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“GET OUT OF RELATIONSHIP FREE”

Our series title for this week of radio programs is certainly the most colorful we’ve used all year. CAN JERRY SEINFELD MAKE IT INTO HEAVEN? And today, there’s an April Fools’ Day definition we spotted that has a certain appropriateness to it, especially going with that chosen theme. Here it is:

“The joke of the day is to deceive persons by sending them upon frivolous and nonsensical errands” — have you already gotten suckered into going on a couple today? — “OR TO PRETEND THEY ARE WANTED WHEN THEY ARE NOT.”

And you know, that’s a line that can kind of hurt the other 364 days of the year too . . . when someone makes you think that you’re wanted when you’re not wanted. Especially this week, as we’re looking here and there through our TV Guides for some spiritual lessons from the farewell season of Seinfeld, that’s a recurring theme.

Coming up on May 14, and the final episode of this nine-year phenomenon called Seinfeld, a lot of people are reflecting on the fictional lives of Jerry, Kramer, Elaine, and George. And of course, our study this week has dealt with the aimless secularization of that program — how in 178 total episodes, four people lurch from crisis to crisis, one meaningless adventure after another, without God being a part of their lives. Except for a vague reference here and there during a funeral scene played for laughs — God simply is not a part of the demographic mix of this NBC hit program. He’s not there.

What is there is this endlessly repeated theme of somebody not being wanted. In one episode going back quite a ways, George Costanza is feeling like there’s no future for him. He’s professionally out-of-work, almost, trying to keep the unemployment office from knowing that his never-quite-materializing job at Vandalay Industries is completely a fabrication. And Jerry leans across the booth there in the diner. “Well, do you have any plans, what you’d like to do?” “No.” “Do you have any talents or abilities that might help you get started?” “No.” “Any irons whatsoever, of any kind, in the fire? Any random thoughts of any kind on what direction your life might take?” “No.” “Any assets anywhere, anyplace, of any kind? Do you have ANYTHING going for you?” And the one-word answers keep getting thinner and thinner. “No.” “No.” “No.” Nothing! His life is a nothing . . . and he knows it.

In a way, he’s like Job, and there was nothing sitcom-y about what happened to him. In chapter seven, he looks up at heaven and mutters in his discouragement:

“Why do I have any significance to You, [God]? Why are You even concerned about me?”

King David, whose life was generally quite a bit more rosy, had in Psalm chapter eight almost the same question.

“What is man that You are mindful of him?”

And you know, friend, maybe you’ve turned off your TV set on a Thursday night after the “Must See” lineup and thought that too. “Man, I’m nothing! I’ve got nothing going for me. Zero! Costanza and I are a couple of losers.” In his comedy routines, Jerry Seinfeld once noted how people in their living rooms don’t always experience the miracles that actors do in the commercials.

“Have you ever been sitting there watching TV and you’re drinking the exact same product that they’re advertising right there on TV?” he asks. “And they’re spiking volleyballs, jet skiing, girls in bikinis. And you’re sitting there, ‘Maybe I’m putting too much ice in mine. I’m not getting that effect.’”

Especially for this “George” character, life is one never-ending and never-successful search for happiness, for a relationship that isn’t just another April Fools joke. He meets a girl named Allison, who’s absolutely beautiful. But his interest in her stems from one unfulfilled dream in his life. He’s planning to take her to a big black-tie dinner, very upscale and fancy. And he has this vision in his mind of walking into the ballroom with a dazzling female beauty like Allison on his arm. She’ll be wearing a drop-dead gorgeous evening gown, of course, and an expensive wrap. And the mental picture is of helping her twirl her way out of that wrap. “That twirl, Jerry,” he muses, picturing it over and over. He doesn’t know how to really love a person; how to get committed in a lifelong relationship. But he’d sure like to be the guy who gives Allison the twirl at that hundred-dollar-a-plate dinner, and have people notice him. That would be the culmination of his fondest dreams in life — to twirl this almost anonymous blonde beauty. For Elaine Benes, dating a guy who calls himself “maestro” is the height of achievement. Or a person who’s sort of, kind of, maybe halfway qualified to be called “Doctor.” He flunked med school and hasn’t ever practiced legitimate medicine a single day in his life, but to be able to introduce herself as dating DOCTOR So-and-So is about as close as she can get to a real human connection with another person. For nine years and 178 half-hour episodes, these four people have just not managed to bond. As I mentioned yesterday, the four-word slogan from co-creator Larry David is rather devastating: “No learning, no hugging.”

