When
Adriana Baer took over as artistic director of Portland's Profile Theater, she
wasted no time: She boosted the troop's income so as to create a margin instead of
barely covering expenses; she produced a critically-acclaimed run of Athol
Fugard's "Road to Mecca;" she even had the chutzpah to ask the
company's founding director, whom she replaced, not to sit on the board so that
she could have a free hand.
Then
word came down: Profile had lost the lease on its venue after fourteen years
and would soon have no place to perform. A thirty year-old woman in a racket
where donors and peers tend to be elderly males, an East Coast arriviste with
no ties to the local cliques, Baer found herself in need of a miracle - or a
friend.
She
found the latter (and perhaps the former) quickly enough. Baer had already initiated
weekly coffee klatches with Damaso Rodriguez, who ran the cross-town outfit,
Artists Repertory Theater. He rented her company space in his building at the
same price she'd been paying before. Rodriguez knew the riff: His former
troupe, Furious Theater, had once found themselves bounced from their own Los
Angeles digs in a similar scenario. The two producers agreed that in a day when
corporate cutbacks and a sinking economy make a pig's breakfast of charitable
giving, those who work in the arts cannot afford rivals, only allies.
That's
a little bit like what Jesus is getting at in the Parable of the Crooked
Bookkeeper.
The
probable situation here is that the boss had developed a work-around for Torah prohibitions
against charging interest. Instead, he lent in commodities rather than cash,
then Shylocked his debtors on the payback. The steward figures he can slash the
notes down to the principal. After all, if you cheat Bernie Madoff, he's not
going to rat you out to the SEC.
Setting
ethical niceties aside, Jesus warns the local holiness brokers that God has
just about had it with them. They've jacked up the demands of the law with
nosebleed interest charges that nobody can meet and Moses never dreamed of.
Their best bet would be to hold a fire sale - slash the soaring inflation rates
on righteousness and concentrate instead on relationships. Judgment day draws
near and none of us has the cash reserves to pay off our sins. We can't afford
the luxury of competition. We must embrace the wisdom of collaboration.
Read
this way, the parable reaches its logical conclusion in verse nine: Adriana
Baer found shelter with Damaso Rodriguez because she befriended him before they
eight-sixed her company out of its home. "In my Father's house,"
Jesus says, "are many mansions," (Jo 14.2) but it may turn out that every
room is a guest room and you can only stay if someone else invites you. Thus
showing grace to others is not an act of superhero holiness but simply the wisest
way of doing business.
All the World's a Stage,
Doug
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