"Upside Down": My Childhood Dream

Matthew 5:3-9

"‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."

Aah…The immortal birthday wish. Who doesn’t love this time-honored tradition? I’m 32 and I still get totally geeked for it. There’s something so empowering about being able to close your eyes, make a wish and then blow all of your germ-infested breath onto a delicious cake that a roomful of unsuspecting people will soon be eating. Is there anything better?

Back in the day at our parties, some people’s wishes would be for crazy, improbable things like Lamborghinis, trips to Mars, the Cubs winning the World Series, etc. Mine was always more improbable than all of theirs (except for the Cubs one). By the time I was four, my birthday wish every year was that gravity would take a hiatus for a day and that the world would be “upside down”. I thought about how cool it would be to finally touch that rusty lamp on our vaulted ceiling and clean the cobwebs from the corner of our dry wall (I know, thrilling, isn’t it?) When this magical “switcheroo moment” came to fruition, I would be to be able to, in the immortal words of one of our great 80’s jerry-curled pop stars, “Dance on the ceiling”. At age 8, I was convinced that if I got this wish, it might eradicate, if only for a few brief moments, feelings of adolescent awkwardness and arm bruises from being punched on the bus by Ben Porter.

By the time I got to high school, I was much more mature and was a little bit ashamed of my secret wish. In fact, I had actually determined that this would have been a horrible abuse of “the wish god’s” supernatural powers. It would have been like Jesus throwing himself down from the pinnacle of the temple. Only in my case it would have been throwing me up and the temple would have been cob webs, but you get the point.

Anyway, It’s easy to beat myself up a bit for this silly wish, seeing as how I could have used this wish for a cause far nobler (like marrying Cindy Crawford or being Michael Jackson’s backup dancer for example!). But, you know, as I look back on it, I begin to wonder…maybe I was onto something….

I am realizing now that not much has changed (well, except for my voice is two octives lower, I have less acne, and I don’t consider nausea-inducing amusement park rides a gift from God anymore!) But really, my desire to see the world turn “upside down” has never really gone away…..

A few years ago I visited Bosnia and met women whose husbands were cut up into small pieces because their last name happened to be from the wrong tribe. I sat there listening to their stories and found myself praying for “upside-down-ness” for the world. When I visited Mexico in college, I saw little children scavenging through a dump to find food scraps. This horrifying sight caused me to close my eyes, bow my head, and pray that God’s spirit would blow out these candles of injustice that I had witnessed. And so, decades later, the “upside-down wish” from my childhood lives on:

“Lord, let those kids in Mexico have their food fortunes turned “upside down”

and:

“Lord, may those frowns of mourning widows in Bosnia be turned “upside down” into smiles of joy, etc.”

and:

“God of opportunity, may the rising numbers of those around the world living in extreme poverty be turned upside down."

When I read the scriptures, especially the Beatitudes (Matthew 5), I see God’s vision for the world being similar to my birthday wish. God’s longing for radical “upside-downness” often gets lost because of our cultural blinders, but this is some revolutionary stuff. If the Beatitudes don’t make you soil your trousers in excitement and terror, you probably don’t understand it fully. To truly understand it is to understand the culture that it came out of. Now, I try to be careful not to caricaturize ancient Judaism because it was diverse like any culture. However, there was a movement within this culture (I call it the “Cosmic Pez Dispenser” movement) that believed that if God found you worthy enough, God would bless you with everything you wanted, and then some. (i.e. “Dear God, because I’m such a sweet dude, could you hook me up with a hummer. Thanks!”) It propagated the polarized (“In” and “out”) thinking about God’s kingdom. This movement is still alive and well within Christianity today. This line of thinking, which was even stronger back in the day, believed that your place on the socio-economic ladder was directly proportionate to how “loved by God” you were. For example: Three hummers means you must have sacrificed large animals to God, a chevy Aveo means you clearly ticked God off, etc. It wasn’t just wealth that was the barometer for your worthiness. There were all kinds of other “in and out” distinctions made. There was healthy/sick, strong/weak, slave/free, male/female, etc. Well, hopefully many of us now know enough buff jerks and enough faithful peasants to know this is a bunch of bull. But at the time this was big news to people. To say “blessed are the poor in spirit” and “the meek” is to say, “those people that you thought were ‘out’, they are really ‘in’. And the people who are punching their ticket as ‘first’ in the kingdom better slow their role.” People in power would have surely had issues with this revolutionary manifesto. And those at the bottom would be comforted and reminded of God’s vision that they be at the top (“Many who are first will be last and the last first” (Mark 10:31)

This “upside down kingdom” as Donald Kraybill calls it, is still needed today, don’t you think? In a world where over a billion of its inhabitants are hungry, isn’t it kind of messed up that I couldn’t finish my cheesecake factory dinner even if I had Shaq there to help me? Isn’t it a little strange that genocide in Darfur claims the lives of thousands of children while kids that I babysit cry because I turn off their wii? That’s really jacked, right? There is “upside-downing” that needs to take place, right? That’s where we come in. God is inviting us, ALL OF US, to be a part of this "Beatitude Flip Flop” by bringing restorative justice to the world. God is inviting all of us to sit at the table in front of our proverbial birthday cake and let the spirit blow through each of us to put out candles of hatred, oppression, and injustice. God is calling us to pray the prayer of upside-down-ness and act as one who has been turned upside down by God’s abundant love. And may the whole world be turned upside down one day into a place of Shalom! Amen.