I’ve been reading a fair bit over the last few weeks about Alan Joyce and his golden parachute - a lavish severance package in the order of millions of dollars that he now gets to enjoy as he floats back to earth in retirement.
He leaves Qantas in terrible shape – accusations of sales on non-existent flights, an unwillingness to repay the government covid payments and instead enrich shareholders, a high court loss against workers the company illegally retrenched and then offshored their roles.
It feels so unjust that Joyce, at the end of his career, would be so enriched when the last few months has demonstrated that the company has taken from every one of us – either in poor service, poor treatment of his workers or by taking government money that could be spent on other things that benefit the community. The practice of giving golden parachutes doesn’t improve the company in any way – after all, it’s received by someone leaving.
But all this has also left me pondering just how unlucky you’d be if you jumped from an aeroplane, pulled the cord, and gold came out. All that’s going to do is weigh you down as you approach the dust.
I regularly read Psalm 73. I find it calms me down and gives me perspective when things are not right. In it, Asaph, the composer, is incensed at the wealth of the wicked. They seem to be getting away with so much. Pride is like a necklace for them. They seem carefree, while the just seem to struggle along. Asaph climbs higher up the hill in Jerusalem noticing the houses are getting nicer as he goes and he’s getting angrier as he climbs. But then he get’s the house at the top of the hill – God’s house. And as he walks across the threshold his whole countenance changes. The architecture of the Temple was perfectly arranged to help worshippers see the story the world is really in. God hasn’t missed any of the evil, and he will deal with it in the end. Moreover, God hasn’t missed Asaph’s self-righteousness – and he’s dealing with that too.
We don’t have access to the same architecture and so we might feel sad about that, but we have something better. Jesus, the new and better temple. He shows us the story we’re in, how he has saved us and gives us a new countenance in the face of injustice.
grace and peace,
Steve