02/11/01 - BYOB: Upside Down Kingdom of God

BYOB: The Upside Down Kingdom of God
Luke 6:17-26
February 11, 2001
St. John United Methodist Church
David Beckett, D.Min.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

{17} He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. {18} They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. {19} And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

Jesus had spent the night in prayer with his 12 disciples on a mountain. They had descended the mountain the next day to greet a huge crowd of other disciples and followers of Jesus. Can you imagine what this scene must have been like…miraculous healings, exorcisms? Can you picture the sights, the sounds, the smells? Tyre and Sidon were cities on the Mediterranean coast, over 100 miles from Jerusalem. If people had traveled from all these areas Jesus was an extremely popular person.
Notice that Luke emphasizes the universal scope of Jesus’ power; the people came from ALL Judea and Jerusalem, ALL the crowd sought to touch him, and Jesus healed ALL of them. This is characteristic of Luke who believed that Jesus came not only for the Jews, but for all humanity.
Notice also that Jesus now speaks to his disciples. There were times he spoke to the masses. When he spoke to his disciples the message was different. There are some things only dedicated followers of Jesus can understand.

{20} Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

These beatitudes are similar to Matthew’s version but different in this sense. Matthew has Jesus saying, "Blessed are the poor." Luke’s are in the second person, "Blessed are you who are poor." They speak directly to the people and their present condition. Jesus strongly affirms the poor, the hungry, the oppressed.
This blessing of the poor does not glorify poverty. Rather, it announces God’s commitment to the poor. At that time it was common belief that the rich were rich because God had blessed them. Not only were the poor lacking basic necessities but they had to deal with the cultural attitude towards them that they were poor because God had NOT blessed them.

{21} "Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. {22} "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. {23} Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

The word "blessed" means "How fortunate" or "Happy are those". Blessings can be found in hunger, in weeping. Blessings can be known when others hate and exclude you. Jesus’ teaching here is scandalous because they overturn every conventional expectation. So scandalous were these words that Matthew changed them in his gospel. "Poor" became "poor in spirit." "Hunger" became those who "hunger and thirst for righteousness."
In keeping with Luke’s commitment to the poor there are four woes. Woe is a word that denotes pain or displeasure.

{24} "But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. {25} "Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. "Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. {26} "Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

More than any other gospel, Luke describes the dangers of wealth. In those days of extreme "haves" and "have nots" this was a much needed message. The message of God needed to address the present cultural situation as it existed. If people are upset, so be it.

WHAT GOD MIGHT BE SAYING TO US TODAY

Are you happy? How do you know if you are happy or not? What measuring stick do you use to determine your happiness factor? Happy is a strange word. Just say it over and over. Happy…happy…happy. It even sounds weird. I must confess that I don’t care much for the word. I think it has something to do with our culture’s obsession with happiness. It is easy to grow up in America thinking that the main goal in life is happiness. It’s even in the Declaration of Independence…we all have the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. There was even a song about the importance of being happy a few years ago. "Here’s a little song I wrote, you might want to sing it note for note: Don’t worry. Be happy!"

Advertising sells products based on how much happier or more satisfied we will be if we purchase a particular brand of shampoo or toothpaste or deodorant (although that probably affects the happiness of the people around us more than it affects us!). In some companies part of the annual performance review is a question that asks, "How would you evaluate your level of personal happiness in working for this company?"

When a couple ends a relationship it’s often because one or both of them are no longer happy. Many of us have bought into the idea that our major purpose in life is to be happy. And we believe we have an inherent right to complain when we’re not happy. How else would you explain the popularity of the Jerry Springer show and others of similar format? Apparently lots of Americans enjoy watching other people express their unhappiness.

Somewhere along the road we’ve become convinced that the appropriate goal for our lives is to be comfortable, secure, proud, and above all happy. If this is true why in the world would we look to Jesus to confirm this notion? In particular, why would we look at the Beatitudes for confirmation of the "Don’t Worry, Be Happy" lifestyle? Even a quick reading of this passage tells us that if we’re going to take Jesus seriously, we’re going to have to give up trusting what society tells us to value.

Jesus says, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." The world says, "Happy is the one who wins the lottery or makes a killing in the stock market." Jesus says, "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh." The world would have us laugh but in a way that denies our tears. Jesus says, "Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled." The world tells us to act on that hunger in our belly. Don’t wait. Fill it now with all kinds of good tasting junk food. I often hear my children say, "I’m hungry." What they really mean is, "Feed me now!" I say to them, "Okay, you’re hungry. It’s okay to be hungry."

