How can we know what something is worth?
Two recent auctions have challenged our capacity to answer that question.
Last month, cryptocurrency businessman Justin Sun outbid six rivals at a Sotheby’s auction to purchase a conceptual piece created by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.
We’re not talking about a bronze sculpture or an oil painting on canvas. Sun paid $6.2 million for Cattelan’s masterpiece – a ripe banana duct-taped to the wall. A week later, the 34-year-old entrepreneur held a press conference in Hong Kong, during which he ate the banana. “It’s really quite good,” he observed, obviously committed to getting his money’s worth.
Then last Saturday, at a Heritage Auction in Dallas, an unidentified individual bid the staggering sum of $28 million to take home one of the four pairs of ruby slippers known to have been worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz.
Those slippers have quite a backstory. For years they were the prime attraction at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, the childhood home of the actress. In 2005, Terry Jon Martin – a small-time crook trying to turn his life around – decided he would pull one last job.
He couldn’t resist the opportunity to steal those famous slippers. After all, they were covered with priceless rubies. So one night he sneaked into the museum, smashed the display case, grabbed the shoes, and ran.
Only then did Martin realize they were covered not with gemstones but cheap red sequins. He could immediately relate to the frustration of the Wicked Witch of the West.
The slippers vanished for more than a decade. The FBI, hot on the trail of what authorities called “one of the most recognizable pieces of memorabilia in American film history,” received thousands of tips. The recovery was finally made by means of a sting operation in 2018.
Until last weekend, no one dreamed that anybody thought the slippers would fetch $28 million. But the actual worth of something – especially in the worlds of art and sports memorabilia – is clearly a flexible concept.
Intriguingly, the notion of “worth” appears in one of the Christmas season’s most cherished solo numbers.
The 19th century French composer Adolphe Charles Adam wrote more than fifty ballets and operas. Most are unremembered. But no one looks past Adam’s O Holy Night. In France it’s known simply as Cantique de Noel, or the Christmas Song.
An American pastor, John S. Dwight, wrote the English words that stir millions of people every December:
O holy night, the stars are brightly shining; it is the night of our dear Savior's birth
Long lay the world in sin and error pining, 'til He appeared and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices. O night divine, O night when Christ was born
O night divine, O night, O night divine!
Truly He taught us to love one another; His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother; and in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we, let all within us praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! O praise His Name forever! His power and glory evermore proclaim.
O night divine, O night, O night divine!
Contemporary artists from Placido Domingo to Celine Dion have risen to the challenge of the emotional rises and falls of Adam’s timeless song. Here is Carrie Underwood’s recent take.
Let’s go back to the second line of the first verse: “Long lay the world in sin and error pining, ‘til He appeared and the soul felt its worth.”
The songwriter makes a direct connection between the Incarnation – God’s radical strategy of walking onto the stage of human history as one of us – and the dawning realization that our lives, our souls, must be worth more to God than we can possibly imagine.
The late radio personality Paul Harvey was fond of telling a story about a gruff farmer.
Christmas had never made sense to him – especially the classic storyline that God had chosen to become human. Really? What would ever induce the Creator of the universe to pull a stunt like that?
On a bitterly cold December evening he was getting ready for bed when he heard an irregular thumping sound against the storm door of his kitchen. It was birds. Sparrows were trying to get into his house.
Sparrows can die on a cold, cold night, unless they find shelter. These birds had been drawn by the apparent warmth of his house.
The farmer was touched. He bundled up and trudged through the snow toward his barn. He opened the barn door and beckoned the sparrows. He turned on the lights. But the sparrows, which had scattered when he opened the door to leave his house, hid in the darkness.
“They’re afraid of me,” he realized. What could he do to earn their trust?
He laid down a trail of cracker crumbs. None of the birds came toward the barn. He came in behind them, gently flapping his arms. “Fly inside and be safe!” he urged them. But they took off in alarm.
It quickly became clear that this was a hopeless task. To the sparrows, his motives were impossible to discern. To them he was nothing but a giant, alien creature, one who was speaking words they could not understand, and making motions that looked like threats.
“If only I could be a sparrow,” he sighed. “Just for a few moments. I could assure them that I mean them no harm, and show them where they can be safe.”
And in that same moment it dawned on him: That was the very thing God had done.
The Creator went to the extreme of becoming one of his creatures. So he could speak clearly to us. So there would be no misunderstanding.
Because he thought we were eternally worth it.
And what can we do in response?
Fall on your knees. O hear the angel voices.
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