Ferris is A Righteous Dude The Rev. Fred G. Garry - June 30, 2002
Texts: Micah 6 and Romans 6
I don't think I would ever be a likely candidate for spymaster. I don't really
blend, if you know what I mean. As a young boy and teenager as is natural
I thought perhaps I could be. James Bond is a kind of extended metaphor of
the male identity. At some point we all believe we may wind up dashing off
to foreign lands, flying jets, racing cars, sneaking into the hidden headquarters
of a mad man set to dominate the world.
Well, I have been to foreign lands and I know without
a doubt there would be no mistaking me; I am thoroughly convinced that I
was not blessed with the dexterity and handeye coordination to be a pilot
or race car driver (the speed limit is fine for me); and, I have all confidence
that if indeed some secret government agency was desperate enough to enlist
my services my name would become a kind of policy by-word for better recruiting
strategies. There would be a kind of "Garry" screen in my wake.
I think this really became apparent to me for the first
time when I was a senior in high school. It was near the end of the year,
April/May I believe. After lunch there were two classes left and in a moment
of teenage impulsivity and bravado I decided not to go. The official title
of this is to be truant, it is also known as ditching or cutting classes.
I can remember a surge of emotion as I moved with stealth to my car and drove
away. It was a pretty heady moment.
It was a moment though that no one noticed. I kept waiting
for the ax to fall, for the principal to come to one of my classes the next
day and haul me off, making it clear to all the students that such behavior
would not be tolerated. And then in the absence of any exterior correction,
much to my surprise, guilt set in. I felt terribly guilty. So guilty in fact
I went and confessed to the vice-principal who seemed a bit amused and pleased
to offer me my just desert. This punishment was almost waived when she asked
me what I did in my self-selected free time. "I went and visited my grandmother,"
I said. "She lives just down the way."
It was obvious to me as I sat in detention that a life
of wayward activity, let alone espionage, should not be my career path. A
few years after this fateful event I was able to see this in an even clearer
fashion. This time the cost of such personal insight was only a few dollars,
no additional charge of guilt or self-recrimination. I watched "Ferris Bueller's
Day Off." From the moment the movie began until its end one thing was very
clear to me, Ferris was a righteous dude and I was a kind of inept minion.
The plot of the movie is very simple, a high school senior
wants to take a day off from school. Unlike my dismal effort, though, Ferris
wants to make the most of it and he does. First he enlists friends to spend
the day with him. Next, he acquires with his special powers of persuasion
the use of a Ferrari for the day. At this point a series of exciting and
fun filled events transpire: lunch at a fabulous restaurant, a trip to the
art museum, a baseball game, and then finally, Ferris caps off the excursion
by singing and dancing in a parade. Needless to say had this movie been made
while I was in high school I might have had a better idea of what to do,
but alas.
Beneath and behind all of this fun though is a rather
intriguing commentary on life. The great line of the movie, the one that
kind of unravels the simple romping good time and exposes something much
deeper is the line spoken by the school secretary who is trying to explain
why Ferris seems to live such a charmed life. She says, "Ferris is a righteous
dude."
This notion has always stuck with me. Ferris is a righteous
dude. Although it was certainly not the intent of the movie, I don't believe
it was, it is the result that a rather intriguing theological claim is being
made here. Having undergone years of theological training and now having
spent the same number in theological reflection, I can attest to this. For
in truth, one of the key claims of Paul about Jesus is that he was the righteous
dude to borrow the parlance. And to extend the metaphor, Paul's most radical
claim in his letters is that you too can be a righteous dude.
Before we get to Paul though I think it would be good
to explore what it meant for Ferris to be a righteous dude. In the story,
Ferris' righteousness is seen through contrast. His life is seen in juxtaposition
to people who are not righteous. The vice-principal is the most obvious target.
He is a bitter, petty man who seems somewhat entwined in his own need for
power. Ferris is a kind of great white whale for him. He vows to bring him
down. No one should be having this much fun in high school. Here, though,
is the first clue. What the vice principal hates is that Ferris doesn't play
by the rules. Something, I would interject, the Pharisees hated about Jesus.
The second contrast to Ferris is his sister, Jeannie.
Jeannie is the forgotten child, so she thinks, and lives in envy of Ferris.
She is infuriated that no one has seen through the sham of this guy. But
what she is angriest about is that no one has seen her. She is right and
no one knows it; she knows the truth that everyone else is missing. Jeannie
has fallen into the classic trap of confusing being right, with being righteous.
Something Paul would distinguish as the difference between the letter and
the spirit of the law. Again, Jesus infuriated the Pharisees by having no
concern for being right, only righteous.