Dr. Viktor Frankl, author of the book "Man's Search for Meaning," was imprisoned by the Nazis in WW II because he was a Jew. His wife, his children, and his parents were all killed in the holocaust. The Gestapo made him strip. He stood there totally naked. As they cut away his wedding band, Viktor said to himself, "You can take my wife, you can take away my children, you can strip me of my clothes and my freedom, but there is one thing no person can ever take away from me--and that is my freedom to choose how I will react to what happens to me!" Even under the most difficult of circumstances, happiness is a choice which transforms our tragedies into triumph.

This is the kind of happiness Jesus is trying to get across to us. Happiness is not to be found in wealth or a full stomach. It does not depend upon external circumstances or bodily pleasures. It does depend on the internal attitude of our hearts.

This is where Jesus is turning everything upside down. Everything is the opposite from what we expect. If the way of the cross were the same as the way of secular society, Jesus would have said, "Blessed are the rich… Blessed are those with full stomachs." But Jesus says the opposite. How can this be? The reasoning and logic of this world can no more answer our question than it can explain the foolishness of God dying on a cross to save us from ourselves. Perhaps a life of faith is the only way to explain it. We can LIVE the meaning of the cross even if we can’t explain it. We can LIVE the beatitudes even if we can’t explain them.

A holy man was engaged in his morning meditation under a tree whose roots stretched out over the riverbank. During his meditation he noticed that the river was rising, and a scorpion caught in the roots was about to drown. He crawled out on the roots and reached down to free the scorpion, but every time he did so, the scorpion struck back at him. An observer came along and said to the holy man, 'Don't you know that's a scorpion, and it is the nature of a scorpion to sting?' The holy man replied, 'That may well be, but it is my nature to save, and why should I change my nature because the scorpion does not change its nature?'

I wish I knew how easy or difficult it was for the first followers of Jesus to accept the Beatitudes and other teachings. I know it’s awfully hard for us in our world. One of our main tasks as a church is to give our children an alternative way of looking at life, a view they won’t get from society, where their values will be the values of Jesus and their vision of life, his vision. We need to help our children grow up to be uncomfortable when society tells them that the best blessings are money, good looks, possessions (name brand, of course), and power.

As they deal with the need to be popular, we need to show our children how to take stands for the right thing, even when they know that they will catch some grief from their peers about it. They, too, must understand that life in the upside-down kingdom of God is not easy, but it IS worth everything that has to be endured.

Frederick Buechner wrote, "Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it’s like to live inside someone else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too."

Here’s an example of what it means to live out an upside down kingdom of God in this world. A small boy at a summer camp received a large package of cookies in the mail from his mother. He ate a few then placed the remainder under his bed. The next day after lunch he went to his tent to get a cookie. The box was gone. That afternoon a camp counselor who had been told of the theft saw another boy sitting behind a tree eating the stolen cookies. He said to himself, "That young man must be taught not to steal."

He returned to the group and sought out the boy whose cookies had been stolen. He said, "Billy, I know who stole your cookies. Will you help me teach him a lesson?" The puzzled boy replied, "Well, yes—but aren’t you going to punish him?"

The counselor explained, "No, that would only make him resent and hate you. No, I want you to call your mother and ask her to send you another box of cookies. The boy did as the counselor asked and a few days later received another box of cookies in the mail. The counselor said, "Now, the boy who stole your cookies is down by the lake. Go down there and share your cookies with him."
The boy protested, "But he’s the thief."
"I know. But try it—see what happens."
Half an hour later the camp counselor saw the two come up the hill with their arms around each other’s shoulders. The boy who had stolen the cookies was earnestly trying to get the other to accept his jackknife as payment for the stolen cookies, and the victim was just as earnestly refusing the gift from his new friend, saying that a few old cookies weren’t that important anyway.
So it is our joyous but risky task as a congregation of disciples of Christ to create a community where forgiveness is real, where peace is genuine, where dependence upon God and one another is seen as a good thing, and where people are not afraid to be who they are because they know that the arms of the people of God will embrace and accept them.

Can you imagine what would happen if the church really believed it was called to be a kingdom community, a place where people truly loved one another, warts and all? A place where the first shall be last and the last shall be first but nobody really minds who goes first and who goes last because they know there is more than enough of everything to go around? A place where the mourners are comforted and the losers win? A place where our wealth is shared with the poor? What would it be like to live in a community like that? Know what I think? I think it just might feel like the kingdom of God. AMEN.

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