Did Jesus come to turn the world upside down?
Sometime around the year 200 AD, someone scratched out graffiti on plaster in the room of a house near the Palatine Hill in Rome.
Jul 21, 2023
Sometime around the year 200 AD, someone scratched out graffiti on plaster in the room of a house near the Palatine Hill in Rome.
The graffiti, discovered in 1857, appeared to mock a Christian worshipping a crucified figure with a donkey’s head against the backdrop of a Y-shaped structure or cross.
Below the blasphemous image, the inscription in crude Greek read: “Alexamenos worships [his] God.”
This was how some segments of Roman society back then insultingly depicted the religion of the people known as Christians. Many in contemporary Roman society simply could not understand why anyone would regard as God someone who was executed on a cross, when it was the Empire that ruled much of their known world.
For many, even today, it is difficult to understand why Jesus had to die on a cross.
Similarly, many have difficulty understanding His message about the kingdom of God.
What is this kingdom about? Was Jesus referring to the afterlife, the kingdom after the “end of the world”?
Or could He have meant that the kingdom was already with us? Or again, did He mean that the kingdom of God is within us, which is what some of us might think? Or something else?
But Luke 17 says:
20 Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was to come, He gave them this answer, “The coming of the kingdom of God does not admit of observation
21 and there will be no one to say, ‘Look, it is here! Look, it is there!’ For look, the kingdom of God is among you.”
The problem in interpretation lies in the original Greek word entos, which has sometimes been translated as “within” in this context, when it can also mean “in the midst of” or “among”.
So, we are actually in the midst of the kingdom or the kingdom is among us rather than the kingdom being within or inside us.
This makes more sense, as the kingdom of God could hardly have been within the Pharisees who were out to fix Jesus up.
Jesus also told Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world.”
This did not mean Jesus’ kingdom was in another world — for then He would have used the word “in” rather than “of”.
What Jesus meant was that His kingdom subscribes to a radically different set of values compared to the worldly values of the unjust leaders of His time, who were under the power of evil forces. Some would call these evil forces the kingdom of Satan.
In truth, many among the ruling class of Jesus’ time worshipped power, wealth, prestige and position.
This quest for power and wealth — the overwhelming greed that concentrates wealth in the hands of a few — is responsible for much of the misery and suffering on the planet.
The rulers of the world in Jesus’ time —and much of the patriarchal society — also regarded women and children, the lower classes, the sick and the poor as either of inferior status or “unclean”. These marginalised groups simply did not matter in the domination system of the time.
But Jesus came to give the Good News to the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed: that God valued them as human beings and they had a place in the kingdom. He lifted up women and children, giving them equal dignity as men. He healed the sick, who many had assumed were paying the price of their sins or those of their ancestors.
Later, this was extended to those who were “poor in spirit” – that is, those who, in spirit, are in solidarity with the poor and other oppressed groups in society.
Some would say, as I have in the past, that Jesus turned the values of this world upside-down.
So did the late South African theologian writer Albert Nolan OP. But then he added, perhaps a more accurate description would be the world’s values were already upside down, and that was not how God meant the world to be. Jesus came to turn the world the right way up.
Nolan described the kingdom of God as a city or fortress set apart. This kingdom would be different from the kingdom of the world under the likes of Pilate, Herod and the chief priests.
It would be a world where people loved one another and shared their wealth so that nobody in the community would be in need.
This did not mean people were expected to sell their own homes or personal belongings. What it did mean was that whatever was in excess of what was needed for a life of dignity ought to be shared with the community, especially those who were in want. It would mean a detachment from wealth in favour of the interests of the community, as we also see in the Acts of the Apsotles.
This was why when Zacchaeus, the tax collector, said he would give half his possessions to the poor and pay back to people four times what he had cheated them of, Jesus declared: “Today, salvation has come to this house….”
It was also why the young man walked away sadly when Jesus told him to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor so that he could enter the kingdom of heaven. But he couldn’t separate himself from his possessions and his great wealth.
The subtext behind Jesus’ words seemed to be: young man, how can you claim you love your neighbour as yourself — one of the two greatest commandments — if you are not concerned about your neighbours’ immense suffering and lack of food and other essentials? And by the way, how did you get so wealthy in the first place? Was it at the expense of your neighbour or the way you exploited your workers, or cheated your customers, or displaced them from their property?
Yes, the kingdom of God is already among us. People like Pilate and the chief priests —the forces of darkness — failed to grasp this, even though it was staring them in the face.
But because the values of the kingdom are markedly different from the values of the world — which worships power and wealth — those who subscribe to kingdom values sometimes have to pay a heavy price, as Jesus did on the cross. The Way is not an easy way. Jesus never said it would be.
Two thousand years on, and things are not that much different. The world is still ruled by forces that value the acquisition of immense wealth, along with the power and prestige that go with it.
The fallout is the tremendous suffering it causes to ordinary people and the degradation and destruction of the ecosystems — the cry of the poor, and the cry of the Earth.
But the kingdom is still among us in the community of those who value justice and love and compassion, growing quietly and unexpectedly turning into a tree where all who need shelter can gather below.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.
(Anil Netto is a freelance writer and activist based in Penang. He believes we are all called to build the kingdom of God in this world.)
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