the angel.
Luke tells us that Mary was troubled.
She was confused.
Perplexed.
Unsure what to do with all of this.
Maybe that’s you this evening. You’re hearing all these things for the first time. And it sounds interesting, but you just don’t know what to do with it.
Well look at what Luke tells us Mary did next.
She wondered.
She reasoned.
She thought deeply.
She didn’t shrug it off.
So can I simply invite you to wonder this Christmas?
To think seriously about what it would mean if God truly did step through the gate into our upside-down world.
Would you take out these cards? We’d really like to help you as you wonder.
Perhaps you’ve already wondered and you’re ready to say “Yes” to Jesus for the first time, put your trust in Him – have him turn things right-side up in your life. If so, please tick the top box.
But maybe you want to wonder more. If so, we’d love to help, so tick box 2 or 3 or maybe both.
Maybe you’re not yet ready. Choose one of the other options.
All those are welcome responses; and the team will come and collect them once we’ve completed them.
But remember, Christmas is stranger than we ever imagined.
And far more wonderful than we ever hoped.
