LIVING RIGHT SIDE UP

Isaiah 29:11-19

Sunday, August 27, 2006

One of our nieces is now attending the University of Colorado, so we went up to Boulder to see her dorm and help her get settled. Being on campus and in a dorm room, brought back a number of memories—not of CU, I attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I remember visiting a friend of mine from high school. She lived in one of the older dorms—the lakeshore dorms, for those of you who might be familiar with the campus.

Her dormitory had probably been built in the 1920’s and the wiring and plumbing were that old—held together after multiple repairs, no doubt, by paper clips and chewing gum. There was something unique about the way her room was wired—I promise this is true, I can give you her email address! When she plugged her alarm clock in, it ran clockwise; but if she unplugged and turned the plug over, the clock ran counter-clockwise! I have no idea why—I’m a humanities major, not an electrical engineer.

There’s something about what Isaiah is saying in our text today and my friend’s clock. Isaiah isn’t really talking about how you and I are wired; he wants to talk about how we’re plugged in. Are you plugged in upside down or right side up? His encouragement—and even warning—would direct us to live right side up.

There are a number of themes that run through the prophecies of Isaiah. A major theme promises the Messiah—Isaiah is quoted most often in the New Testament either by Jesus or in reference to Jesus. Helping to develop this major theme is one that compares and contrasts the kings, Ahaz and Hezekiah. Comparing these two kings gives us an idea of the difference between living upside down and living right side up.

Do you remember King Ahaz? He’s famous only for his rejection of a sign from God that resulted in Isaiah’s prophecy of the Child who would be conceived by a virgin. Ahaz sounds pious enough in those verses. He doesn’t want to trouble the Lord for a sign, how pious is that? Remember that the reason Ahaz doesn’t want to consult the Lord is because he’s already engaged the king of Assyria—so he really doesn’t want to hear from the Lord. He’s already made up his mind—made his plans. Clearly, he’s out of relationship with God—plugged in upside down.

It would be nice if living upside down was always as obvious as Ahaz. Sometimes, things are more complicated. Consider the Pharisees in the story from Mark’s Gospel. They are truly pious men, who are confident they’re living right—they wash their hands the right way so they must be living the right way. They look so pious and righteous. Jesus tells them that they’re completely upside down.

I wonder sometimes if our trying to figure living out—to tell what’s upside down and what’s right side up isn’t a bit like looking at one of those M. C. Escher drawings. You know the ones, there’s usually some buildings connected by a twisting staircase that seems to be impossibly always right side up or upside down, depending on how you look at things.

Ahaz and the Pharisees thought they were doing things right, and life seemed generally to work for them—like my friend’s clock, she didn’t give it a whole lot of thought, it just ran. So it is with our living—as long as it works, as long as nobody gets hurt—we don’t think about whether we’re upside down or right side up—clockwise or counter-clockwise. We just run.

Isaiah warns against living like this. Running the way that you think is right leaves us the way Jesus found the Pharisees—living upside down. Isaiah uses some very vivid language here: the clay telling the Potter what it will be; the creature telling the Creator how things will be. It’d be like your calendar dictating to you how your day will go. This is not only upside down; it is dangerous.

In the verses just before those of our text, Isaiah warns that when even God’s people live upside down, they risk becoming His enemies. As the Pharisees hearts were far from Jesus and Ahaz had a different plan than the Lord, living upside down puts us on the outside from God’s plan.

His plan was that things should be right. At Creation, man and woman were right with one another and they were both right with God. God even called all of this “very good.” We turned things

upside down then, and we continue to live upside down. We end up living like Ahaz rather than Hezekiah. How can we live right side up? We can’t set them right by ourselves. We can’t unplug ourselves and plug ourselves back in properly.

Martin Luther spoke of a glorious exchange, a grand reversal. God does the reversing in our lives. He turns everything right side up—in a most unexpected way. Our wisdom, our expectations couldn’t imagine such a thing. The Creator dies for the creature. The One through whom everything came to be—the Word spoken into our flesh, Jesus—dies in our place so that we, who are dead because of sin and selfishness and living upside down, can live and live right side up. The Potter is destroyed for the sake of the clay. This is an amazing reversal.

God doesn’t stop with Isaiah’s metaphors. He goes further. Hezekiah stands as a type of the Righteous King to come—Jesus is that King who does and makes everything right. He turns what we think is right side up, upside down—He reverses everything. He even reverses death. The One who died, lives. He plugs us into this life.

In Baptism, Jesus grabs us by the plug, pulls the plug out and plugs it in right side up. We can run the right way. We run, plugged into the Word and energized by the Holy Spirit. Living right side up now, we can see properly and understand which of the two of us the Potter, the Creator—God.

So what does this living right side up look like?

When those plugged in elsewhere look at us, we look upside down to them. The people you work with who are run by their stuff; the people you go to school with who don’t really care how they run or where; are living upside down. So when we live right side up, we reverse what they do.

Let me give you an example. There’s a rhythm to living. For those still living upside down, that rhythm runs from work to rest. These folks work at their jobs or in school or whatever so that they can rest. Don’t bother them when they rest, because they are very serious about their weekends—so serious, they are exhausted when it’s over. This rhythm leaves them empty and upside down—plugged into nothing.

Living right side up, we have this rhythm reversed. We rest to work. We gather here to rest—no, not to nap during the sermon—in worship. Our Lord feeds us and we rest in His Word and strength so that we are ready for the tasks ahead—both in what we expect during the week and also what God has in mind for us. Ready for the tasks, we have His resources as our strength—so we aren’t ever empty.

We have our rhythm reversed, so also is our focus. The folks out there that you live with in the world are driven by their stuff. Their reason for having stuff is basically selfish. They expect to be served because they see themselves at the center. Our focus is reversed so that we don’t focus on ourselves but on serving others and our God. We put our stuff into service, too—our time, talent and treasure—so that we run it, rather than being run by it.

Our rhythm reversed, a reverse focus and direction for living; what else does living right side up mean? Ahaz lived for the moment—his decisions were based on what he could see then. So many of the folks you and I know are like Ahaz—they are urgent to meet the needs of the moment. Like Hezekiah, we know we’re plugged into the God who’s in charge of moments—He reversed the sundial, remember?

Plugged into such a God, we live through the moments with Him with our perspective set on Heaven. That’s what it means to live right side up. It means our hearts are right with God as we are plugged into Jesus and powered by the Spirit. It means we live—live by His grace—for Him, with Him, through Him each day, running plugged into Him.