Irrational Exuberance

As we were in the midst of the housing bubble and the era of highly inflated stock prices, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, a most dour sort, in a speech on the economy referred to the danger of over-inflated values with the term, “irrational exuberance.”  Overly exuberant realtors and brokers were behaving in a most irrational way.  He was saying, “Let’s tamp it down, folks.”  Was he just being another “Debbie Downer?”  Or was he aware of something that those in the housing market and those on Wall Street didn’t know?

Well!   We all know what happened, when in 2008 our irrational exuberance caught up with us and the economy came crashing down about our ears.  In the blink of an eye, trillions of dollars of wealth was destroyed.  As usual, those suffering most were the poor and communities of color.  An entire mélange of bad actors was a part of the disaster.  Banks selling “liar mortgages,” buyers inflating their incomes, bond rating organizations inflating the value of worthless, bundled mortgages – triple A investment grade, my donkey!  You remember those NINJA loans?   No Income.  No Job. No Assets.  And certainly, no cop on the beat.  It was the worst of wild west economics. 

We certainly learned to be afraid of “irrational exuberance.”  And this goes for the church as well.  I’ve often counted on the church treasurer being our “Debbie Downer,” when it came to putting the budget together.  Let’s just play it safe and hoard up what little there is.  You never know!

In the gospel reading, Judas, the church treasurer, is shocked at Mary’s Irrational Exuberance as she pours a most costly ointment all over Jesus’ feet.  “My God, women!  What are you doing?  Don’t you realize that stuff is worth thousands of dollars an ounce?  Have a care!  We could have sold it and raised the money for the poor and needy.”  Judas has a point – not that Judas gave a fig about the poor and needy.  He only wanted the money for himself, the greedy wretch.  But one has to admit, what he counsels is sound economics.  You never know when a rainy day is coming.

Mary, on the other hand, is overcome by the joy of the Lord’s presence.  It just bubbles up out of her uncontrollably.  The words of Isaiah ring through her soul, “The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.” 

Remember how David Letterman used to boast, tongue-in-cheek, about his comedic ability, “Genius has no ‘off’ switch.”  Well that goes double for the abundance of God’s grace.  There is no “off switch.”  It’s all irrational exuberance.  All the time, twenty-four/seven.

It is the same irrational exuberance embodied in Isaiah’s proclamation, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.  Our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.”  This is Mary as she wipes the ointment from Jesus’ feet with her hair.  Certainly not something done in polite company.  Definitely not done in an Episcopal church!

But our faith is a celebratory faith.  No Debbie Downers allowed.  So, bring on the irrational exuberance, or at least some modified exuberance.  Something we might call Hope.

I remember our early experiences as foster parents.  We had taken in charge the oldest daughter of close church friends.  The parents had divorced and the dad, being an alcoholic, showed no interest in supporting their five children.  We, being young and idealistic – read ‘stupid’ — took the oldest daughter, the child that caused the mother the most grief, and another family in the church, an older couple, took a very compliant younger boy.  Our two families agreed to care for the children for a year, giving the mother time to get her bearings.  The father was as useless as the proverbial bump on a log.

Well, to say that Nikki was a handful was an understatement.  Nikki had flunked nearly every single one of her courses in her freshman year of high school save one.  She got a “D-“ in PE.

She was sixteen going on twenty-four and her motto was, “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.”  We had to devise a dress code for school and church.  Her belly button could not be exposed at church and she could only wear clothing which exposed it at school once a week – hey, we were young and thought this a reasonable compromise.

Nikki assured us that her time with us would be an opportunity to start all over again.  We had high hopes she might find an outlet in some wholesome school club or in band.  Anything!  But it only took Nikki two weeks to find another new set of scuzzy friends, mostly boys up to no good.

We had told her that we wouldn’t be micro managing her school work.  It was up to her.  Unless we found out that her approach wasn’t working.  Well, it was by mid-semester that a flurry of purple notices began arriving in the mail.  Nikki was again headed for failure.  Homework was not turned in.  Test grades were abysmal, and unbeknown to us, she had begun skipping class. 

All this culminated with a meeting at the county courthouse with the probation officer – did I mention that Nikki had been on probation for stealing her boyfriend’s car.  Yes, at sixteen this was her claim to fame.  In a snit she took her boyfriend’s car, and he had reported it stolen.  So, there we were in the probation department office with the P.O. and the school vice principal for attendance, a Mr. Fackrat – you can imagine what the kids called him?  I definitely would have changed my name!

