Thursday: The Major Reversals
WEEK 26
THURSDAY
THE MAJOR REVERSALS
Revelation 21:5-7
We are looking at the ways the world was turned upside down with the impact of the Jesus whom Paul preached.
4. Jesus reversed the method of greatness. Before Jesus, those who were greatly served were great; and the greater the number of servants, the greater the person. But Jesus reversed that by making those great who greatly served others. That opened greatness to all—not the getters but the givers were great. Jesus himself was an illustration of this. I saw a raja’s name upon a marble tablet, and his titles extended four lines. I turned to someone and said, “‘you will call him Jesus’ (Matt 1:21); one word—‘Savior’—was sufficient.” I can’t even remember the raja’s name, but neither I nor the world can forget the name of Jesus!
5. Jesus reversed the method of being defiled. Before he came, you were defiled by “unclean” foods and by touching “unclean” persons and things. But Jesus said, “It’s not what goes into the mouth that contaminates a person in God’s sight. It’s what comes out” (15:11). That which goes into the person is physical, but that which comes out of a person—evil thoughts, evil words, evil acts—comes from the heart and defiles the person. Here he turned purity from the ceremonial to the moral, the greatest moral turn upward that has ever been made in human history and the most effective and decisive.
I sat in a compartment of a train with a Brahman. When I asked if he was going to have his dinner brought into the compartment as I was, he replied that he was going to eat his food in the Brahman refreshment room at the next station. “Are you afraid of my evil eye falling on your food and thus making it unclean?” I asked. He replied: “No, but they tell us if a person of another caste sees you eat, he emits rays different from yours; and it stops digestion.” Even this Brahman was feeling the impact of the moral upon the ceremonial and had to defend it on pseudo-scientific grounds rather than ceremonial. The revolution was pressing upon him.
O Jesus, your thought and mind are pressing upon the old things within us and are turning our inner world upside down. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am a part of the greatest revolution that ever touched us, and I shall extend it today.