PENTECOST: PROPER 20, 9/23/07

The line stretched out the door, down the street, and around the corner. It was a little after 7 a.m. and Borders Book Store wouldn’t open for another two hours, but people continued to come. There hadn’t been this kind of turnout except for the sale of the last of the Harry Potter series. What was happening? The appearance of a rock star? Brittany Spears or Paris Hilton signing copies of “Finding Jesus in Jail? Eventually a limousine would drive up and an aging gentleman would disembark with an attractive younger woman on his arm and they would be ushered into the book store. Thereafter the doors would be opened and Alan Greenspan would sit at a table signing his newly released book revealing the inside dirt of working with the last half dozen presidents of the United States.

What I found interesting was that less than twenty-four hours later the Federal Reserve Board, in a Greenspan-type action, would lower the prime interest rate by half a point and the Dow Jones Index would jump 357 points! Jesus proclaims in the Gospel for today, “You cannot serve God and mammon (money)” and Greenspan says, “Don’t you believe it!”

Admittedly this happened at the same time O.J.Simpson was charged with eleven counts of felony for trying to steal his own memorabilia, but it just proves that shrewdness will trump stupidity every time!

The story Jesus tells his audience sounds so contemporary. Could this be another Enron scandal? The owner of a large company receives a tip that his Chief Operating Officer is squandering company resources. He calls the COO into his office, informs him of the charges and tells him the auditors will arrive bright and early Monday morning. Moreover, the COO is getting the axe, not just for squandering, but for making the owner look like a fool. Our Executive goes back to his office knowing that the auditors will expose him for the incompetent, self-serving crook that he is. What to do? How can he save his hide? He wails, “I’m too old to dig and too proud to beg!” Now you have to remember he is no dummy, this isn’t O.J. we’re talking about. He hatches a rather shrewd plan. He calls in his largest customers and discounts their debt anywhere from twenty to fifty percent. What he is doing is forfeiting his usual commission which makes him look good, not to mention the good will attributed to the owner of the company. Everybody gets something and everybody looks good. If the owner does fire him he will have created enough good will that they will take care of him.

Now the story that precedes this one in Luke’s Gospel is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. He, too, squanders his resources. Both of these guys are bad stewards and the only hope for their redemption is, ironically enough, to be found out. In “twelve-step” lingo, they have to “hit bottom” and so they do. The Prodigal ends up eating the corn husks fed to pigs, a rather ignoble fate to befall a good Jewish boy, and the Company Executive gets canned. Both of them hatch schemes to save face.

Now if this happened in our own day the wayward son could easily end up being disowned and cut out of the old man’s will and the Executive would do a long stretch in the Federal Pen. But this isn’t a story about retribution, it is a story about God’s grace and that grace is shocking. When Jesus commends the Unjust Steward the disciples and the Pharisees are shocked! In the story of the Prodigal the Father doesn’t care about his son’s well-rehearsed story, he simply wants to embrace him. Jesus commends the steward’s ability to give up an old way of life and create a new one. The Prodigal and the Executive are concerned about once again being respectable and what each needs is to become a new person.

You and I value respectability—we always want to look good. How many times have you said to a son or daughter, “You’re going out looking like that? What will people think?” Jesus was more concerned with being authentic than he was with being respectable. If Jesus were interested only in respectability, he would not have used the Prodigal or the crafty steward as examples of how saving truth works. He would not have dined with tax collectors and harlots; he would not have violated the Sabbath; he would not have been accused of being a drunkard and a glutton; he would not have died as a criminal in the most despicable way imaginable. In fact, if Jesus had only paid more attention to being respectable, he would have lived to a ripe old age. What these parables teach us is that grace cannot come to this world through respectability. Respectability regards only life, success and winning; it will have will have nothing to do with grace that works by losing and dying. And that is truly shocking.

These are stories about being set free. We think we are free; our Constitution tells us we’re free, but, but for many it is an illusion. We not only chase after the myth of respectability, as though that will save our very souls, but we believe that our possessions will set us free. In truth, however, we always end up being possessed by the very thing we thought would set us free. You see, freedom has to do with a sure and certain faith that we are God’s beloved children only through His grace. That is why we pray for the newly baptized that the Holy Spirit will not only cleanse them, but give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and persevere, and the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s world.

What does a grace-filled life look like?

One of the most memorable characters in all of literature who embodies this kind of freedom for living, uninhibited by respectability, is Nikos Kazantzakis’ Alexis Zorba, or Zorba the Greek. At sixty, the old miner of Crete is still a man of great physical presence and lusty appetites. He lives with utter gusto-whether he is supervising laborers at a mine, dealing with mad monks in a mountain monastery, telling tales, or enjoying wine, women, and song. He has been married and unmarried, been a father and a lover, owned property and been a beggar. He lives with passion—not out of decadence, but out of a lust for life. He is the embodiment of life lived on life’s terms. When he runs out of words to express what he feels, he dances, often to exhaustion.

The counterpoint to Zorba is “The Boss”, Zorba’s young, English employer and friend. He is stiff and controlled—uptight about work and skeptical of leisure. He lives from the neck up, finds his home in what Kazantzakis portrays as a sterile world of “ideas” and intellectual concepts. He is, in other words, on a short leash emotionally and spiritually. Kazantzakis juxtaposes these two figures and the different ways they go about living. Zorba’s passionate, freewheeling way of life gets through to the boss, who finally begins to unthaw and loosen his grip. It all comes to a head when the pulley-system Zorba has rigged to get logs down from the top of a mountain to the seaside collapses and the whole enterprise crashes into the water. Zorba and the Boss stand there in disbelief and then Zorba begins to laugh, laugh hilariously, and then he begins to dance, slowly at first and then more and more frantically. The Boss is astonished and shocked at the spectacle, but then he begins to smile, ever so faintly, and then he begins to laugh, and finally he shouts, “Zorba, Zorba, teach me to dance!” Zorba grabs him and begins to teach him the dance and the pace quickens as the Boss catches on to the steps and they move faster and faster until they collapse in a heap where they ultimately will fall asleep in each other’s arms.

Beloved, I believe discipleship as Jesus defines it in these wonderful parables has to do with learning to dance. It is reveling in God’s grace as His beloved—grace that is concerned with life and not respectability. So, when you pray, pray thusly, “Lord, teach me to dance!” Amen.