Undercover Boss

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

04.10.2016;  Rev. Dr. David Williams

Scripture Lesson:  John 21:1-19

LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:

Reality television was just such a peculiar thing.  Or I guess it is still, but I don’t really have much basis for observing it.

I remember when it reared its strange, misshapen head from the murk of some programmer’s id, all the way back in the era when MTV still mostly played music.  Is MTV even still around?

The Real World, it was called, and I remember watching fragments of it once or twice as I flipped through the channels, in the same way that I can’t help looking briefly at a deer carcass lying by the side of the road on my way home.  It involved finding the most annoying possible twenty-something human beings, putting them in a fancy house, and manufacturing fake drama.  One would never have thought, not for a moment, that it would start a cascade of entertainment-product that just hasn’t stopped.

As a genre, reality tv has delved deep into the dark recesses of the human soul, as we for entertainment have watched one absurdity after another.  Over the years it’s subjected us the Kardashians and Honey Boo Boo, and at least one presidential candidate.    It has been wildly absurd, “reality” distorted through the lenses of profit driven absurdity.  

There’ve been shows like The Swan, where women who had been determined to be “ugly” were surgically altered, with the most successfully modified woman “winning.”  There was a show about a woman having to pick a romantic partner based only on his personality, meaning from a group of men who wore masks the whole time.  To add gravitas, it was hosted by Monica Lewinsky.  There’s been a show about Mike Tyson raising racing pigeons, and a show entirely revolving around 1990s rapper Vanilla Ice learning to live among the Amish.

I have watched none of these shows, just as I’ve never watched the show “Undercover Boss.”  That conceit, honestly, seems better than most.  Unlike Shark Tank and that show starring a particular presidential candidate, Undercover Boss doesn’t fawn over the rich and the powerful.   It wasn’t an American show to start, so perhaps that explains it.  The conceit behind this strange bit of tee vee is, apparently, that you take a CEO and make them work secretly as an entry level employee at their company.  There, not only do they learn what it’s like to be at the bottom of their corporate food chain, they also get an unvarnished perspective on just what their employees think of them and their leadership.

It’s a reality version of a theme in human storytelling called the King Incognito, in which...in order to learn the truth about things...a powerful ruler or monarch will don a disguise and go out amongst the people.    It’s a storyline that goes back at least to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which was published in the year eight.  Not 2008.  Just eight.  One of the tales in that collection involves the gods Zeus and Hermes, who pretend to be beggars and go seeking hospitality, and find only one elderly couple (Baucis and Philemon) willing to care for them.  They are rewarded by being allowed to die simultaneously and be turned into  a pair of intertwining trees, which, romantic as it is, seems like maybe not the best reward, even if they did ask for it to be their destiny.

That idea of a ruler coming among his people in a form that’s hard to recognize is written deeply into the concluding concluding section of John’s Gospel.  This portion of the Bible is full of intriguing stories, like, for instance, the description of the doubts that Thomas felt when Jesus showed up, and Christ’s response, as He told us what it meant to believe.

But this last section is particularly odd, as Jesus both appears and does not appear to his disciples.  It comes as something of an epilogue, added on to John’s Gospel after it had already concluded.

The disciples are fishing, out there on the shores of the Sea of Tiberias.  It was Peter’s idea, we hear, but they’re out on the water and having not much luck.  Then someone appears on the shore, someone who shouts out to them a question about their fishing.  “Catching anything,” he yells.  “Nope,” they yell back.  “Try the other side of the boat,” yells back the stranger.  There are fish there, of course.

It’s at this point that the unnamed disciple realizes, although others do not, that it is Jesus.  Because apparently it wasn’t obvious, meaning the person in question did not actually look familiar, or like the Jesus they knew.  LIke Mary at the tomb, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, this Jesus is both Jesus and not Jesus.

The disciple announces this to Peter, who was evidently not wearing clothes.  Peter puts on his clothes, and then flings himself into the water, yet another bizarre moment in a bizarre tale.  Maybe it was that he thought he’d walk on the water.  It’s hard to say, but it doesn’t bear any resemblance to any fishing trip I’ve ever taken.

Once the haul of fish is ashore, Jesus is there...apparently already with fish, and a fire going.  He invites them to breakfast, at which point none of the gathered can bring themselves to ask just who exactly he is, because he is Jesus, but simultaneously not Jesus.

There’s a peculiar resonance with this story, that of the King Incognito, one that plays out monthly in the life of our little community.     It’s the story of Martinus Turonensis, a third century Roman equestrian aristocrat.  Yes, that has something to do with Poolesville.  Give me a minute.

Martinus was the child of a Roman cavalry officer, who entered into the service of the Empire despite his fledgling Christian faith, one that was an offense to his father and family.  As the story goes, Martinus eventually gave up on the military life, renouncing all violence and setting aside the power and privilege of his office.

The transforming moment for Martinus came while he was out riding one winter’s day, in the full regalia and armor of a Roman horseman.  As he rode, he came across a beggar freezing by the side of the byway.  Suddenly overcome by compassion, Martinus drew his sword and cut his heavy winter riding cloak in half, keeping one half, and giving the other to the beggar to keep him warm.

That very night, as the story goes, Martinus saw a vision of Jesus wearing the cloak he’d given to the beggar, and realized that the beggar was, in fact, Jesus.

It was at that point that Martinus Turonensis, or Martin of Tours, was transformed.  That plays interestingly across the life of this community, where we regularly spend our time at a Catholic parish named after good brother Marty.   

I missed that Lord’s Table experience yesterday, as I realized halfway to Gaithersburg that I’d managed to take off with the set of keys to the van that my wife needed.  But as I was driving back mumbling grumpily to myself, I was reminded of how the story of our care and service to others meshes with the manifest reality of the Christian journey.

His story speaks to the core moral assumption of Christianity, that of our encounter with Jesus in every soul and every individual we meet.  It’s something of a baseline, as we deal with the peculiar mix of human beings in our lives.  The healthiest default for Christian ethical behavior, for our approach to every interpersonal interaction, is this: every single one of them is undercover Jesus.  Every last one.  

He’s disguised?  Sure.  We’re not quite certain.  Sometimes he’s very, very disguised.  But we should, with the disciples at that first prayer breakfast, be afraid to ask.

Hey, we should say to the anxious looking woman who just cut us off in traffic.  Are you by any chance Jesus?

Hey, we say to that co-worker who’s a serious pain in the behind.  Might you be Jesus?  When one friend shares a bit of particularly juicy gossip about a mutual acquaintance, we can nod and say, you know, they still are Jesus.

And sure, that reality is a peculiar thing.  But unlike most of the “realities” we create to distract ourselves from one another, when we let that shape us, it does some pretty amazing things.

Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.