A Cambridge God Adventure* 76) A rebuked preacher

(*please skip if you have not been following this story). While the church was sympathetic to helping the homeless in principle, several voiced concerns about the practicalities of providing accommodation in premises which already had a wide number of other uses.  Open our doors in this way and it could dominate our mission.  Already we had drunkenness sometimes interrupting worship services - what else might happen? What would be the knock-on effects on the general public using our restaurant, or our children's work using the same halls.  Wouldn't it change our whole ethos on the main street and make it less easy for strangers to come in?  Oh, you can imagine the fears and how understandable they were!

The rebuke about shirking this need was one of the factors that led me to preach a sermon series called 'The Upside Down Kingdom'  which I preached directly to myself as well as the church. The first sermon was called 'Down is Up', based on Luke 1:46-53.  I began:

Most of us are conventional, happily fixed in our own culture where we've been brought up to do certain things in certain ways. So we try to make Jesus conventional and predictable too. We play safe and over-spiritualize, concentrating on the comforting words of Jesus. If we come across revolutionary words we try to avoid their practical implications which might affect us socially, morally, politically, economically.......

Titles like: Blessed are the poor, Losers Finders, Loveable Enemies, Last is first, Low is High, Peace with a Sword, Unseen is seen brought deep challenges Sunday by Sunday.  And I found myself repeating like a refrain these words:

When Christ comes among us he turns everything that people thought about life upside down. Something new is happening among us, right now.  God says 'My kingdom is here. It's a kingdom of love and service, The least are the greatest, outcasts are welcomed, adults become like children, enemies love each other, leaders are servants of others'....

Was a God-happening occurring?