Maybe It's Right-Side Up--September 14, 2020

 “Maybe It’s Right-Side Up”—September 14, 2020

[Jesus said:] “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” [Mark 10:31]

So Jesus is in the business of turning things upside-down, is he? Hmmm… the first shall be last, huh? The last shall be first? Whether that sounds like good or bad news to you depends on two things: (1) whether you see yourself as among “the first” or “the last,” and then (2) whether the last being first means that the last-who-are-now-first are going to be jerks who lord it over the new last place people, or whether the cycle is going to be broken once and for all. 

And that second question is what makes the Reign of God we learn from Jesus different from history’s long line of revolutionaries-turned-dictators and reform-movements-turned-stifling-institutions. Come on, let’s be honest here: a lot of human history, especially in the last hundred years, has shown us that the last can become first. And it usually starts out with good intentions: the cry for justice from an oppressed people, refusing to be stepped on anymore. It usually starts out with beautiful and noble visions of freedom, or the righteous anger of people who have been mistreated and wronged. This was the sales-pitch of Marxism and communism, after all: the poor and oppressed workers could overthrow the shackles put on them by their rich and decadent bosses and finally create a “just” society. And if you were one of the people who felt you were last in line, and you were wondering how you were going to feed your family tomorrow, the promise of no longer being at the end of the line sounded pretty good. All it would take was a little blood-letting in a revolution, and then things would finally be put right. You can at least understand why the sales-pitch was appealing to people who were working themselves to death but couldn’t put food on the table while other people seemed to sit in the lap of luxury. 

Problem was, of course, that even after the revolutions were done, the people who used to be the lowly oppressed people on the bottom decided that they liked power once they got a taste of it, and decided to use it to stomp on the new people on the bottom. The cycle just started all over again—the “old” last becoming the “new” first in a perpetual game of King of the Hill. The popular, charismatic folk-hero leaders of the movements became the power-hungry, oppressive tyrants and Supreme Leaders of the next generation, stomping on a new round of “bottom rung” people who are the new “last.” As George Orwell famously described the cycle in his allegory Animal Farm, it starts with the animals taking over their farm from their human owners with the cheer, “All animals are equal,” and then ends with the chant, “All animals are equal… but some are more equal than others!” As plenty of philosophers have noted, you have to be careful what you fight against, because you will become the very thing you hate. (Nietzsche said it hauntingly: “Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster—and if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”) 

So, not to get all ramblingly philosophical, but the question we have to ask when we hear Jesus say “the last will be first and the first will be last,” is, Is Jesus just setting us up for another round of King of the Hill? Because if that’s all the Kingdom is, we have seen the wreckage that kind of thinking leaves behind. We have heard the stories of the millions who were imprisoned, “disappeared,” or killed by the revolutions-turned-dictatorships of the 20th century, and the plight of those who still live under the thumbs of the “old last” who are now the power-hungry “new first.” And we are not interested, if that is all we are talking about here in Mark 10:31. 

But let’s give Jesus the benefit of the doubt. Does he sound like someone who hasn’t thought his teaching through? Does he sound like someone who will settle for just replacing one set of dictators who used to be “first” with another set of dictators who used to be “last”? No, not the Jesus we have met so far in the Gospel. What Jesus offers us in the Kingdom is a whole new order of things, where the lowly are raised up, but where no one steps on top of a new group of “lowly” people. The revolutions in the dustbin of history all put one new greedy human on the top of the heap to replace the old greedy human on top of the heap. But Jesus offers us the Reign of God, where the One who rules over all is also the One who washes the feet of his disciples and dies for their sins. The Kingdom Jesus offers us can turn the old order upside down and make the last first, and even let the puffed-up, proud, and powerful be taken down a few pegs, all without starting the old cycle of stepping on people all over again. That is because the God who reigns and does this re-ordering of things is also the God who loves selflessly and risks being “stepped on” at the cross. That makes all the difference. 

So, when angry, upset voices start talking about "Me and My Group First," it is probably bad news all around, because the new dictators turn out to be just as bad as the old ones. 

But when Jesus talks about the last being made first, it is, strangely enough, good news all around, because he is creating a new kind of community where all are lifted up and all become servants. And that is the kind of life that we Christians, we people of God, are invited into right now—that we would care for one another’s needs and let our needs be cared for in an ongoing circle where all put themselves second to the needs of others around them, and all find themselves put first by the other people in the circle. That kind of love—where we all let ourselves be last so that someone else can be first, and where other people put you first so that you can be lifted up, too—that is something we get to live in now, even if only in glimpses, in the Christian community. And that, even if practiced in little gestures and small moments between you and one other person, has the power to turn the world upside down… or maybe, from God’s perspective, to turn it right-side up. 

Lord God, your reign overturns all our old thinking and competing with each other, but still we strive and struggle to learn to see the world through your love. Give us the eyes to see the world right-side-up, even if it seems upside down at first.