“Upside Down World”

February 11, 2007

Scripture Reading: Luke 6:17-26

Rev. Dr. Carol  L. Kerr

 Blue Point Congregational Church

Have you ever wondered why the map of the world is always oriented with the North up, like this?  (Show world map.)  How come we never see the world map oriented like this?  Upside down?  (Show world map upside down.)  You probably are thinking right now, “No, frankly, I have never ever wondered that.”   Well, the reason why you never wondered that is because it is embedded in everything we see and listen to- in every school class room, in every history book, in every news broadcast.  We are so use to the map with north on top it is like wall paper.  After so long, we just don’t notice.

But, what if we did orient the map like this?  (Show the map upside down.)  Other than it being just plain weird looking there is really no reason why not to.  After all, the earth is really floating in space and there is no right side up or up side down in space.   The convention of putting north on top came a few centuries ago when the northern hemisphere explorers and European navigators started using the North star and magnetic compass.  Before that the top of the map was to the East or “orient” which is Latin for east (hold the map sideways).   That is where the word “orientation” comes from. 

Even though we in America never wonder why the map is shown this way with the north on top, people in Australia have.  In fact, the people in the southern hemispheres sniff out a bias against them in these chauvinistic Euro/American maps.  They have a point.  Our language always infers that the person on top is the better person.  There are tons of expression like “He is on top of the world.”  Or, “He is King of the mountain.”  Or, “You’re the top.”   When you draw little people on these maps, which they do for children to show them population statistics, the people in America and Europe end up stepping on the heads of the people in South America, Africa, and Australia.  Why not have South American people step on our heads?  So, people in the southern hemispheres have devised a new world map.  They have rotated maps where the top of the map is the south pole.  The one I am holding here is one of those maps.  Notice the printing is right side up when I put it “upside down.” 

Today the scripture lesson is the most famous sermon Jesus every gave.  He starts each line of the sermon with “Blessed are….”  Such as, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.  Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.  Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.  Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven…”  Church people call this sermon “The Beatitudes.”  There are two variations of this sermon.  One is found in the gospel of Matthew and other is the one we have for today’s lesson and is found in the gospel of Luke. 

Now the beatitudes can strike us as very sweet.  After all, what can go wrong with a sermon that starts out each sentence with a blessing?  In fact, some modern translations of the Bible instead of “blessed are you…” say “happy are you…”  The minister, Robert Schuler at his Crystal Cathedral, wrote a book making a pun on these words and entitled the book The Be-happy-attitudes.  So it would be easy to think Jesus was a kind of happy guy preaching and whistling the gospel of Bobby McFerrin “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

It is this kind of misunderstanding of the Beatitudes that makes people think Jesus was just trying to pacify the poor, hungry, persecuted….  For instance, Ted Turner called Christianity a “religion for losers…”  (Reader’s Digest, September 1998)  His reasons were based on the beatitudes.  His thinking is that any religion which asks its followers to be meek and merciful even in the face of oppression can only be a religion for losers.  Sure, Jesus said, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.”  But, this reward in heaven business is “pie in the sky by and by.”  Carl Marx said it was like giving people drugs in the name of God, or his famous phrase - “Religion is the opiate of the masses.”   

Ted Turner, Carl Marx, and a lot of other people think that Jesus was trying to lull people into accepting the status quo.  “Don’t worry, be happy if you are poor.  Don’t worry be happy if you are hungry.  Don’t worry, be happy if you are sad….”  In other words, Jesus was trying to convince people that the map of the world can only be hung one way – with the north on top.  They think Jesus was trying to say, “Don’t even think of turning this map of the world upside down.”  Only, it wasn’t a map that had not continents, rivers, and mountains on it, but a map with  the rich, laughing, reputable, successful, healthy are on top and  the poor, hungry, sad, persecuted, etc. are on the bottom.  (Put these labels on the map one by one.)    Ted Turner and Carl Marx think that Jesus is saying, “See, these guys are on top and you are on the bottom.  Don’t ever think of holding this map any other way.”

However,  this is not what Jesus is saying in the Beatitudes.  He is not lulling people into accepting the status quo.  He is not saying to the poor, “Don’t worry, be happy, and forget about the fact that you don’t have any money.”  He is not saying, the world looks like this, and just accept the fact that you are on the bottom.  He is not pacifying people with a pie in the sky by and by, wait until heaven thing.  It is just the opposite.  Jesus is turning the map of the world that we are so use to seeing upside down.  This is evident especially in Luke’s version.  Because after Jesus finishes with his blessings, he starts in on his woes.  “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.  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.  Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”   If Ted Turner had read Luke’s version of Jesus’ sermon he would start getting pretty nervous, after all Ted Turner is one of the riches men in the United States. 

The Beatitudes are revolutionary.   They reverse conventional values by calling people to a radical change.  The blessed person is not who you think it is.  The blessed person is not the person living the status quo and prospering because of it.  Rather, the blessed person is the person whom Christ will find awake to God.  God will bless those who choose the ethics of God’s Kingdom and put him first over all things of the world. 

We are so use to looking at the map with the rich on top and the poor on the bottom.  We are as use to that as we are the north pole on the top and the south pole on the bottom.  We are so use to assuming the rich are the happy ones that we cannot envision it any other way.  Of course the rich are happy.  Of course those who have enough to eat are happy.  Of course those who have no troubles and are not upset are happy.  Of course, those who are successful in the world are happy.  What is Jesus talking about?  What is wrong with Jesus? 

