Unconventional Wisdom

This sermon was heard on March 21, 2010, the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

In 1987, Oliver Stone made “Wall Street,” the story of the rise and fall of Bud Fox, a young stockbroker desperate to succeed, and his hero, Gordon Gekko, a wealthy, unscrupulous corporate raider. This movie has long been known and remembered for what became the financial credo of the 80’s, “Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good.” What isn’t so widely known and remembered is that this speech was inspired by a commencement address made by stock trader and finance wiz Ivan Boesky at UC Berkeley’s School of Business Administration on May 18, 1986. To an entire generation of business, management, and finance graduates Boesky said, “Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”

This was the conventional wisdom of the day; it’s all about the green back dollar. Ten years later, Diddy taught us the same thing singing “It’s All About the Benjamins.” So, where did conventional wisdom get us?

In the third quarter of 2009, the country had its worst rash of mortgage foreclosures ever, beating the record from the third quarter of 2008. During this quarter, the one out of every 136 mortgages suffered foreclosure.[1] Missouri ranked 30th out of the 50 states with one out of every 335 mortgages foreclosed. Kansas fared just a little better, ranking 31st with a foreclosure rate of one out of 358 home loans being shuttered.

As far as unemployment goes,[2] in the Kansas City census area, which includes both sides of the state line, the unemployment rate is 9.1%, ranking 133rd out of 372 metropolitan areas. This is less than the national unemployment rate at 10.6%, but if you or a member of your family or a friend is unemployed, these numbers are pretty meaningless. The same goes for the mortgage statistics.

The statistics are horrible, and the human element of these numbers is worse. As a Kansas City musician once sang, “Numbers don’t lie, but numbers don’t bleed.”[3] Between you and me, I would just assume a lot of financial wizards were a little less greedy, even at the risk of them feeling a worse about themselves.

Pastor Andy shared with me that you have been studying the story of the Prodigal Son during this Lenten season. One of the things I learned about this passage is that the scribes and the Pharisees, this story’s first audience, would have thought the hero in this story wasn’t the loving father; they would have though he was a fool. No, to the scribes and Pharisees the hero in this story was the elder brother. The elder brother stood for traditional family values, the elder brother stood for the social standards of the community; the elder brother stood for truth, justice, and the Galilean Way.

It is only later when we receive the extravagant grace of the cross and the empty tomb that we are able to see this same overwhelming love in the father for both of his sons. Even though both sons had caused their father grief and sorrow, the father goes to great lengths so that they may be reconciled to him and to one another. It is designed to remind us all of the embarrassing lengths to which God, in the person of Jesus, goes to make that homecoming a reality.[4]

So when we look at our gospel reading for today, we run into the same issue; human wisdom is being faced with Godly wisdom offered by the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.

Our reading begins six days before the Passover, and Jesus is in the home of Lazarus where a dinner was being held for Jesus. As Martha was preparing supper, her sister Mary was preparing Jesus by anointing his feet in a pound of pure nard.

I tried to figure out how much a pound of pure nard would cost today, but in my research for this sermon, it was impossible for me to find pure nard on the internet, much less its cost. Using the metric provided in scripture, 300 denarii is a year’s wages for the common worker. According to the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, the average year’s wage for a worker in Kansas City is $37,200.[5] As we read this passage we have two choices about how to interpret Mary’s actions. Let’s begin with how it is seen by Judas.

Judas was a man. He is a member of Jesus’ inner circle, one of the twelve apostles. He is the treasurer and he’s full of human wisdom. He’s not just an accountant; he’s the most stereotypical kind of bean counter. He’s also dishonest and a thief; and worse than all of those things, he’s also a hypocrite.

There is a moment like this in the “greed is good” speech from “Wall Street.” Gekko is addressing the shareholder’s meeting of Teldar Paper and telling everyone that the company is in bad shape. There are 33 company vice presidents who each earn over $200,000 per year. There are luncheons and hunting trips, corporate jets and golden parachutes, and for what? In the eyes of Gordon Gekko these VP’s produce nothing discernable. As true as this may be in the story, we know better. We know that Gekko is working the room like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s sympathetic to the individual shareholder, until he crushes the company.

Judas points out that the nard could be sold for a great deal, a year’s wages, 300 denarii by his reckoning and $37,200 by mine. This money could be used to create community development grants, or purchase goods for a food pantry, or help with the budget of a homeless shelter. There are a lot more things this money could be used for than foot washing.

Human wisdom tells us that at face value Judas has a point; of course we know that this face value is of no value at all since we are also told that Judas is a thief. But at face value, we know that there is more that can be done with this nard than getting into the Guinness Book of Records for the most expensive pedi ever.

This is conventional wisdom, but there is a fallacy with this wisdom.

To Mary, what she was doing was not a waste of time or money; it was a sacrifice of praise made to her Lord. It was a gift of thanks made to the one who brought her brother back from the dead.

