Wednesday Wonder

I just love turnarounds, inversions, and “things that”, in the words of the old pop song, “make you go, huh?” That’s what the audience gets when it takes in the stage play, Wicked. Of course it is playing on Broadway in New York now. And I was privileged to see it recently on tour at the Fox in St. Louis.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen the Wizard of Oz, Frank Baum’s tale of a harrowing and transforming journey. I even have my own T-shirt: Don’t Make Me Call the Flying Monkeys. I’ve always really enjoyed it on so many levels. But I have never, and I wonder why, even begun to think about the possible stories behind the story of the good and bad witches. It’s only now that I ask myself why did Glenda, the good witch of the north, the one who saved the day, always give me the creeps? And why did the wicked witch of the west, green as she was, intrigue me more? Where did she come from? Why is she this way? Well, if you want a turn around, this is the stage play to see.

The truth is that the truth is not found in appearances, and that appearance actually masks reality. You look at the surface of things, and the glare keeps you from peering beneath. And people that are exceedingly good at manipulation – be in personally, professionally, in religion or politics – buff the appearance of things, retrofit the stories, so as to create a new reality. The surface appearance may be distorted and remade as it so often is on the ideological radio and TV networks to create a new, substantially different reality.

But what you see is not what you get, not at all. The problem is this, and we discover it fully in the Jesus story: The truth about things is resisted, rejected, and in the worst case scenario, inverted or distorted to appear as though it is false. Then the false masquerades as the true. In John’s Gospel we hear that the light came into the world, but the darkness attempted to extinguish it. Well, yes.

Where do you find this today? Well, everywhere, even and especially in ourselves!

I was at a recent gathering of friends in another city and one person spoke of just why she didn’t want a care center for seniors going in near her neighborhood. There were all the arguments: It could be developed somewhere more appropriate, the traffic would be a problem, it would open the zoning door to other similar developments, and our property values would deflate. And maybe so. Who can argue with these self-interested concerns? But beneath the surface of the conversation brewed an unspoken truth: What if the care center for seniors is not a bad thing, a threat to my prosperity and well being, but rather a social good, something that adds value to our life together? What if its motivation, beyond being merely profitable, is to do good? If that is the case, then all my efforts to describe it as the source of harm and injury to me and my way of life becomes a deception, a twisting of appearance, the darkness attempting to squelch the candle flame. In no time at all the good thing is branded as the opposite, the wicked witch.

And of course, we do the reverse: We justify the harmful and rename it as not so bad after all. Poor old BP. How we’re beating up on them. And they’ve been so conscientious, too. We create Glenda, the good witch of the north. And we will not allow so much as a spot of crude to sully her spotless white dress.