The law was laid down to Nikki.  If she cut one more class she would be going back to juvie.  I looked her in the eye and told her, that if she ended back in juvie, don’t call us.  We would figure that this is where she wanted to be.  There was a long silence in the room.  Slowly, Nikki nodded.  She had gotten the message loud and clear.

Now it wasn’t clear sailing after that, but Nikki never cut another hour of class.  Not only that, when the grades came out at the end of the semester, she had received an “A” in art.  It was the first “A” she had ever received in her entire life.  There was great rejoicing in our house.  A time for irrational exuberance if there ever was one.  Nikki was the most surprised of all.  And so were we.

At the end of her time with us, one of Jai’s friends had asked her how we thought we had done as foster parents.  Jai said that we thought we had done pretty well.  Nikki had had a “C” average in school.  She wasn’t on drugs – other than her cigarettes.  She wasn’t pregnant and she didn’t have anymore run-ins with the probation department or school authorities.  Pretty good, indeed!  Oh, yes – this was also my first church appointment.  What a year.

We and Millie and Ray, the other couple, with trepidation did what any church family would do.  We, in irrational exuberance, took Nikki’s family into the embrace of our arms and loved them.  In real and tangible ways.  It was most irrational, and had we been older we might not have been so exuberant.  We might have considered the real and unlikely possibility of success.  We might have put our treasurer’s green eyeshade on our generous impulse.  We might have just turned our backs and hoped that Nikki and the others might have had a good life – somehow.  Somewhere.

In the real world, the human results of God’s grace range from astounding to pretty good to sometimes, barely passable.  At a party in Lazarus’s house – you remember the guy Jesus brought out of the tomb, living, back alive again?  And now here at a feast for him, with Jesus present?  Certainly cause for irrational exuberance.  Grace with no “off switch.”  And, yet, John’s gospel places this story as a foretelling of Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem. All coming to a bad end on a Good Friday.

Out of that ignominious death on a cross, God’s grace triumphed in the raising up of the Church – the Body of Christ in the world.  That is the Easter Story – as someone wrote, “The Greatest Story Ever Told.”  That is our story.  Cause for irrational exuberance.  Or at least a bit of modified hope.

Last Sunday, after coffee fellowship, several of us took packets of California poppy seeds and with abandon spread them around our statue of St. Francis.  Not having the budget for water or for a full-time gardener, most of the front yard of the church has gone to weeds.  Yet in the midst of it all, we spread seeds of hope.  Seeds, we trust, will be an offering of beauty.  In, dare I say, irrational exuberance, we went out sowing in faith that a carpet of beautiful golden flowers will be a fitting sign of new Easter life here at St. Francis.

And new life does abound, right here in San Bernardino City.  We have several of our members signed up for Cursillo.  To boot, the Rectora of the whole shebang is one of our own.  We have a volunteer who has agreed to head up our proposed food pantry.  We have received a generous giant from the diocese to install a shower for the homeless.  And I have a newly refurbished office.  When Trent and Jennifer and their children head back to Texas, they will leave with the lived knowledge that at least one church really did welcome the homeless. 

And, given some of God’s generous rain, we will have a most beautiful golden carpet of poppies around St. Francis’ feet.

I have always insisted that we have a category of the church budget on the income side labeled “FAITH.”  It is placed there in trust that God will open doors unseen – doors invisible to the economic eye of the finance committee when they gather to put on their green eyeshades and reckon with the hard, cold reality of our present circumstances.  We need to allow for at least a smidgen of irrational exuberance, for that is what God’s grace is.  With St. Paul, we trust in things unseen, for hope we dared not even dream of. The same hope of those bedraggled Hebrew refugees returning from Babylonian captivity.

Each Sunday we gather around this table with love for one another, in hope that God’s irrational exuberance might anoint us from head to foot with the priceless ointment of grace, poured out to overflowing.

We leave the doors of this place in the same hope that we, let loose in the world, might be the sacramental embodiment of
God’s irrational exuberance.  Grace with no “off switch.”  Fine ointment to heal our bruised world.

And how did Nikki turn out?  The last we had heard was that after having a child out of wedlock, she had found a stable, responsible fellow who was the store manager at one of the chain drugstores up north, in Seattle, I believe. And married him.  And in my book that counts as an “A” grade.   

Yes, Easter is coming.  And with Mary and her jar of costly ointment, we best get ready for it.  Irrational exuberance is the order of the day.  Amen

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

Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C, 2019

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino