21.08 | Upside Down

Acts 17:1-15

‘And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” ‘

Acts 17:6-7

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There’s a story about Mohandas Karamchand (honorifically known as ‘Mahatma’) Gandhi, whose nonviolent protests led India to independence from British colonial rule. Raised a Hindu, Ghandi had a sincere interest in Christianity and was deeply inspired by Jesus’ teaching and life. One Sunday morning, he decided to visit a Christian church in Calcutta. The ushers at the door, however, stopped him, telling him that only upper caste Indians or whites were welcome. Ghandi, being neither, turned his back on the church, and maintained a complex relationship with Christianity for the rest of his life. “I like your Christ,” he later said, “but not your Christianity.” For Ghandi, he experienced in Jesus something radical, revolutionary, carrying a beauty greatly beyond the brokenness of the world. In the institutions of church, however, he saw a religious mirror to broken cultural norms—those same hierarchies, divisions, and power games made manifest in the buildings and communities that bore Jesus’ name.

As Paul and Silas move to Thessalonica today, they begin, as they always do, in the synagogue. They begin in the place that has incubated the Scriptures and Laws and promises of God, expounding and explaining how Jesus came as the suffering Messiah in fulfilment of everything that they have been reading and praying and singing. And, as is often the way, some believe, whereas some are jealous, and offended. They drag Jason—Paul and Silas’ host—before the civic authorities, with one lead accusation against them:

These men … have turned the world upside down.

They mean it as an insult. And yet it is a stunning description of how the Kingdom of God breaks it. It turns the world upside down.¹

Which gives a stunning vision for the Church.

It calls us, in a world of division and tribalism, to be communities of diversity, trust, and interdependence.

It calls us, in a world of power-mongering and ego-management, to be a community of mutual surrender, service, and the promotion of the powerless.

It calls us, in a world of anger and vengeance, to be a community of forgiveness and reconciliation.

It calls us, in a world where identity is built on desire and consumption and entitlement, to be a community restored into the truth worth of the children of the King.

It calls us, in a world of cancelling and shame, to be a community of grace and the restoration of dignity.

It calls us, in a world that wounds and bites and harms, to be a community where wounds are healed.

It calls us, in a world of slavery and addiction, to be a community where people move into freedom.

It calls us, in a world of brokenness and hatred, of despair and pain, of corruption and hypocrisy and of darkness and dirt, to be a people who live in the Way of light, hope, peace, truth and beauty.

That our cities may look at us and wonder how it is that we live with such radical departure from the secular norms, that they wonder how it is that we are living upside down.

Ghandi put it this way:

“You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilisation to pieces, turn the world upside down and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature.”

Turn the world upside down. Thus is the call of the Scriptures. And, for the sake of the Kingdom and of our cities, may it be so.

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Reflect:

Asking the Spirit to help you, consider what issues you are coming up against in the world right now.

How might the Kingdom of Jesus turn this upside down?

Turn this to prayer. Turn this to action.

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Pray:

Heavenly Father,

In this world,

Help me to live

Upside down.

Invert in me,

Anger to kindness,

Fear to faith,

Bitterness to compassion,

Blindness to sight,

Broken ideology to wisdom,

Tribalism to trust,

Corruption to integrity

Silence to song,

Turn heavy religiosity to the buoyancy of the free.

Heavenly Father,

Invert your Church,

That in this world,

We might smell like heaven

And taste like grace

And feel like freedom

As modellers of the more beautiful way.

And heavenly Father,

May it be said of me, 

And of this your Church,

That we turned the world upside down,

In the power, in the Way,

And in the Name of Jesus,

Our only King,

Amen

Old Testament: 

For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:

Job 1-3 | Psalm Psalm 102:18-28

1. More accurately, we should argue, it turns it again the right way up.