Which Way Is Up--February 18, 2025"Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said:
'Blessed are you who are poor,
To listen to Jesus is a little bit like having vertigo. We might have thought we knew which way was up and how the world was ordered, until he comes along and reorients us until we discover that what we thought was upside-down was really right-side-up. And that will always make us a little bit uncomfortable--as well as making us look and sound odd to the rest of the world that hasn't been shaken up by Jesus yet.
But let's be clear here, as we take a look at these words from Luke's Gospel that many of us heard in worship on Sunday: Jesus has in mind nothing short of turning our old vision of the world on its head and then telling us that we had been pointed in the wrong direction all this time. He isn't offering helpful life-principles to "get ahead" and live "our best life now," at least not in the usual ways we describe those things. No, here, as he describes God's priorities, Jesus subverts all that "conventional wisdom" has been telling us about the good life and replaces it with his own vision. That's bound to cause a little motion sickness of the soul.
The real issue is that somehow we've gotten our bearings so convoluted and backward in the first place that what Jesus says will sound backward and wrong-headed to our ears. But from Jesus' perspective, he isn't saying anything new or outlandish--he is simply putting things right that we have had out of sorts all along.
And to be sure, there are lots of loud voices (many of them obnoxiously so) who would have us believe that the REAL "good life" is all about accumulating MORE--more wealth, more food, more stuff, more technology, and more experiences (or substances) that will stimulate more good feelings. There are plenty of folks whose whole sales-pitch is built around claims of making us ever wealthier, or more secure, or more successful, who never for a moment even question whether those goals align with the kind of life Jesus has in mind. They cannot fathom that anyone could possibly say--as Jesus does without blushing--that God's blessing is on the empty-handed and God's favor is for the broken-hearted.
This is what makes Jesus' so revolutionary. Honestly, there were plenty of would-be messiahs in the first-century who were promising wealth, power, and status to their followers--those were a dime a dozen. They promised their recruits greatness and the arrival of a golden age of prosperity, happiness, and excess, if they would just join their armed resistance again the Romans and help them replace the old empire with a new one. Jesus doesn't do any of that, because he knows better that the ache deep inside of us is not for more money, or more power, or even for more of the things that cause the momentary happiness of endorphins in our brains. Jesus instead points us toward a different set of values, where we care most about those who have been treated as least, where we lift up those who have been bowed down and stepped on, and where we make sure to feed those whose plates and pantries are empty. Jesus says that these are the priority for God, and that all of our chasing after the endless quest for "more" (even when we mislabel it as "the pursuit of happiness") is fundamentally upside-down. The things that make for the good life look a lot more like love, compassion, empathy, and a sharing of our good things with others, and a lot less like the opposite values of greed, avarice, and self-interest.
If it seems like we are being asked to choose between two different competing visions of reality, that's because we are. We cannot chase after the things the world's loudmouths tell us we are supposed to want (no matter how "great" they promise they will be, or how rich they swear they can make us) and also at the same time seek the things Jesus tells us are worth our effort. We cannot make enough profit in the stock market to buy the Kingdom of God, and we gain no advantage if we have food spoiling on our shelves while others starve to death. If we want the life that Jesus offers, it will mean learning to reorient our lives, our values, and our choices--away from what the world told us was worth having, and toward the well-being of the people God is particularly concerned about, namely, those who suffer. The ultimate question for us is whose reality we will accept as, well, real. Who gets to tell us which way is up--the conventional wisdom that says the real "winners" are the rich, the full bellies, and the blissfully ignorant; or Jesus, who announces God's blessing on the poor, the hungry, and the weeping?
Will we let Jesus turn us the 180 degrees it will take to see his vision and make it our own? Will we allow Jesus to briefly give us spiritual vertigo--and then cure us of the same as he puts us right side up at last? Will we allow Jesus to show us, no matter how accustomed we are to the old orientation, which way really is up?
Lord Jesus, turn us right side up to align these hearts with your compassion for those who weigh heavily on your own heart.
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