This is Holy Week - Monday: Upside Down

This is Holy Week - Monday

Upside-down

‘And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.” And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.’

Matthew 21.12-13

Jesus has the knack of turning our lives upside-down or should that be turning our upside-down lives the right way up. That is what he was demonstrating in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple was the centre of and symbolised a society that cared more about tradition and ceremony while those on the edges, the poor, the sick, the infirm, women and children, the outcasts, the unlovely and the unloved, were not welcome; ostracised and despised. The Temple’s reason for existence was called into question. Society was upside-down and Jesus was about to show how it could be put the right way up. He healed the blind and the lame; two examples of the people who were considered pariahs and not worthy of God’s loving grace by those in charge. He was about challenge their whole concept of a Saviour King.

Where in our world is a similar revolution needed to put things the right way up? Where do we see institutions that are serving the opposite purpose from which they were intended? Where are the people in our community who have been pushed to the edges and what can we do bring them front and centre again? In Holy Week, let Jesus turn your upside-down life the right way up once more.

Jesus, Lord, we look to thee,
let us in thy name agree;
show thyself the Prince of Peace;
bid our jarring conflicts cease.

By thy reconciling love,
every stumbling-block remove;
each to each unite, endear;
come, and spread thy banner here.

Let us for each other care,
each the other's burden bear,
to thy Church the pattern give,
show how true believers live.

Free from anger and from pride,
let us thus in God abide;
all the depth of love express,
all the height of holiness.

Charles Wesley (1707-88)

The Methodist Church provides worship and devotional resources at www.methodist.org.uk