Advent 2002

Accounting has made the news this year. But is Advent the time for talking about accounting? Isn't it? "Advent" means "arrival," though in our English Christian parlance we call it the "Second Coming." And the second coming of our Lord is about accounting. At least it is about settling accounts. (How many parables he told that centered on that unnerving prospect!) Advent is the final month of the fiscal year. (Advent is also about hope, especially for your church treasurer, who counts on a large influx the last eight days of the year.) As Advent is the end of the fiscal year, so Christ's re-arrival will be the close of the business day, whereafter no one can work, and the books will be closed -- but only briefly until they are opened for the settling of accounts. Maybe the accountants at Anderson can make our losses look like gains?

There may be no need for that. For when Christ comes again, He will come primarily to pay out. He has made a lot of promises, after all. And expensive ones, I add. Some of us, based on his IPO of resurrection from the dead, have extended him credit on those promises, believing He is good for it ("credit" is Latin for "believing"). So His coming is to pay up, to make good on His promissory notes -- baptismal, eucharistic and verbal. Those who would not extend Him credit will receive no return, and will have to face their losses without His help. But for us His creditor-believers, what a happy prospect is His return! So He said, "When you see Me coming, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." Yes, with the lavish payouts we expect from Him, we will be more than redeemed from all debt. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Whether or not I have persuaded you that Advent is about accounting, the feature article of this issue is. Specifically, it is about crooked accounting, and called "The Gospel after Enron." Pr. Jerry Burce is qualified to write this, not only because his last name can be misspelled "burse," an old word for purse (where you keep track of your money), but also because he has pondered these things over several months with the fellow believers in his parish in Ohio. Jerry presented the gist of this at our Crossings practicum in June in St. Louis, under the title, "Just Compensation and Real Net Worth." Just compensation is what sinners fear, but real net worth is what believers have in Christ. His crossing of crooked accounting with the gospel was so insightful, I asked him to put it in writing for us, and he has graciously done so. Following Jerry's looking at Enron-style accounting through the Crossings prism, is an interview with an accountant in my congregation, and reflections on evangelical theology's need for accounting terms. May these accounts of our faith assist you to extend credit to Christ, who is coming to pay off His promises to you.

tbcm

The Gospel After Enron
A Crossing of Our Times
with the Aid of St. Matthew

Enron has fallen. Suddenly, dramatically, like the house in the little parable of which our Lord was moved to observe "and great was the fall of it" (Mt. 7:27). Doesn't this always happen, asks Jesus, when silly people pour their wherewithal into houses built on beds of sand? By contrast, wise people build on bedrock, which is to say, they "hear these words of mine and do them" (Mt. 7:24). But in the wake of Enron -- thereafter of Worldcom and Tyco, of Adelphia and Arthur Anderson -- how will anyone in a right and sober mind even think to take a whirl on the "wisdom" Jesus calls for?

This, in polished form, was a question I helped bring before a gathering of the right-and-sober-minded, about 30 of them, at the end of June. The occasion was a Crossings workshop. We met in St. Louis. I thank our editor, Pr. Murken, for the chance to say more clearly in print what I tried with mixed success to lay out then.

Ah, but immediately it hits me that these thanks of mine, previous sentence, were a trifle premature. For doesn't a guest writer of this newsletter need somehow to smith his many words (I'm a "he," so I'll stick with "his") around the one main word? The conundrum: how can Crossings serve as a reorganizing aCROStic for all those other words we spilled last June?

Bear with me, gentle reader. Grit your teeth if you have to. If you've relished Bob Bertram's essays in these pages over the years then you're obliged, like all who have known him as friend and teacher, to admit that you were spoiled. You sat down at the theological dinner table and got to start with the soufflé, that dish so wondrously rich and nourishing, whipped up in a marvel of taste, texture and exquisite presentation.

But now an oaf from the scullery runs loose in the kitchen. Where the soufflé bowl sat he plops down another concoction altogether, one that looks and smells alarmingly like lumpy oatmeal. How will you bear this move from aristocrat's feast to serf's fare? Will it help to remember what someone said about the last being first and the first last? If so, then now is the time to dig in gamely, obediently. As Bob himself would be the first to remind us, even oatmeal will keep us alive -- so long, that is, as it somehow conveys Christ.

On then to the apprentice's acrostic, in faithful if clumsy service of the Gospel after Enron:

• C-R-O-S-S is for CROoks, Saps, and Suckers
  who comprise the sinners' universe, as the recent fall of Enron has proved all over again. Though CROSS is also for sinners who, bumping into the only God who deserves to be called God, are obliged by instinct and unshakable habit to be CRitical, Outraged, and when those fevers have passed Scared Silly. This too has been proved once more by Enron's fall. Starting with the facts, here's how.

• I-N is for INtermission
  Time out, in other words, to muse too briefly on two big matters.

• G and S is for so G is for Go and S is for Store,
  those two blunt verbs by which Jesus prods the post-Enron likes of us to act out our faith in the unsullied promise of KOH, Inc. He needs brokers these days, fervent, faithful types who, exulting in his authority to keep KOH throbbing with life forever, will hit the highways and byways of all the nations to rope in new investors (Matt. 28:16-20). In case you were wondering, see Matt. 10 for the KOH, Inc. broker's guide. For the human resources manual check out Matt. 18.