How Fulfillment Only Comes When You Think in Upside Down Ways, When you Live the Opposite Life

I admit it.  I still get nostalgic.  I miss those days when Kramer crashed through the door.    

I miss Elaine shoving and saying Get out.  

I miss George and Vandelay Industries.   

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, 

then you didn’t watch as much Seinfeld as I did.  If you’re a fan, 

you likely have your favorite episodes.  

One of mine is this one. 

Now that makes for a funny moment, but what if it’s true?  What if you and I are living in a world like that.  What if almost all the messages the world gives you about life are wrong.  What if instead you need to be doing the opposite?   What if only doing the opposite will bring you the life God created you to have? 

In the words, you are about to hear, Jesus points the way.  Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say. 

Luke 6:17-26

Do you find the words we just read familiar?   Almost certainly they are.  Jesus’ words here and in Matthew have become some of the most famous words in history.  But what do they mean?   Basically, Jesus is telling you this.  Much of what the world tells you will bring you happiness won’t.  Instead, only the opposite of that will bring you the happiness you seek.

And Jesus intends these words to be as shocking as they sound.  Jesus has come to completely overturn conventional wisdom.   Jesus has come to generate a revolution, but not one that overturns some power figure.  Jesus has come to do something more significant than that.  Jesus has come to overturn the way you think.  

You can tell that Jesus brings a revolution by where he delivers these messages. In both versions, Jesus deliver this message around mountains.  In Matthew, he’s on one.  In Luke, he’s coming off one. The fact that Jesus chooses those settings tells you everything about how radical he intends his message to be.

After all, where do revolutions begin?   Years ago, I worked in El Salvador with some Christians, who had been veterans of the Civil War there.  They had fought with the revolutionaries.  But they became disillusioned with the violence and turned towards other ways to help the poor.   One day, I was talking with one of those Christians with whom we worked, Misael, about the war.  He pointed in the distance to the mountain, Guazapa.  He said.  That’s where I used to fight.  It made sense.  That’s where revolutions start, in the mountains.  Why?  Those places are harder for the powers to get to and easier for the rebels to defend.  And what was true in El Salvador, was equally true where Jesus lived too.  So, when Jesus gives this message in the mountains, he is announcing the beginning of his own revolution, a revolution in the way you think.    

And he begins that revolution by telling you what will actually bring you bliss.  That’s the best way to translate that word, blessed.   Jesus is saying how blissful are the poor for yours is the kingdom of God.  But how can that even be possible?   But think about it.  The United States has become the wealthiest nation in history.   But are Americans all that blissful?

But still how does poverty bring you bliss?   Well, when Jesus talks about poverty here, he’s going deeper than material poverty.   He is talking about a poverty everyone has, rich and poor.   Every human being has the same problem, Jesus is saying.  Deep within, they are poor.  They have an emptiness that nothing can fill.  

Now, wealth does a better job of covering that emptiness up.   It anesthetizes you with all sorts of distractions.  That’s what Jesus means when he says.  Alas you who are rich, for you have your comfort.  If you have the comfort of wealth, it can hide from you what you desperately need.    But when you are poor or hungry or grieving, that inner emptiness is easier to find.  You have less to distract you from it.

Still both rich or poor can miss the boat on what Jesus is saying.  The martyred Salvadoran bishop, Oscar Romero put it well.   The person who feels the emptiness of hunger for God is the opposite of the self-sufficient person.  In this sense, rich means the proud, rich means even the poor who have no property, but who think they need nothing, not even God.  This is the wealth, Romero, says, that is abominable in God’s eyes.

So, what is this empty self-sufficiency that Jesus is pointing to?   It’s a self-sufficiency that denies your lack, that denies how self-obsessed you are; how it captures you, fills you with insecurities and fear.    And if you don’t think you have that problem, let me ask you one question. 

When you find yourself in a group picture, where do you first look?   You look at yourself, right? And why do you do that?   You’re pondering questions like these.  How do I look?   Do I look better or worse than the other folks?  Do I have a goofy smile?   And behind all those questions, lies what? - anxiety about your acceptability, about your attractiveness, anxiety about you.  And we’re just talking a group picture.   Even that, points you to the problem. 

Jesus is saying until you acknowledge your need, your emptiness, your hunger for love and acceptance, you will never have the bliss God intended you to have.   But when you do, it opens to you the entire Kingdom of God.  It opens to you a bounty of abundance that goes beyond anything you could imagine. 

And as you begin to taste the abundance, you’ll want more.  You’ll hunger for it. And as you hunger, God will fill you up.   God will fill you up with a sense of security, with peace, with well-being that as it grows, nothing, not even death will be able to shake.

Now on the other hand, you can fill yourself up with all sorts of other junk, stuff that will distract you from your real need.   Yet, at some point, you’ll come to a painful realization.  All that stuff isn’t really filling you.   It’s only covering up the emptiness, the emptiness that has always been there, but that you have always denied.   That’s why Jesus says.  Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.  

    

Still when that bounty of God’s love and acceptance comes, grief comes along too.  What brings the grief?   It comes with facing up to that emptiness.  As God fills you, it becomes more and more clear, how far you still need to go, how often you still get caught up in anxiety or self-justification or self-righteousness.  It’s why saints never think they’re saints.  They know. The deeper they go with God, the more they see how much God still needs to change them.  And it does bring them grief.  Yet that very grief opens the way to joy.  That very grief opens the way to the very transformation you and I need.  Another word for this grief is the word repentance.  That is the sort of grieving Jesus is talking about.  And what does repentance mean?  It means a change of mind, in the way you think.   Your realization of your poverty leads you to a grief.  And this grief opens you to a transformation of your mind, of your very thinking, that brings you a joy that cannot be shaken by anything.

Now as this thinking revolutionizes your life, it will freak people out.   To quote the writer Flannery O’Connor.   She said. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.   After all, you’ll be running against the current of the times, even the current of how many religious people think.  Jesus got killed for preaching this revolution.  And the religious and the non-religious even teamed up to do the job.     

Now, in our culture, Christianity still has some cachet.  And our nation has enshrined religious freedom as no other.  So you won’t encounter the resistance that hits many Christians around the world.   But as you live more and more in this way, you will encounter people who will find it hard to get you, who won’t understand.   And if you’ve got this, really got this, then this resistance won’t freak you out nor will it make you feel superior.  After all, it’s not like you’re any better or worse than anyone else.   You’re simply a beggar that has found the bread.   And you have no need to feel superior to anyone anyway.  You already know other people’s opinions don’t determine your value.  God does that. 

But if you haven’t gotten that, then people’s opinions will matter.  They will lead you to even be false to yourself to win their approval, just as Jesus warns about those false prophets.   

Now how can you know that this upside-down way of Jesus works?   You can know because Jesus didn’t simply speak the words, he lived them.  He came as someone literally poor.  And as he died, he emptied himself even to death.   He cried out in hunger.  He experienced utter grief and abandonment even by his closest friends.   Even his own religious leaders, excluded, reviled and defamed him.   Yet, in that revolutionary act, Jesus overturned the old order forever.  And since his death, the world has never been the same.   In fact, his death, even overturned death.  That’s how powerful this way is.  It frees you from everything, even from death itself. 

And as you follow in his way, as you acknowledge your poverty and hunger, as you face up to your grief and regret, Jesus will open the way for you.   He will open the way to his kingdom, to his bliss.   Jesus will fill you.  He will fill you with laughter and with joy.   And as Jesus does, by his love, he will enable you to become everything God has created you to be, both now and forever.