Living Right-Side Up
February 2025 - Bruce Fairbairn, Elder
In her inspiring and insightful sermons on the Gospel of Mark, Pastor Sara Jane talks about the Bible as telling the story of a world that is upside-down, that people are thinking and living according to worldly ways and values, rather than God’s. In this regard, Jesus came to help people recognize the reality of this world and to teach us how to live right-side up.
Throughout the New Testament, by word and example, Jesus, the Apostles, and the early church teach and model the true kingdom of God and its changed way of living and relating to others. In Mark, we have seen Jesus reaching out and affirming the value of people marginalized and deemed inferior in the eyes of the prevailing culture, including women, children, the poor, the dispossessed, and non-Jews. In last week’s sermon, we met the rich young man who seemed to have it all together according to society and the religious laws, but who was unwilling to give up what he thought really defined him and gave him worth–his wealth, prestige, and self-centered pride of accomplishment.
In the Beatitudes, the prelude to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus really turns the conventional world’s way of thinking on its head. He preached that the humble, the hurting, the poor in spirit, and those thirsty and hungry for righteousness are blessed by God, completely reversing the world’s view, which, then and now, values instead power, money, fame, and complete reliance on self-effort. After Christ’s resurrection, the Apostles and early church spread the Good News and a new right-side-up way of living and thinking. Because they were viewed as different and unconforming, they faced death and persecution by the powers that be. Some other people, however, were attracted by how these Christians loved and cared for one another and their neighbors. And so it continues to today.
The Chosen series visually depicts this reversal, this Christian shift in perspective and action. In the opening credits, a large number of fish are all slowly swimming in the same direction. Suddenly and little by little, some fish reverse course and start moving in the opposite direction, swimming against the tide if you will. Two of the Chosen’s catch phrases also amplify this seismic shift from worldly to God-centered thinking: “Come and See” and “Get Used to Different.”
I can’t resist adding a historical illustration that makes a similar (but not the same) point about inverting the status quo. When the American army won at Yorktown, effectively ending the Revolutionary War, the British band played a popular bar song entitled “The World Turned Upside Down”. When news of the defeat reached England, Prime Minister Lord North moaned “Oh God, it is all over.” The upstart Americans had overturned the Royalist order and the controlling aristocratic powers, instituting a radical new form of government and proclaiming that all people are created equal and endowed by God with certain rights and liberties.
When we celebrate communion, we remember Christ’s new covenant offered to the Disciples in the upper room. We also know that the Cross loomed just ahead. The world at that time saw the Cross as an instrument of torture, shame ,and death, but Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection transformed the Cross into a symbol of salvation and love—upside-down lives turned right-side up!
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