It is possible, probable in fact if you have been in these pews more than a handful of times in the last year and a half, that you have heard me call crypto-currency a con job, a Ponzi scheme, or a criminal enterprise. I mean, I’m not all that bright most days, but I just can’t see that it is based on anything real, never mind the libertarian sociopathy that inspired the whole scam.
A bunch of hot computers solving math problems does not create value in a world where hungry kids can’t eat math problems, where things like actual sunflower oil and actual clean drinking water matter. Call me crazy, but non-fungible tokens don’t seem to be feeding much of anyone. At least you can eat real fungus, on your pizza right there with the pepperoni.
If you are asking, yes, I told you so, and yes, I’m sinfully smug about recent events.
Among the string of recent crypto-implosions is FTX, an exchange and hedge fund headed by Sam Bankman-Fried, now facing federal criminal charges in connection with the collapse. It is estimated that clients lost more than $8 billion, though to be honest, I’m not sure anyone knows how much of that was real money and how much was phony money, crypto backing crypto. If it doesn’t make any sense to you, good, because it doesn’t make any sense.
Bankman-Fried’s downfall has been bad for Democrats, for he was a major donor, for the NBA’s Miami Heat, for he had purchased naming rights to their stadium, and for a movement called “effective altruism,” for he was its poster-child.
Now, this is the point where you might say “Whoa there! Effective altruism? That sounds like a good thing.” And you’d be right.
Altruism is good. Selfless concern for the welfare of others is at the heart of our faith.
And there is nothing wrong with wanting to be effective.
In fact, I am all about asking if we are having an actual positive impact with our missions in a world where so much feel-good charity does more harm than good, where our silo’ed systems of social services with their eligibility-cliffs trap people in bureaucracy and cycles of dependence, where many churches and non-profits exist in order to exist, having long forgotten their original vision, mission, and values.
The Bankman-Fried logic for effective altruism goes like this: I am very smart, so I could make the world a better place by doing field work or being a researcher. But I can do even more good if I become insanely rich and donate my money to charity. You know, like Bill Gates.
Except that Bill Gates got rich through business practices that were often unethical, predatory, and sometimes allegedly illegal, destroying lives and livelihoods. Same goes for Jeff Bezos, never mind the certifiably evil oligarchs like Elon Musk.
And it is kind of hard to figure out what was altruistic about the $40 million dollar penthouse in a luxury compound in the Bahamas that Bankman-Fried occupied, even if he chose to drive around in a Corolla to make a point. Though, you know, he saved a ton of money running that multi-billion dollar enterprise with QuickBooks.
The son of Stanford law professors, Bankman-Fried was born on third base, covered home plate in gold, then proclaimed himself a batting champion.
Not looking so successful now, in handcuffs. Not much of a poster boy for effectiveness.
Of course, he isn’t the first highly-leveraged con-artist to claim a success that was all smoke and mirrors. And there’s always a mark willing to fall for it, or vote for it, as the case may be.
So let’s ask ourselves, what is success? Because this isn’t exactly what Paul is asking in today’s reading, yet it sort of is.
Let’s bracket all of the metaphysical claims for a moment, ignore Jesus as an actor in a divinely-scripted melodrama, and just look at the man.
He didn’t lead a successful rebellion like Moses. He didn’t march at the head of a triumphant army, like Muhammad would six centuries later. Instead, he tried to lead a religious reformation in Galilee, which was pretty much a rural backwater, and when he and his followers marched on Jerusalem, the cultural and religious center of power for his people, he was promptly arrested, tortured, and executed in the most gruesome and humiliating way.
We could go down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what Paul means when he says Jews demand signs, but Jews in that context were incredibly diverse, and we should not forget that Paul was a Jew and considered himself to be one even after he joined the Jesus movement and became its chief evangelist to non-Jews.
And signs of what? The entire gospel traditionally attributed to John is organized around signs that Jesus was the Messiah. Are they looking for a warrior-king marching in to Jerusalem? An end to the Roman occupation?
Greeks demanding wisdom isn’t as straight forward as it looks either, for the term Greek mostly just meant anyone who wasn’t a Jew. The entire eastern half of the Roman Empire was more Greek than anything else. Greek, not Latin, was the lingua franca of the region.
When Paul talks about wisdom, he is really talking about Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans. Paul had a rough go of it when he tried to preach Jesus in Athens, the legendary center of Greek philosophy. He might just have a bit of a chip on his shoulder.
But the particulars are not the point. Paul wants us to understand that God’s redeeming work, as experienced in Jesus, does not follow human understandings of power, does not meet human standards of success.
Paul reinforces this by reminding the Jesus-followers in Corinth that most of them are not successful by worldly standards, not among the elite, and yet his entire letter reminds them of their place in God’s story of love, of salvation.
Paul can sometimes get a little off track, but here he is exactly echoing the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the historic memory of the gospels.
Think of the Beatitudes, especially the simple truths found in Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain.” Blessed are the hungry and woe to you who have full bellies now. Think about Lazarus, not the resurrected friend in the gospel attributed to John, but the poor man begging at the gate in the parable recorded in Luke. In the afterlife, Lazarus is blessed, served by angels, while the rich man who ignored him in life is in eternal torment in death.
The gospel of Jesus is all about reversals. The lowly shall be lifted up, the mighty brought low. The first shall be last. The greatest of all shall be the servant of all.
And you’ve been washed in the blood of Jesus, who wants you to witness to your salvation in a luxury Escalade, on a new church campus, in nice custom-tailored suits and diamond rings because your wealth testifies to the glory of God! Hallelujah!
Oh wait. About that…
There will always be some new fad or fashion, some pie-in-the-sky product or weight-loss program, some charlatan selling Christ in four easy installments. There were “influencers” long before Instagram and Tik-Tok were invented. There will always be get-rich schemes and scams, and ridiculous ways of defining success. There will always be those who are born into privilege and power and wealth and think that they somehow earned it. None of that has anything to do with following Jesus or being a Christian.
Just as it was when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, our standard for success is foolishness to the advertisers in Vanity Fair, to the unreal “Real Housewives,” to social media influencers. Because our standard is not about eyeballs and shares, about the amount of attention we can attract. It isn’t about the latest make-up trend or tech gadget or travel hot-spot. It isn’t in how many zeroes there are in our bank account. If we need success as measured by those worldly standards, we have forgotten God completely, forgotten the gospel.
Our success is measured in our appreciation of the beauty, grace and glory which is existence, and in our wise use of what we have been given to make the world a better place, to be aligned with God’s ongoing work of breathtaking and heartbreaking creativity.
Did I celebrate today? Did I love? Was I useful? Did I experience the holy? Did I make the world a better place, somehow?
Foolishness like the Rev. Dr. William Barber, Moral Mondays, and the Poor People’s Campaign. Like Representative Katie Porter with her white board in a congressional hearing. Like the person throwing extra mittens or personal hygiene products in their basket, because there are kids with cold hands in this city with so much poverty, and people sleeping behind the grocery store.
It is, as Theodore Roosevelt said, being in the arena of life, all dust and sweat and blood, in lives that are meaningful and real, flying coach not private jet, not sitting behind the gates of some luxury estate in the Bahamas.
Scripture’s warning to be in the world but not of the world is a warning against the world’s way of measuring success, in swords and gold, in a vanity spaceship company, in mattering much in things that matter little.
Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly. Perfect foolishness.
Amen.