Nothing is wrong with Jesus.  The difference between Jesus and Ted Turner is that Jesus bothered to flip over a few stones and saw what is going on the behind the scenes.  When you do that, it quickly becomes apparent that the rich are not necessarily happy, the full are not necessarily happy, those who are not mourning are not necessarily happy, and those who are successful are not necessarily happy.  In fact, if you look at what is really going on around you, it becomes apparent that happiness or blessedness has nothing to do with being on top.  These things do not necessarily make a person happy.

Let me give you a few examples:  Jesus say, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.”  We all watched the Super Bowl last Sunday.  It is fun watching it.  Although, not as fun as if the Patriots were playing.  I think winning the Super Bowl is cool.  It is an accomplishment.  In fact, many of us sitting on our couches, eating Doritos and dip, might think those NFL players are much happier that we are.  We might look at our stained carpet and think, those NFL players would be rich enough to buy a new one, indeed a new mansion.  But, as it turns out being an NFL player, even winning the Super Bowl, it is not the answer to happiness.  Richard Justice writing in the Houston Chronicle “Life after Football:  Hello Real World,”  (Jan 31, 2004) – explored the statistics regarding the transition many football players undergo after they retire from the game. 

            -Sixty five percent of NFL players leave the game with permanent injuries.

-one in four players report financial difficulties in the first year after he retire (and the average NFL income is $250,000 to $9,000,000)

-Of the NFL marriages that fail, 50% fail in the first year after the player leaves the game.

-The suicide rate for active and retired football players is 6 times greater than the national average.

-78% of NFL players are unemployed, bankrupt or divorced within two years after their last game.  Life is clearly not about the money the NFL players get, it isn’t about fame, either.  Perhaps Jesus looked at the poor and saw a lot of them a lot more happy than he saw the rich.  Or at least concluded that being rich does not make you happy.  Trust in God does.

Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.”  According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) the world produced enough food in 2001 to provide every person in the world with 2,807 calories of nutrition per day.  That is more than 40% more available food per person than the FAO’s recommended minimum intake of 2,000 calories per day.  There is enough food in the world to feed the 852 million undernourished people in the world.    That there is this much food and this many people still starving means there is something wrong here.  Something is upside down, and inside out.  “It’s distribution and logistics problem,” explains Ron Denham, general coordinator of Rotary International’s water, Health and Hunger Concerns Resource Group.  “The food is not where it’s needed.”    Being well fed does not make you smarter.  It makes you lucky.  The solution to the overwhelming complex problem might be to think globally but to act locally.    “Small groups of people connecting across the globe on local hunger projects “can harness large-scale ambitions and create small-scale solutions,” Denham says.  (The Rotarian, Jan 2006)  Those who are full are not necessarily blessed.  It is those people who are working locally and thinking globally.  The hungry fed by this kind of network on the blessed. 

Jesus says, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”  Even though no one wants to get divorced.  I have been told by many divorced people that having gone what they went through made the grow.  It made them find strength and resources inside themselves that they would never have known were there.  One woman mentioned how she had to make her own living, learn how to buy her own house among other things.  They have had to make tough decisions and overcome great anguish.  More over, the ones that really seem able to not be stuck in a perpetual tread mill of anger at their ex spouses are the ones who are able to rely on God and give their pain over to God’s peace.  On the other hand, I have seen people who remain stuck in their lives, and although they remain married, they are never ever get to this degree of intimacy with God.    This is just one example of how it seems that people who mourn might actually be the more blessed.  Jesus probably saw similar examples around him every day. 

Jesus says, “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.”  :  A chaplain in a state prison received a request from a father of a young man who was interned in the prison.  The young man had committed a robbery in a little town and had been sentenced to many years in jail.  He was angry and embittered. 

The boys father came each week to visit him, but the lad steadfastly refused to see him.  The chaplain was asked to intervene, to plead with the boy to see his father.  But the young prisoner refused to reconsider.  Despite his refusal, the boy’s father took off work every week, boarded a bus, and traveled across the state in the hope of seeing his son.  Every week.  And every week it became the chaplain’s difficult task to ask the son, “Do you want to see your dad?” He than had to bear word of the refusal to the waiting father.  The father would thanks the chaplain, gather his belongings and head toward the door for the bus trip back home.  One day, after telling the father the same thing, that his son would not meet with him, the chaplain said, “No one would do what you are doing.  Your son is an embittered, defiant young man.  Go back home and get on with your life.  No one would put up with this kind of rejection, week after week.  Nobody would do this.”  The man answered,  “He has put up with it for centuries.”  As he picked up his meager belongings and headed out.  The chaplain fell on his knees realizing that this old rejected father had more insight into God that he had through all his years at seminary.  Jesus must have seen this kind of faith in people around him who were persecuted and laughed at.  Success is not what makes a person happy, the status quo is not what makes a person happy -  It was this man’s deep faith in God, connection with a God that never gives up on us, so he never gave up on his son, that made him one of the most blessed people the chaplain had ever met. 

Jesus looked around at the world, he flipped over the stones of the rich and the well fed and the successful, and saw quickly that things were not as they appeared to be on the surface.  Jesus saw that these things do not necessarily bring blessing and happiness.  What the world thinks is great, money, fame, even health and food, are not so great.  In fact, looking around, it is clear that some people who would be considered living on the bottom are happier than those living on the top.  Jesus had the spiritual creativity and insight to realize that we are looking at the world all wrong.  In fact, we have it upside down.   Those that are on top are the ones and only the ones that choose the ethics of God’s kingdom and put him first over the things of the world.