One of These is Not Like the Other PART 3 “Rearranging the Price Tag” (Traditional Service)

Blink and you’ll miss it. It’s the shortest book in the Bible. Only 25 verses and 335 words long. Should take the average reader about 3 and 1/2 minutes to read the entire book of Philemon. So, why bother? Because sometimes big things come in small packages. A slave somehow becomes a brother in Christ. A human piece of property becomes a partner in the work and ministry of Christ. It doesn’t make sense. In the world Paul knew it was just understood, a slave is a slave. If you were born a slave, you died a slave. But something remarkable happens.

Soren Kierkegaard tells a parable of a vandal who broke into a department store one night. But rather than steal things, he rearranged all the price tags. The next morning the salespeople and customers came upon one surprise after another: diamond necklaces on sale for a dollar, and cheap costume-jewelry earrings costing thousands of dollars.

The gospel is like that, Kierkegaard says. It rearranges all our price tags. The lowly are raised up, the haughty are brought down. The poor are rich, and the rich are poor. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Weak is strong and strong is weak. We create price tags, and we assign value to things and people because they help us make sense of the world. Then, Jesus comes like a thief in the night to rearrange everything we thought we knew.

He turns our world completely upside down.
Or if you really think about it, he turns it right side up.