“ The Great Reversal ”

 

Dear “The End is Near Christians,”

It seems backwards.  The calendar says we’re entering the last quarter of the year …but for decades, churches have practiced it as the first quarter of the new year!  That’s because September brings the “traditional” END of summer (Labor Day), the “traditional” BEGINNING of the school year, and the Church’s “traditional” Christian Education programming year—even though for decades and decades school has started in August, and “Fall” is not the first Season of the year!  Still, here we are in the church and elsewhere around us, acting as if we’re “getting back into the swing of things” or “starting something new”! 

I get it.  But only “sort of.” 

We’re coming toward the “end of things” seasonally.  The growing season that concludes with harvest; and THEN winter finally comes, when the earth “takes a break.”  The work doesn’t have a break, but the seasons are winding down for a rest.  And, in the lectionary, September, October, and November bring us to the END of the Jesus story—when Jesus entered Jerusalem, offered his last teachings, parables, stories, and advice …just before Jesus is arrested, tried, and crucified.  It would make far more liturgical sense, to celebrate Lent and Easter at the end of the calendar year, and Advent and Christmas in February and March!  …But this kind of “reversal” would uproot a lot of things in our lives; and make us seasonally out of step with the rest of the world. 

But here’s something that Jesus asks of us …being “out of step” with the rest of the world.  Jesus’ words and teachings have pointed over and over to a “fulfillment” in which the first are last and the last are first.”  The idea that the have-nots will “have” and the “haves” will still have enough.  That sinners will repent and enjoy the fruits of righteousness and the righteousness will still enjoy their fruits.  It’s the world of “doing unto others as we would have them do unto us,” or even better, the world of “doing unto others as GOD does unto us.”  And doing what Jesus asks of us, puts us in a “backwards way” to what the world teaches us: that there are winners and losers, that we always have to “be the best,” where life can’t be good if your football team isn’t winning, a world where you have to work hard and pull yourself up by your own boot straps, where God only helps those who help themselves. 

Jesus invites us into a different way of being in the world …a way that mimics the Kingdom of God—where the lost, the least, the wanting, the penitent, and the thankful, all have standing. 

But I hear people saying it all the time—that Jesus doesn’t want believers to be “weak, to lose, or to have less,” even that Jesus desires that we “prosper.”  I get it; but I don’t understand their thinking.  Where does Jesus teach this?  In fact, I believe Jesus demands that we not prosper at the expense of others.  This “reversal” isn’t an “either-or” like winning and losing; it’s about blessing!  It doesn’t end with us NOT having what we need, it ends with enough for all.  But here’s the thing, the Kingdom seems to work “backwards” from the world, just like Jesus shows us. 

Thus, the seasons conclude with thankfulness and joy, and our being invited to give or share with our neighbors.  A time to delight in athletic competition but not think of it as only winning or losing.  A time to find the least or the lost, so we all might glimpse the Kingdom of God among us. 

We’re not dying on the vine; we’re living our best life.  Even if it seems backwards.