Living in the Upside Down
Jesus Invites us to the Rightside Up
On Sunday February 16. 2025 I preached a sermon on the Gospel lectionary passage Luke 6:17–26. This essay is an essay form of the ideas within that sermon. A little behind the curtain thing is that I preach from what could be considered minimal notes and have never written a manuscript sermon. So, this is not a sermon transcript or manuscript. I’ll leave the link to the service of that date, but this essay will contain the “big ideas” of that sermon.
The Netflix series Stranger Things introduces the idea of a place called “The Upside Down.” This is a mirror universe of a sort in which the things of the “normal” world are rotting, empty, dangerous, and dark. The Upside Down is not a place where we would want to live. As I approach the Gospel of Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain,” I have the picture of Jesus inviting us out of the Upside Down. But that’s kind of a spoiler. Let me start at the text of scripture.
He came down with them and stood on a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases, and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
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 on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. But 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 how their ancestors treated the false prophets. (Luke 6:17–26 NRSVue)
Let’s look at the scene first. The text describes a level plain. My instinct is to assume this means a place that is made level through an equilibrium. But my friend Steve, who pastors with his wife Tasha in Scotland, preached on this passage a few years ago and talked about the level plain being a picture of a wiped out place. Picture the devastation of a tornado, hurricane, flood, or fire. This is a picture of a place razed and ready for a new birth. Being the geek I am, my first thoughts went to the “Scouring of the Shire” which is the eighth chapter of the sixth book of The Lord of the Rings. If you are not familiar with the book(s) then you may not know about the scouring of the Shire. I’ll give you the quick notes to get up to speed.
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After Sam and Frodo have saved the wider world, they finally return to their own corner of that world and find it twisted and realize the horror of the darkness of Sauron extended throughout the world. The chapter opens with this passage:
It was after nightfall when, wet and tired, the travellers came at last to the Brandywine, and they found the way barred. At either end of the Bridge there was a great spiked gate; and on the further side of the river they could see that some new houses had been built: two-storeyed with narrow straight-sided windows, bare and dimly lit, all very gloomy and un-Shirelike. (Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume (p. 998).)
The quartet of Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin then go through the Shire gaining help and scouring the un-Shirelike changes. Of course, this leaves the Shire barren and a shadow of it’s former self. They have destroyed the Upside Down of the Shire, but then face the reality of the harm done. We will return to find out what happens in a bit.
Back to our text and the level plain that Jesus and his disciples have stopped upon. This is a place that is scoured or flattened and ready for filling. In this case it is scores of people coming to hear Jesus and be healed. Luke does a flashback to chapter four when the people of Nazareth tried to throw Jesus over a cliff, but he “gave them the slip.” (Luke 4:30 The Message) (A colleague mentioned this translation to me and I love that phrase). If you read that passage, the final straw in causing the people to attempt to throw Jesus over the cliff comes when he shows how God’s mercy and care extended to the people in places like Tyre and Sidon. These were places they considered other. The text tells us that the multitude included people from the areas of Tyre and Sidon. Luke is highlighting an important truth and it is in the context of how the message of the Kingdom of God spreads to those for whom it is needed regardless of where they are.
The “Sermon on the Mount” in the Gospel of Matthew and the “Sermon on the Plain” we are discussing are similar. But in the Gospel of Luke, there is a poetic contrast that Jesus gives between blessings and woes. This is where I, and many others typically say that Jesus is describing the “Upside Down Kingdom.” But I’ve been struggling with that idea based in the picture of the “Upside Down” in Stranger Things. You see, I now believe the better statement to be that Jesus is describing the Right Side Up Kingdom and inviting us to leave the Upside Down. This is a shift, but so is what Jesus is saying. The blessings and the matching woes describe competing realities. One is what we call Old Creation and the other is what we call New Creation. But I’m even rethinking New Creation because what we are describing is more akin to Original Creation than a completely new creation (at least in purpose). But I’ll stick with New versus Old Creation for our purposes. I don’t want to seem too novel.
