There's No Business Like No Business
Cyrus Hassankola is going out of business. The city of Dallas says he can't. Unless he really is. Perhaps I'd better explain.
Mr. Hassankola sells imported rugs. He started in Zurich in the early nineties and quickly realized that an impending shut-down led customers to believe they could get a bargain. He found that a going-out-of-business-lost-our-lease-fire-sale-everything-must-go sign changed the buyer's question from, "Can I afford it?" to "Can I get a deal?" and led to increased sales.
He went out of business four times in Zurich and has since done so in Maryland, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia. He finally landed in Big D where he officially christened his company "Going Out of Business." But the Better Business Bureau says Going Out of Business is bad business because business is so good they're in no danger of going out of business. Hassankola changed the store's name "Cyrus Rug Gallery" and slapped up a "Liquidation Sale" sign.
I think Jesus would have liked Cyrus Hassankola. Jesus himself once told a story about a sharp operator who, faced with being fired, slashed interest rates on his boss's usurious loans so he could later blackmail the beneficiaries into plumping up his golden parachute (Luke 16.1-9). This guy would fit right in on late night cable: Mad Man Malachi's bankruptcy bonanza. I have to be crazy to let these loans go at these prices!
Now, usually when Jesus talked about a day of reckoning for venture capitalists, he meant that God would soon call in Israel's marker as stewards of land, temple, and Torah. One likely reading of this parable is as a prophesy of the nation's destruction by the Romans. If that is correct, Jesus appears to mean that the Pharisees' strategy of upping the interest rate on holiness and declaring the world in default is a sucker bet. Far better to slash legalistic interest rates, discount the principle and proclaim God's love to the nations where they will soon flee for refuge.
The western church, like Jesus' crooked accountant, has long lined her own pockets with God's gifts. Statistics indicate that the master has run the books and may have decided to outsource our jobs to Christians in the global south who will cut operating costs and pass the abundance on to the poor. Our unsaved neighbors have foreclosed on our social influence and may soon own our buildings.
In light of these possibilities, it might be a good idea if we wrote off moral variables like clothing and hair styles, body art and piercings, and proclaimed the fixed-rate message of faith in Christ. Perhaps then, when we come to find out that we really need our neighbors, we will also discover that they are our brothers.
Everything Must Go!
Doug
Sermoneutics is a weekly column authored by Doug Jackson. Before coming to SCS, Dr. Jackson pastored local churches for nearly twenty-five years.