I admit that I’m not a big fan of science fiction, and yet, I have enjoyed watching the recent popular science fiction show Stranger Things. In the small town of Hawkins, Indiana, in the 1980s, some middle school kids discover an alternate world, a parallel universe, called “The Upside Down.” In the Upside Down, things are almost a mirror image of real life, except that there is something terribly wrong with everything in the Upside Down. It’s a creepy place. Familiar landmarks in the real world are somewhat recognizable in the Upside Down, but they’re distorted or hard to decipher amid the darkness there, or else they’re covered with goo or cobwebs. Lurking in the shadows are bizarre, otherworldly creatures. This parallel universe is uninhabitable by humans. Indeed, it is deeply dangerous to them.
In the show, the real world in which the human characters live is infiltrated by the Upside Down through an opened portal between the two worlds, which creates the crux of the drama. We might say that the Upside Down is a shadow side of the real world as we know it. It’s the flip side of normalcy. It’s the result of an ordered, normal world gone seriously wrong.
The Upside Down is, of course, no more than science fiction and fantasy. But I have recently felt as if we are living in some kind of Upside Down. In this present-day Upside Down, things as they should be are turned inside out. They are turned upside-down, and when they are upended, a dark scene emerges. Here, to quote the prophet Isaiah, people “call evil good and good evil,” and they “put darkness for light and light for darkness,” and they “put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20). To quote the prophet Amos, this Upside Down world is where justice is turned into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood.[1] It’s a dreadful place.
One of the reasons it’s so frightening is that, on the surface, it appears to be the real world as we know it. Landmarks are in all the right places. Geography has not been distorted. North is north, and south is south. But at some point, you realize that this world is not the normal world. Ordinary markers have been twisted. The meaning of words is skewed. Light has been turned into darkness, and evil masquerades as the common good.
The veil between the Right Side Up world and the Upside Down is thin. We don’t know exactly how things get flipped or how the Upside Down world infiltrates reality, but it does so surreptitiously. And this is why it provokes fear.
When the prophet Amos addressed the people of the northern kingdom of Israel in his oracles of judgment, one of which we hear today, he was speaking to an Upside Down world. The eighth century BC was a prosperous time for the people of Israel. They seemed to be on top of the world, which meant that there were plenty of people under their feet. Amos decried the severe oppression of the poor, especially those “who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,”[2] to use his words.
Amos witnessed gross social inequalities. And yet the same people who countenanced, aided, and abetted these inequalities were the very ones who professed devotion to the God of Israel. Their burnt offerings were prolific. Their sacrifices were plentiful.
They longed for the Day of the Lord, that day of judgment when, in their minds, they would be vindicated by their God. It would be a day of great light, of victory, of triumph, because they had done everything right.
And Amos, not mincing words, drives a sharp wedge into this idyllic picture, shreds it to pieces, and reveals it to be false. He shows it to be an Upside Down world.
Amos’s words have, for millennia, spoken justice in the face of injustice, with very little need for explanation. The Civil Rights movement was fueled with the famous verse we here today: with the call for justice to” roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Amos’s injunctions speak for themselves. And yet they go so often unheard.
Perhaps what is even more disturbing is how everything as we know it gets turned upside down. How does the Right Side Up world suddenly, or perhaps ever so gradually, become the Upside Down? This is the question I have been asking myself. Maybe you have been asking it yourselves.
The circumstances from the eighth century BC seem eerily similar to 2020 AD. People who profess devotion to God, whose ritual offerings are manifold and robust, countenance the neglect of the stranger. Faithful worshippers who receive Holy Communion, read their Bibles diligently, and say their prayers nevertheless throw coals on the fire of division when they leave the church.
Blasphemy poses as a glorification of God’s will. Blessings are turned into curses. Evil is called good, and good called evil. God’s power becomes a justification for oppression. Holiness becomes separation from the world. Prosperity becomes associated with God’s favor.
It’s an Upside Down world because something is very wrong with it. It’s what Amos pointed out. It’s what Jesus pointed out in his home synagogue in Nazareth. Carrying out the message of the prophets before him and embodying it in his very life, Jesus announced what he would do: bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and let the oppressed go free.[3] The prevalence of the poor, the walking wounded, and the imprisoned were the new normal in the Upside Down. But the message of the prophets taken up by Jesus Jesus and embodied in his very life turned all this right side up.
The Upside Down world has always been with us. When Jesus remarked that we’d always have the poor with us, is this what he meant, that the Upside Down world would always penetrate into our midst and linger there? But the question remains: how did the Right Side Up flip?
And I think that Amos offers us a clue as to how we find ourselves in an Upside World. If we read between the lines into the historical context of Amos’s day, we see that he prophesied to a people who were extraordinarily complacent. Amos’s cries convict our own day, too, with its extraordinary complacency.
When we’re on top of the mountain, so to speak, sometimes the dizziness tips us over, and we find ourselves in an Upside Down world. Our designation as God’s beloved people goes to our heads. It becomes a way of justifying our own favor and ignoring the sufferings of others. It becomes our warrant for claiming God on our side and on no one else’s. And when anyone has reached this peak of personal prosperity, it’s not so far of a leap to get turned over into the Upside Down, where anything can be justified in the Name of God. And I mean anything.
It’s sometimes when we perceive ourselves to be closest to God that we are in the most spiritual danger. Whether it’s in our prayer, worship, or religious loyalties, when we think we have arrived at the Promised Land, the Devil has a field day with us.
And this is why Amos’s words are so convicting to his audience. They were mired in the Upside Down. For them, the Day of the Lord would mean darkness and not light, gloom and not brightness. The ritual offerings and pious devotions of the gloatingly complacent were deemed worthless to God. The exuberant hymns were grating noise to God’s ears. Everything had been flipped, because when God’s justice comes, it’s unbelievably painful for those who have made their home in the parallel universe of the Upside Down.
When God’s judgment comes, it turns everything right side up. This is what the prophets testified to. This is what Mary sang of in her Magnificat. This is what Jesus himself embodied in his life, death, and resurrection. Jesus showed us how to put things right side up.
But the lure of the Upside Down is powerful. It’s powerful because it so glibly masquerades as Right Side Up. It feels good. It seems right. And pretty soon, good is being called evil, and evil is being called good. Lies are seen as truths, and truths are dismissed as lies.
But God has upended the world time and time again. He will continue to upend the world, if we let him. And he is with us, God with Us, right now, working through us, to turn a world that is very upside down.
If we turn things right side up, the Day of the Lord becomes light for all those living in darkness. In this Right Side Up world, goodness is called goodness, and it’s embraced and clung to for dear life. When things are right side up, evil is shunned, trampled on, and cast away for what it is. Complacency is revealed to be the sham it is for tolerating injustice in the Name of God. The songs of those embracing the lost and the suffering are the hymns that please the ears of God. And the noisy displays of phony righteousness are unmasked as discordant bloviations.
And so we are left with a question today, even as we recognize that we inhabit an Upside Down world. The question for us this day and for the rest of our lives is this: will we be content to stay in the Upside Down, or will be let God come and upend our world? Justice is plentiful. Righteousness is ready to spring forth. And if we stand under its fountain, it will flow down and cover us and wash away the cobwebs from the terrible mess of the Upside Down. And we will find that in the Right Side Up, the light reigns and salvation is near at hand.
Preached by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost
November 8, 2020
[1] Amos 6:12
[2] Amos 2:7
[3] Luke 4:18