Upwardly Mobile

Henry Ford grew up on a farm in Greenwood Twp, Michigan.  His father was an Irish immigrant and his mother was orphaned and adopted as a child.  So he started from very humble beginnings.  At 15 he started taking apart watches and putting them back together again.  Through this he became a self-taught watch repairman.  Over time he became a machinist, then worked on steam engines before starting Ford Motor Company.

 

The rags to riches story is part of the American fabric.  Stories like Henry Ford are both astounding and familiar.  We can cite many similar examples.  Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey to name a few.  Barack Obama is such a story.  No matter what you think of his politics, the story of a boy born to a single mother with an absent father growing up to be president, is this same story in a nutshell.  

However, upward mobility is a very modern concept.  For most of human history it was just not possible to rise above your social status.  We see shows like PBS's Downton Abbey (Set in the early 1900s) and their images of the lives of upstairs verses downstairs.  The scandal of one of the Earl's daughters falling in love with the chauffeur, or one of the maids aspiring to one day be a secretary.  It is hard to wrap our heads around it all.

 

The changes through the twentieth century broke down social classes and made it possible for people to rise beyond their station of birth to become more, 

Similarly, when Christ came to Earth, He turned the world upside down.  Not only were there systems of class and status, but also regiments of prayers and sacrifices.  Jesus came to say that the meek would inherit the Earth, that we should love our enemies and embrace the unclean.  That we should should not stone others for their sins, but reflect upon our own.  And his birth was not proclaimed by a royal herald, but by shepherds straight from the field.

Watch this clip from Pastor Chris.

The barriers of social class would take centuries to break down.  And to be honest with ourselves, they aren't completely gone.  But the message brought by Christ; the idea that we need to we need to worry about the content of our own heart and that we need to show compassion over condemnation was a truly revolutionary idea.  It changes the world forever and allowed us all to rise above the status to which we were born.