Jesus' description of New Creation is an interplay between the cares of new versus old. In New Creation the hungry are fed, the mourning find laughter, the poor are kings, and the spit upon know their true value. In contrast, the rich will go hungry, the laughing will mourn, and the vaunted will be found as false prophets. If we think of these as purely spiritual, we miss the point of Jesus' message. Instead, let’s think of the metaphor of reality that Jesus gives. Woe to the full for they will be hungry and then they will be filled. Woe to the laughing for they will weep and mourn, and then laugh. Woe to those thought well of for they will be as the false prophets, spit upon, and then leap for joy. The woes and blessings. are for all, because we can find ourselves at every juncture in this poem.
Yet the Upside Down tells us otherwise. It tells us that we must have power and influence to make a difference and to matter. The Upside Down tells us that we have no value simply as human beings. The same is true of creation. But this is all Old Creation thinking. Jesus invites us into the Right Side Up. This is more than an invitation to some far off prize at the end of our life our our age. This is an invitation to living in the Right Side Up now. This is an opportunity for us to participate in the work of New Creation. But we must be wary of the way Old Creation seeps into our faithful work. The critics of Old Creation often find themselves vilified by the purveyors of Old Creation ideas. Just think about the reaction to people like John Wesley who claimed that the whole human being could be free from sin and its effects. The hopes of Martin Luther King, Jr. that society could change and be one of equity rather than mere promises. The songs of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, U2, and of Pulitzer Prize winning poets like Maya Angelou and Kendrick Lamar. Those criticisms of Old Creation often cause people to see them as false prophets rather than the ones hoping for New Creation.
New Creation has the promise of healing. Our text says that the multitudes came to “hear Jesus and to be healed.” The people came to the level plain to hear and be healed. The text tells us that power goes out from Jesus and heals the people. Which brings us back to the Shire.
After the Hobbits scour the Shire and evict Saurumon who is killed by Wormtongue on their way out of town, they are faced with replanting the Shire. As they are thinking on how to do this, Sam remembers the gift of Lady Galadriel and opens the box. He finds fine dust and a seed. He begins to plant and tend the Shire as a garden.
So Sam planted saplings in all the places where specially beautiful or beloved trees had been destroyed, and he put a grain of the precious dust in the soil at the root of each. He went up and down the Shire in this labour; but if he paid special attention to Hobbiton and Bywater no one blamed him. And at the end he found that he still had a little of the dust left; so he went to the Three-Farthing Stone, which is as near the centre of the Shire as no matter, and cast it in the air with his blessing. The little silver nut he planted in the Party Field where the tree had once been; and he wondered what would come of it. All through the winter he remained as patient as he could, and tried to restrain himself from going round constantly to see if anything was happening.
Spring surpassed his wildest hopes. His trees began to sprout and grow, as if time was in a hurry and wished to make one year do for twenty. In the Party Field a beautiful young sapling leaped up: it had silver bark and long leaves and burst into golden flowers in April. It was indeed a mallorn, and it was the wonder of the neighbourhood. In after years, as it grew in grace and beauty, it was known far and wide and people would come long journeys to see it: the only mallorn west of the Mountains and east of the Sea, and one of the finest in the world. (Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume (p. 1023).)
Sam tends the garden and the Shire is made anew. Isn’t that what original creation was intended to be? We were to tend the garden and that purpose has not gone away. Even with the curses of consequence, our purpose has been to tend the garden. We are to tend the garden
so the hungry are filled
so the weeping find laughter again
so the poor are no longer poor
so the reviled are no longer hatedwe are to tend the garden
so that the rich see the poor and share in bounty
so the laughing see the weeping and understand that weeping
so the full see the hungry and give them something to eat
so the high esteemed remember the reviled and meet them in relationship.
Jesus invites us to leave the Upside Down behind. The path is already cleared; we simply need to see it and follow. When we leave the Upside Down, we walk into the glorious Right Side Up of tending the garden and living faithful lives of invitation.