Willard Wednesdays

The Divine Conspiracy: Chapter 3 What Jesus Knew: Our God-bathed World (pp. 88-91)

The Great Inversion

The Widow’s Offering

Luke 21 As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. 2 He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. 3 “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. 4 All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

"This story calls to our attention The Great Inversion that lies at the heart of the good news of Jesus and his people.  The scene at the offering box in the temple is an illustration.  What turns up so graphically in that case is actually a general structure that permeates the message of the Bible as a whole and the reality portrayed therein."

"This structure indicates that humanity if routinely flying upside down, and at the same time it provides a message of hope for everyone who counts on God's order, no matter his or her circumstance."

"Again, the children of Israel were the most deprived segment of Egyptian society.  Yet they 'triumphed over the horse and the rider in the midst of the sea.'  The barren, the widow, the orphan, the eunuch, the alien, all models of human hopelessness are fruitful and secure in God's care.  They are repeatedly invoked in Old Testament writings as testimony to the great inversion between our way and God's way."  

"To see everything from the perspective of 'the heavens opened' is to see all things as they are before God.  The Kingdom Among Us is simply God himself and the spiritual realm of beings over which his will perfectly presides- 'as it is in the heavens.'"

"The kingdom is to be sharply contrasted with the kingdom of man: the realm of human life, that tiny part of visible reality where the human will for a time has some degree of sway, even contrary to God's will.  'The heavens are the heavens of the Lord,' the psalmist said, 'but the earth He has given to he sons of men.' (Psalm 115:16)  And as things now stand we must sigh, 'Alas for the earth!'"  

"To become a disciple of Jesus is to accept now that inversion of human distinctions that will sooner or later be forced upon everyone by the irresistible reality of his kingdom.  How must we think of him to see the inversion from our present viewpoint?  We must, simply, accept that he is the best and smartest man who ever lived in the world, that he is even now 'the prince of the kings of the earth' (Rev.1:5)  Then we heartily join his cosmic conspiracy to overcome evil with good."