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In the very funny but irreverent film Life of Brian, Monty Python’s spoof about the life of Jesus, a group of people are standing on the very edge of a crowd listening to Jesus preach about the kingdom of God. Due to their distance, they struggle to hear all that he’s saying and out of boredom they begin to bicker with one another until one of them shushes the group and asks, “What did he say?”
I think it was “Blessed are the cheesemakers,” a shepherd replies.
“Ah, what's so special about the cheesemakers?” a woman asks.
Her husband, the wise interpreter, man-splains, “Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.”
Hmmmmm. It’s ridiculous but not altogether untrue. I mean Jesus says some pretty shocking stuff that upends our views on wealth, wrong-doing, violence, national identity, fairness, greatness, forgiveness, and even God. His message at times – if we’re paying attention – sounds like an overturning, an inverting, an upside-downing, of how the world actually works, who God really is, and what God is truly doing. And that’s what we’re exploring in our series Upside-Down Kingdom; not to man-splain Jesus but to listen to him well and live upside-down ourselves so that we can stand right-side-up. So the first thing you have to do is in order to hear Jesus’ kingdom message well is . . .
Upside-Down Your Repentance
We listen to Jesus begin his ministry but it’s so easy to mis-hear. When you’ve heard the word “repent” I imagine that you picture feeling terribly sorry about bad behavior – feeling guilty, if not ashamed, and imagining that all of that is somehow necessary in order to be forgiven or loved by God. And while there’s nothing wrong with feeling bad about doing wrong, it doesn’t seem to make sense of what Jesus meant as he announced his Upside-Down Kingdom. He doesn’t say, “Feel bad and believe the good news!” but “Repent and believe the good news!” So our first upside-down is that God’s kingdom is about joyful repentant goodness.
What does Jesus mean by “repentance”?
It means so much more than feeling regret for past wrongs. It signifies a fundamental reorientation of one's entire mindset and attitude toward the goodness and beauty of God, oneself, and the word. Repent was a world that literally meant, “go beyond the mind you have.” It involved “A new way of seeing”- and a new way of seeing. And what are we to see? “Good news,” Jesus shouts.
This upside-down thinking then leads to a change in behavior, a turning away from a previous way of living toward an upside-down one. But what is that upending transformation? It’s what life looks like when one realizes that God is more gracious, more forgiving, more inclusive than we ever thought and that God wants us to go beyond the mind we have and be like that.
This change of heart and mind is not so much achieved through human will but is a gracious gift offered by Jesus. So the Upside-Down Kingdom is the gift come down that God through Jesus offers us. He invites us to receive this gift, not pay for it.
So Jesus’ upside-downing is that repentance is less like a person in mourning and more like the Flammarion Engraving, a famous sixteenth-century woodcut of a pilgrim pushing his head through the firmament of heaven to discover a bigger and more wondrous world behind the world.
That’s what Jesus announces and invites us to. It’s a willingness to be curious, to listen carefully, to take risks, to accept gifts, of good news. It’s a willingness to look outside of ourselves for a gift that has come down and which aims to joyfully take over the world. Joyful thinking is our act of resistance. So upside-down your repentance! And . . .
Upside-Down Your Time and Place.
15 ”The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near.”
21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
It is interesting that in Luke’s Gospel the first word of Jesus’ public ministry, apart from reading Scripture, is the word “today,” a word that appears in Luke more than any other Gospel. The kingdom of God is here, right now, Jesus says. There is good news, freedom, and liberation, “this very day.”
Jesus will model a daily spirituality that points to good news for the present moment to be present on the earth. The famous Christian philosopher Dallas Willard will acknowledge this powerfully: “The gospel is less about how to get into the Kingdom of Heaven after you die, and more about how to live in the Kingdom of Heaven before you die.” The kingdom of God and salvation aren’t just about an afterlife, but about a daily, interactive relationship with God, where one lives out Jesus' teachings and participates in the kingdom of God on Earth.
The problem for us is that many of us have been told that salvation is a later thing, a far-off thing; that “heaven” is a beyond thing, an after-life place, a grand ole by-and-by event when you die. And yet that’s not what Jesus is primarily inviting us to. We know this because Jesus taught the us that we are to pray regularly – “on earth as it is in heaven.”
This is an inverted prayer for heaven present here. He taught that we should let go of worry about tomorrow and on many occasions will announce “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:9). But friends, I’ve been in the church long enough to know that Jesus says, “today” and we say, “tomorrow.” Jesus says, “Look! right now” and we long for the past. Jesus says, “This very day God is here, active, present, liberating people on the earth” and we say “trust Jesus so that you can go to heaven when you die.” Jesus’ kingdom invitation upends our timetable and territory. How should you think about your enemy? Now, like heaven come down. How should you think about the poor? Now, like heaven come down. How should treat the immigrant? Now, like heaven come down. And like any protest movement – which is a great description of Jesus followers – we are to chant, “What do we want? Heaven on earth! When do we want it? Now!” So upside-down your repentance and your time and place. But also . . .
Upside-Down Your Body and Soul
The mission of Jesus – the one he received from God and derived from Scripture is not to save souls out of the world, but to save the world and heal all of creation by drawing the human race back into its proper relationship with God and with each other – body and soul. It’s to liberate real social categories and solve earthly problems and not merely spiritual ones. That’s what we mean by the word “salvation.” But the passage from Isaiah, that Jesus quotes, also says that this work applies to us. For this anointed one, we are told will establish a people who are:
“oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. 4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.” (Is. 61:3-4).
When Marianne was going through her divorce she had a student who was helping watch the kids. One day, that student calls Marianne and tells her that she needs to come home right away – that the kids were okay but that there was something very important for her to see. When she arrived home, she discovered that one of the kids had gone through the house and had overturned and inverted everything that she could turn over or lift. She had upside-downed everything because that’s what her world felt like. While that’s a tragic example, it points us to our work. That we are to repentantly listen to Jesus’ way, Jesus’ time, Jesus’ mission, and invert everything that is not as Jesus intends it to be. Jesus’ kingdom message is always – always - a joining of two realities that we must never separate immaterial and material, salvation and justice, love of God and love of others, inner transformation and outward construction. For those of you who might only wish to ask, “Are you saved?” Jesus would add, “Do kids have enough to eat?” To those who might only worry about economic concerns, Jesus would add, “Do you need forgiveness?” For those who say, “Let’s pray.” Jesus will add: “and rebuild and restore.” And to those who are quick to slap on work gloves, Jesus asks, “Are you receiving this gift that comes down from heaven for you - a God who loves you before you do or say anything?” Salvation, friends, IS the upside-down, Jesus announcement of the mind-blowingly joyful, kingdom of God – now – “on earth as it in heaven” – body and soul. Amen.
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