Upside Down

Have you ever been in a two dollar shop and found a real treasure? Not merely something that is useful but something of great worth? Probably not!

The philosopher Kierkegaard tells of a vandal who breaks into a department store at night. In the darkness he moves through each department, each floor, deliberately, carefully.  Just before dawn breaks and the light will reveal him, he exits the way he came. The amazing thing is he does not steal anything but rather rearranges all the price tags. The next day shopkeepers, not to mention the delighted customers, encounter such oddities as diamond necklaces on sale for a few dollars and cheap costume-jewellery earrings costing thousands.

God’s Good News is like that, says Kierkegaard: it changes around all our normal assumptions about worth and value. Hence Jesus can say of a poor widow who puts a few cents in the temple treasury bucket, “I tell you she has put more in than all the rest!” Her gift from poverty is a real treasure compared to the tokenism of apparently rich benefactors. Jesus values the motives of the woman highly. She holds the little she has in an open hand whilst the others cling tightly to what they have. It’s as if God counts what we keep, what we cling to, rather than what we are prepared to give. I guess we can’t truly mirror God’s generosity if we are tight-fisted with anything … compassion, love, time etc.

God’s kingdom is a strange upside down economy where a willingness to embrace poverty is blessed! Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Peter Morphew – Chaplain