This Week's Lessons:
http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp17_RCL.html
Gregory Peck, not long before he died, said that if you’re going to play the part of the devil you have to look for the angel in him, and if you’re going to play an angel you have to look for the devil in him. One great example is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off , directed by the recently deceased John Hughes.
Ferris Bueller, HS student and devilish angel, wakes up on a perfect sunny day and decides to ditch school – convinces his loving parents he is sick and takes off on comic adventures with his best friend, Cameron, and his girlfriend, Sloane. Now Ferris is a slick liar and a manipulator who can get anyone to do what he wants. But Ferris is also a kid whom everybody likes (by the time he gets home, his home is full of flowers, balloons and candy from well-wishers who heard he was sick). He can get away with anything because, well, he’s Ferris Bueller.
The iconic image of this movie happens as a German parade goes through downtown. Ferris talks his way onto one of the floats and lip-synchs “Danke Schoen”, then leads the whole dancing, cheering crowd in a rousing rendition of “Twist and Shout” – because that’s just the kind of thing Ferris Bueller does.
Ferris has a younger sister who resents him and an officious school administrator who’s on to him. So a big part of the movie is Ferris weaseling his way out of being discovered.
The funniest thing to me about this movie is that suburban teen adventure movies from Risky Business to Mean Girls have certain conventions. There are popular kids, who turn out to be foolish and self-centered and have all the wrong priorities; and there are regular, average kids who triumph. There’s a huge party, things get broken, the parents and teachers find out and there’s major trouble in store, and it all results in a transforming growing-up process for main character, who becomes an adult.
This movie doesn’t fit the pattern – first of all, Ferris is hugely popular not because he’s foolish and self-centered, but apparently because he’s sweet, kind and helpful. His priorities may be mixed up from an adult perspective, but he is truly kind, to everyone from a freshman who he promises to get out of summer school, to his tightly-wound best friend, whose punishment he offers to take.
And at the end, everyone around Ferris has had some sort of spiritual awakening – from his sister, who meets a strung-out-looking Emilio Estevez in a police station, and he tells her, “Your problem is you. You oughta spend a little more time worrying about yourself, and a little less time worrying about your brother.” To his best friend, who finally gets up the nerve to face his harsh, unloving father; to the officious school administrator who gets his comeuppance by basically falling into the trap he has set for Ferris. In fact, the only person unchanged at the end of the movie is Ferris, who has had a very pleasant day getting away with all kinds of shenanigans, and ends it untouched. He doesn’t need to be transformed himself – he is sort of a catalyst, who helps all the people around him grow and blossom. It’s like, anyone as devilishly sweet as Ferris doesn’t need to grow up – he is already perfect, and perfectly endearing – no need for a spiritual awakening.
Strangely enough, in real life, most of us aren’t like Ferris Bueller – so perfectly sweet that we don’t need to grow up and experience a spiritual awakening. Most of us find that we need spiritual awakening and growth, nearly constantly. Life isn’t really a matter of getting through high school and then being free to do whatever we want to. True life presents one challenge after another, which most of us meet with varying degrees of success throughout our lives. And the biggest challenge of life for most people ultimately comes down to this: how do we live a peaceful, joyful, fulfilling life in the company of other people?
This is the challenge that individuals, families, communities and nations face. And it’s one challenge that I think becomes especially important for churches. Because we are God’s beloved community, the sign of God’s love to the world, and we are called to make that love apparent in the way we interact with each other and with the world around us. And if there is anything in life that requires spiritual awakening and growth, it is the challenge of loving our neighbors in the church and the wider community. Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner suggested that our lifelong hope is to "become" Christians, not "be" Christians, as if such a transformation could happen in an instant. We are all in a process of growth and “becoming,” learning day by day how to live in love with God, and with our neighbors – learning how to live as Christians.
Our scriptures have talked about wisdom for 3 weeks now – which is not same thing as knowledge. We are way better at knowledge in the age of the internet than we are at wisdom. All the websites in all the world don’t carry the same wisdom as the ancient Scriptures – they may not have had instantaneous worldwide communication, but they understood that the major challenge of life is interacting with others. Eugene Peterson says, "Wisdom is not primarily knowing the truth, although it certainly includes that; it is skill in living. For what good is a truth if we don't know how to live it? What good is an intention if we can't sustain it?"
All 3 of our readings today tell us about wise living. In Deuteronomy, we hear part of Moses’ farewell speech as the Israelites are preparing to enter the Promised Land without him. God has given Israelites the Jewish law – a standard of moral and ethical living – not in order to earn God’s love or be saved, but to provide evidence of God’s salvation and be a witness to the world. Observing the law is evidence to the world of the wisdom of Israel, and it becomes a powerful demonstration to the world of who God is.
In Mark, we see what happens when people begin to forget the original purpose of the law. The law can become only outward observance without the involvement of the heart. Jesus makes very clever remark about what defiles a person: not what comes in from outside, but what goes out from inside. We carry our own devilishness within us, says Jesus, and we can poison the world around us by allowing our own evil intentions to spill out. True wisdom, says Jesus, lies in allowing God to transform, to cleanse, our insides, so that what spills out of our hearts into the human community is transforming love that in turn helps cleanse others. Jesus wants us each to become a catalyst for world transformation – like Ferris Bueller.
Our lesson from James tells us something very similar: God gave us truth and life by planting the word within us. This seed takes root so that we ourselves become the fruit/harvest. Then he explains how we become the harvest, how we ourselves become God’s gift to the world. It may sound like a list of behavior rules, but it is truly a picture of God’s wisdom, lived out in community. James tells us how to live as the beloved community, including rules for relating to others – listen, speak, be slow to anger; anger does not help the seed grow; only God’s word has the power to save. James counsels patience, listening, open communication, choosing not to get angry, but valuing each other and treating each other with respect. James gives us a picture of how we can live out God’s wisdom – letting it transform us in every part of our lives.
James says it comes down to this: Be doers, not hearers, of the word. Becoming doers of the word is evidence to the world that God loves us. The best evidence of true religion is reaching out with love to each other and to outsiders – helping orphans and widows (the most disadvantaged people in James’ world). For us, evidence that (unlike Ferris Bueller) we have been transformed by God is our willingness to be constantly transformed, constantly undergoing process of spiritual growth, learning how to live transformed lives with each other, and focusing on helping those whose lives can be changed by our help.
We have talked about wisdom for 3 weeks straight now, and we’ve talked about gaining God’s wisdom through prayer, through worship, and through living as God’s beloved community, extending love to each other and to the world around us. And it’s a great time for us to talk about wisdom, as we embark on a journey of discovering God’s wisdom for this congregation, in our visioning process. In this process, we will be praying for wisdom, and we will be talking and thinking together about it. But in the quest for wisdom, the most important thing of all is for us to live wisely, to treat each other lovingly, to realize that the caring community we are creating in this congregation is itself the proclamation of God’s wisdom to the world- we are the gift. And as we allow God’s gifts of kindness, generosity, open communication, valuing each other, and love, to blossom in each one of us and in our Church, our prayer is that our church, living out God’s transforming love, like Ferris Bueller, will become a catalyst that will inspire transformation in all the people around us. And in our life of transforming love, we will fulfill our mission of transforming lives with the love of Jesus Christ.
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