Turned Upside Down: Homily for Thursday, December 4, 2025

This season of Advent, Isaiah gives us and paints for us a world where everything gets turned upside down. We hear it in very familiar verses like, “The lion and the lamb will lie down and the kid will play in the cobra’s den.” We hear it today, too, that in the strong city, in the nation of firm purpose, it is in fact the needy and the footsteps of the poor that are going to be the really strong ones. They’re going to trample in this city. Readings for Today.

Turned Upside Down

When I was teaching, I had a class where there were about a third of them were very bright students who were attentive, did what they were supposed to, completed their assignments. And the other two-thirds, they kind of wanted to ride on the work of the third that was really smart.

So when they were in group assignments, of course the smart kids concerned about their grades, unfortunately wound up doing most of the work. One of the many reasons why I’ve never really liked group work. But for this one assignment, we were doing something with the Acts of the Apostles where the Apostles were evaluating something.

And so I took the third and made them the Apostles, and they were to do the judging that the Apostles did based on the reading. And then the other two-thirds were all in a group together. At first it was kind of interesting, but eventually one kid kind of looked around and said, “Wait, you put all the smart kids together. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It was a world for them that had been turned upside down. I learned actually from that experience that I had to get very direct and forceful with students who leaned on others to do the work. I would say to them, “You’re the one that nobody wants in their group because you don’t do anything. So don’t let that happen.”

Because you could cajole, you could encourage, you could make subtle hints, but it didn’t work. Sometimes that direct approach did work. The world in that class had been turned upside down. It was something completely different for that class.

And this season of Advent, Isaiah gives us and paints for us a world where everything gets turned upside down. We hear it in very familiar verses like, “The lion and the lamb will lie down and the kid will play in the cobra’s den.” We hear it today, too, that in the strong city, in the nation of firm purpose, it is in fact the needy and the footsteps of the poor that are going to be the really strong ones. They’re going to trample in this city.

Things are going to be turned upside down. The powerless will have power, or maybe better yet, authority, because of their firm purpose. Dr. Viktor Frankl said that the very thing that drives human beings is not survival, as with Freud, not power, as with Adler, but meaning. That if we know what something means in our life, or if we can find meaning in an event, we’re better able to deal with it.

We are living in a time where when one looks around, it does not seem like this is going to be true someday. The poor certainly do not appear to be in a circumstance or a situation where they’re going to trample, or they’re going to have authority, or they’re going to be the ones who are in charge, so to speak.

We look around at our world and it’s hard to imagine that we are really following the Prince of Peace when there is so much violence. When we look around at our world, it’s hard to imagine that we value the dignity of every person when we see how people are being treated, especially in our own country. But just like those students had to recognize that in a way they were all invited to learn, they were all given the opportunity to accomplish the task at hand, so too must we understand and acknowledge that this upside-down world is precisely what Jesus is inviting us to.

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