So yes — it IS hard to both want and be wanted. We’ve all made April Fools out of ourselves in how we search for relationships. As Seinfeld once observed, everyone ought to be issued a few of those Monopoly cards, but these would read: “Get Out of Relationship Free.” So that when it’s not working out AGAIN, you simply hand the rejected person a card and breeze away to start crafting another futile and fractured connection. Which, if we were all issued the same number at the start of the game, means that some of us would soon have way more cards than others, if we received more than we gave out.

But let’s return to our theme question for the week: CAN JERRY SEINFELD MAKE IT INTO HEAVEN? Can a life without God, where a person not only can’t connect with his fellow man, but also can’t or won’t enter into a relationship with his Creator, still qualify for the kingdom of heaven?

In His long and wonderful sermon beginning in John chapter 14, Jesus gives us both the straightforward answer to that question, and also the quieter, sustaining truths that we couldn’t flesh out in nine years of shows or even ninety. In verse six, Christ tells us plainly what it takes to gain eternal life:

“I am the way and the truth and the life,” He explains. “No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

So what does it take for Jerry and George to be saved? A salary of five million dollars an episode? An Emmy statuette on your headboard? No, there’s no arguing with the Word of God; the answer’s the same for them as it is for you and for me: a relationship with Jesus Christ. Can Jerry Seinfeld make it into heaven? And the answer is a clear and unequivocal yes . . . if he accepts Jesus.

But the rest of Jesus’ sermon goes on to share something that all of us need to hear on April Fools’ Day of 1998. Friend, even after nine years of relatively godless sitcoms from the laptops of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, don’t write off these four people: Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine. Because the love of Jesus Christ is relentless in pursuing those who don’t have a relationship with Him. He actively seeks them out, not with a “Get OUT of Relationship Free” card, but with the very opposite: one of those recruiting posters that say very simply: “I Want You.” And the word “Free” is printed on His cards, too — as in “Salvation is My free gift to you.”

In the very next chapter of this sermon, Jesus opens up His heart to the cast of Seinfeld:

“As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you.” And then He almost pleads: “Now REMAIN in My love.”

For those who can’t seem to last a week with a new girlfriend, who can’t see beyond the shallow pleasure of a banquet twirl, the clumsy anonymity of first-date sex, Jesus comes after us and invites us into a relationship that lasts. In fact, we can accept as very personal to each of us what Jesus says to His 12 disciples:

“I no longer call you servants,” He tells them (and us): “Because a servant does not know his master’s’ business. Instead, I have called you friends.” Now that’s a relationship!

Back in his Psalms, King David writes some very plain words to the creative staff of NBC’s #1 program, where he says this: “Only a fool says there is no God.” But then he goes on, time and time and time again, to tell us how relentless is the love of the Lord in pursuit of people like the hopeless George Costanza. Probably the best line of all comes from chapter 118:

“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever.”

So friend, let’s not assume anything just now about the destiny of these four fictional people whose names are known all around the world. Will God be able to save George and Jerry and Elaine and Kramer? He’s certainly going to give it His very best shot.

And for each of you listening — and for me here in the recording booth — the same is true. Maybe your life doesn’t match the glamor of the commercials you see, and the love life of your hero on NBC, empty as it may be, far surpasses yours. Maybe someone has just broken up with you using George Constanza’s patented line, which he claims to absolutely OWN: “It’s not you, it’s me.” Which is cheap comfort when someone is pushing you out the back door of their life here on April 1. But through every pain you may ever feel, there’s a Savior whose love for you is everlasting. It endures through the ups and downs of television ratings: good seasons and bad ones. When everything else is canceled, when all of life is a bad rerun, there’s a Savior out looking for you, relentlessly passionate in His love, right this very moment with His card: “I want you.”