Imagine sacrificing a year’s wages, imagine sacrificing $37,200 to wash someone’s feet. Quite intentionally I don’t mean “wasting” a year’s wages, I mean sacrificing this much to wash feet, and then wiping, massaging these ravaged feet with your hair. Imagine loving someone so much that you are willing to wash their feet with such expensive balm.

To the world this is extravagant to the point of foolishness, but this is the world’s wisdom, this is the wisdom of Judas Iscariot, this is not the glory of the Lord. This was a gift, an extravagant gift freely offered, a gift of love, to the one who deserves it above all others. To the Lord, it is even more than that.

Jesus accepts this sacrifice of praise Mary offers. Jesus is anointed and his feet massaged in an act of thanksgiving during a time of fellowship at the table where her Lord and her brother share dinner. Judas argues, and Jesus says, “Leave her alone.” She brought the nard, as well as her sacrifice of wealth and praise to prepare Jesus for the day of his burial. Jesus proclaims that he is not long for this world, but the human condition will long remain until the end of days. She prepares thanks to her Lord even in the shadow of the cross.

Lent is a journey that reminds us that the story of Jesus inevitably moves toward the cross, the ultimate picture of failure and disgrace. Jesus willingly accepts the embarrassment of being stripped, beaten and hanged naked to die and to be held up as a failure for the whole world to see on a day that we call Good Friday. It is through that failure, that embarrassment, that disgrace that God chooses to save the world.[6]

What’s ironic about this take on wisdom and the illustration from the movie “Wall Street” is that Oliver Stone wanted people to leave the theater recognizing the cautionary tale of Bud Fox, a good boy swept up in a current that would only carry him to his own demise. Instead, people left the theater saying, “I wanna be like Gordon Gekko, greed is good, money is good, wealth is good, power is good.” The director sends one message, but the listener hears another.[7]

Gordon Gekko tells us that “greed is good.” He tells us that greed will save us. Jesus tells us that our wisdom is nothing. Lent leads us toward the cross and Mary is taking this moment to sacrifice what she has so that Jesus may make his walk to the cross with beautiful feet. Costly and degrading as far as the world is concerned, glorious in the new ways of God.

Thanks be to God that through Christ, human wisdom that by our reckoning is quite sensible, is replaced by something better. Our Old Testament reading makes way precisely for this point as Isaiah writes, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

Even as we wander in the boondocks of our own wisdom, we will be given “water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.” God gives drink to the chosen people, the people whom the Lord formed so that they might declare God’s praise.

So we have two choices, one of them is to accept the conventional wisdom of the day and hail and praise people who turn out to be less than sympathetic. In the story of the prodigal, this is the older brother. In the story of Mary anointing Jesus, in an ancient yet still money hungry world, this is Judas. As for our world, Ivan Boesky, the man who first told business and management graduates at UC Berkley that greed is good, he would later be convicted of insider-trading.

The other choice, the better choice is to know that our knowledge is limited. What we know for sure is bounded by what we sense.

Over the past three years or so, Oliver Stone has partnered again with Michael Douglas to produce the sequel to “Wall Street.” In September, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”[8] hits theaters. In the sequel, Gordon Gekko leaves prison after a term of twenty-three years in jail, the longest prison sentence ever for a fictional character convicted of insider trading. In an effort to make amends with his daughter, Gordon comes to the assistance of her fiancé, a Wall Street trader played by Shia Leboeuf. He leaves prison with nothing and through trials and tribulation, seeks to make amends, to be reconciled to life anew.

Will Gordon Gekko leave greed behind? Will he find scruples? Well, we’ll all just have to buy a ticket when the movie is released in September to see. The question that matters to us is will we follow the conventional wisdom of our day, or will we seek something better? Will we give all that we have in worship to God? Are we willing to go as far as to wash feet to show our love to the Lord? These are the questions we leave with today.

Gloriously, wondrously, we leave here with one answer. Our Lord Jesus Christ has already done a new thing for our benefit and for all of creation. It is this new way, this unconventional wisdom that we are called to seek and follow. So come and give thanks to the Lord for he has given greater things to us, even his life on a cross, just six days after this meal.

[1] Foreclosure Activity Hits Record High in Third Quarter, http://www.realtytrac.com/foreclosure/foreclosure-rates.html, retrieved March 15, 2010.
[2] Unemployment Rates for Metropolitan Areas, http://www.bls.gov/web/laummtrk.htm, retrieved March 20, 2010.
[3] Walkenhorst, Bob, “Too Many Twenties.” From “Skin,” V&R Records, 1996.
[4] Post Your Failure, HomileticsOnline.com, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93040516, retrieved February 15, 2010.
[5] Median Household Income by City, http://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/wages/city_medincome.stm#k, retrieved March 20, 2010.
[6] Post Your Failure, HomileticsOnline.com, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/btl_display.asp?installment_id=93040516, retrieved February 15, 2010.
[7] Lewis, Michael, “Greed Never Left,” Vanity Fair, April 2010, page 126-129.
[8] Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street:_Money_Never_Sleeps, retrieved March 20, 2010