Loading...On Friday night, Jeff and I went to our first play over at the Little Colonel Playhouse. It was “It’s a Wonderful Life, A Live Radio Play.” If you have time at 2:00 today, and they still have seats available, you might want to go see it.
The play was told as a live radio show. Live theatre, you might say, where sound effects may go awry or someone might sing out of tune, or the audience may respond when the voice actors aren’t expecting, but the show still goes on.
How many of you have ever watched the iconic film with Jimmy Stewart? It’s a mainstay for me, and I might even identify it as one of my top 5 favorite films. The messages within it are poignant and strong: Even if life is hard and things don’t seem like they are going your way, it is, genuinely, a wonderful life we have been given.
You probably remember George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart’s character. George had a lot of things happen early in his life that meant he did not get the life he dreamed of. Saddled with a job he didn’t want in a town he didn’t want to live in, in his mind, his life was anything but wonderful. He may have even been a little resentful for the way things were going for him. When financial ruin felt inevitable, George could not see any way out. He didn’t think his life mattered at all.
He wasn’t a praying man, he admits, yet he goes to prayer, goes to God to ask for help to get out of this mess he finds himself in.
It seems like he is grasping at a last resort, coming to Jesus, seeking salvation. Maybe a little like the people who have come to see John in today’s Gospel, who are a motley crew of people who just might be looking for a quick fix to save themselves through baptism and repentance.
John calls them a “brood of vipers,” people looking for anything that will get them out of the fire, using their ancestry as children of Abraham, like it is a get-out- of-jail-free card.
John isn’t buying it. At least not until they ask what more they need to do to be people of God.
Now these people in the crowd are not only ordinary folk. They included tax collectors and soldiers. People with less-than-savory reputations, who were often forced by their professions to be thieves for their Roman bosses, extorting more than what was owed, or creating blame for things their Jewish friends and neighbors did not do. John knows this, and he tells them what they need to do to not just say the words to receive forgiveness, but to act out their repentance—to change their lives and be the followers of God they profess to be.
John tells the people to share: to give away that second coat to someone who does not have one. He tells the tax collectors to only collect what is legally requested, nothing more. He tells the soldiers that they shouldn’t threaten people or falsely accuse them of crimes. That they should not use their power to harm others.
As Jewish people, none of these responses are out of line. Richard Swanson, in his book, Provoking the Gospel of Luke, wrote, “The Jewish faith understands that God created the world as a rich and good system that has enough for everyone, as long as no one gets greedy. For Jewish faith, the existence of poverty is evidence of the activity of greed. John’s words about sharing grow out of this background.”[1]
John is inviting people who work for the Roman government to do the bare minimum, and through that action, join the resistance that will block the greedy efforts of the Romans. John is building up a rebellion against the Roman Empire that will quickly land him in prison and ultimately will lead to his beheading.
So, what does George Bailey have to do with this?
George Bailey is a Building and Loan guy, forced to remain in the business when he longed for adventure, but life got in the way. Throughout his building and loan career, he got to know the people of Bedford Falls. He loaned them money for homes, he built relationships that spanned lifetimes. He fought to keep the business when a greedy Mr. Potter continually connived to take it from the Bailey family. He was creative when the 1929 bank run brought his clients, his investors, his friends and neighbors to his door, wanting their savings placed securely in their hands. He helped his friends understand how the building and loan worked—that each person helped the other, their neighbor, their friend, by allowing the Baileys to invest in their homes. And when money went missing, and it ended up in Mr. Potter’s possession, Potter called “finders’ keepers” and ultimately sent George into depression and desperation when instead of returning the money to its rightful owner, Potter told George he was worth more dead than alive.
What George did not realize was that his worth was not about money. It was about how he treated others. How if he had that proverbial second coat, he would give it to someone who didn’t have one at all. How he would never ask for more than what was necessary from anyone. How he stood up for and respected the dignity of each of the people he met. How his kindness and mercy for everyone was what kept little Bedford Falls a safe and beloved place for so many of its citizens.
He may not have been a praying man, but George lived a life doing all that he needed to do to be recognized by God as a righteous man, worthy of being saved when he felt all was lost.
It took a second-class, wing-seeking angel named Clarence to help George see what life would have been like had George never been born. Clarence had to show George the measure of his worth.
George could be any of us. Oblivious to all the ways we impact the people who share this life with us. We might not recognize those moments where we give something away or don’t accept more than we need or treat someone with kindness. These are the things John tells those gathered around him they need to do, and by our nature or maybe our nurture, or our faith, many of us do them.
John’s baptisms that day set the stage for Jesus. John prepares those people by teaching them what God expects from those who walk in faith. He tells them that he is just a messenger and that someone else, who we know is Jesus, is coming to bring freedom to the captives and hope to an aching, broken world.
George Bailey may have been a captive in his own mind, regretting that he was unable to live the life he dreamed of, frustrated that it seemed he was always looking over his shoulder wondering if the greedy Mr. Potter was lurking there. But he lived a life of giving back, of making the world a little more hopeful, peaceful, and joyful for those around him.
We need stories like “It’s a Wonderful Life” to be reminded that even though the world is broken, there are people always striving to make life a little better for others. Whether they recognize that what they are doing is exactly what John was preaching about or what Jesus taught us or not, they are our models of what love can look like.
Amen.
[1] Swanson, Richard. Provoking the Gospel of Luke. The Pilgrim Press, Cleveland. Page 67.