The last contrast is subtler. One of the friends Ferris
enlists in his romp is Cameron. Cameron is a boy waiting to be loved, waiting
to be approved, waiting for his parents to stop destroying their lives and
remember they have the greatest gift life could bring, him. Here is perhaps
the greatest contrast of righteousness. To be righteous is to be willing
to risk, to dare, to strike out on a path. To be righteous is a movement,
a direction, not a place, not a posture, not even a determination. To be
righteous is somehow a setting off on a journey without all the ducks in
a row, without all the answers. Cameron was a contrast to what it means to
be a righteous dude as he was the moment of hesitation, the paralysis of
self-doubt.
In this we are getting really close to what it meant for
Jesus to have been the righteous dude and what it might mean for us as well.
Notice what Paul considers as the mark of righteousness: You have been freed.
Freedom. The contrasting characters that surround Ferris were not free. They
were tied up in anger, envy, or fear. Notice too you can be right and be
angry, envious, or afraid. You can be these and be right, but you cannot
be these and be righteous.
Paul talked about righteousness and slavery. Slavery is
a hard notion for us to get our arms around today. Brazil was the last country
to outlaw slavery and that was more than 100 years ago. In Paul's time, though,
slavery was everywhere and it was a kind of lingering fear and possibility.
If there was war, or if your finances collapsed, if you were accused of a
crime, all of these could result in slavery. Slavery was everywhere. Today,
in truth, there is no slavery. What we have in its stead is a kind of emptiness,
spiritlessness, a kind of meaningless despair. This is what "enslaves" people
today if we were to keep the word. What Paul meant by being slaves to sin
is what we can see in lives today that are unrighteous: angry, petty, small,
and afraid.
To live a life where we are always just about angry; to
live a life where we can only see the small things, where we live with a
kind of petty give and take; to live in a lingering shadow of disappointment
where we lack the courage to be free: this is what Paul was trying to convince
the Romans they could move beyond. They could be bold, bold like Jesus or
like Ferris. To live large, to live life with a kind of unbridled happiness,
a life of eternal joy, such was the mark Paul was hoping to strike.
Now it would be wrong of me to suggest that we all ditch
school or call in sick to work or drive off with reckless abandon. The "day
off' was meant not as a model, but a metaphor. Paul says, should we sin so
grace may abound? No. No. He too wanted to be clear about all this freedom
stuff. The "day off' is a metaphor of freedom. How would you live your life
if you were free? How would you spend a free day? What was so interesting
in the movie, as it is in our lives, is how much freedom we live without
simply because we dare not. What is interesting is how much of life is spent
waiting, worrying, and fuming and how little is spent rejoicing, dancing,
and laughing. How interesting it is that we long to be with people who are
free, yet how much we respect restraint.
I'm glad that Ferris is a metaphor and not a model. For
I don't believe I could approximate his actions. I can look back on my one
paltry attempt at such wilding and remember I ended up with my grandmother,
and it is an interesting testimony that she was much more of a Ferris Bueller
than I will ever be. I may not be able to approximate the actions, just as
I cannot make myself a Judaen peasant of antiquity, but I can be free. I
can be convinced of freedom, that it is not being right, but being righteous.
And to be righteous is to follow a path of freedom, to walk with a sense
of unbridled hope, to dare, to risk, to live out the life of Christ where
I treat others better than myself and live in complete joy. That I can do
as it is Christ who lives in me. For this was the life he lived.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, aim as high as you possibly
can for you will surely fail. In this Emerson is being true to himself: he
is at the same time optimistic and pessimistic. Emerson reveled in being
self-reliant and self-contradicting. But there is a strange truth in what
he is advocating, something I believe few of us really grasp. The truth is
this: we all know things fall apart; we are convinced that we will fall short,
or like Paul says, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
This does not take a great deal of power to persuade. Yet, the truth is we
are not committed to aiming high.
You know the greatest thing about mediocrity is that you
are always at your best. The gospel though is not about mediocrity. The great
hymn says, lift high the cross, not place the cross in a safe place where
it would be out of the way. Emerson's strange adage bears this out. Aim as
high as you possibly can for you will surely fail. And the truth is you will
fail again and again. But if you are going to go to the effort, and life
demands we make an effort, if you are going to go to the effort aim high.
So then we are left with a question, what is this "high" mark?
I have only found one mark that rises above the rest:
to be righteous, to live a life of freedom and joy. That would be my "day
off', my definition of the "free gift" of God. That is the only life I would
want to live forever. Amen.
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