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BrandedFebruary 28, 2010 Second Sunday in Lent Listen to part one of this sermon. Listen to part two of this sermon. In my Faith Matters message this week, I quoted an article that ran in the Financial Times on the occasion of one of the world's largest advertising firms, Young and Rubicam, publishing its annual league table of global consumer brands. With a grand flourish they announced that "Brands are the new religion. People turn to them for meaning." The brands that succeed, they claimed, "are the ones that have the passion and energy to change the world and to convert people to their way of thinking." "Successful brands stand for more than a product, they represent a set of beliefs and the people who built them are like the missionaries who spread Christianity around the world" - so claimed a spokesman for the advertising firm. "It was the passion with which the missionaries communicated beliefs that led to people responding in the millions, because the religions were based on powerful ideas that gave meaning and purpose to life. In the same way, the most successful brands were those that stood not just for quality and reliability but for a set of beliefs," or should I say, "briefs" since Calvin Klein was among the top ten belief brands cited in the article. Columnist Richard Tompkins offered that "Young and Rubicam has a point. The decline in religious belief has left a void in people's lives that for some has been filled by consumerism. And brands are consumerism's icons. To put it crudely, if one product is as good as another, people will buy whichever is cheaper. But brands offer a way out of this - if people can be persuaded they are getting a way of life as well as a product, they may be prepared to pay more." And evidently find their identity, purpose and meaning in the process. There's something of the old adage in this about money following our interest. If you ever wish to know what you really value versus what you say you value, keep track of how you spend your money beyond basic necessities. But now I wonder if the Great Recession will fundamentally alter this attitude. I don't know where Toyota stood in the brand rankings, or any product Tiger Woods endorsed. Maybe our culture will evolve beyond our branding-as-meaning addiction. On the other hand, attendance at religious services has been in decline in western culture for some time. As another advertising consultant observed, tens of thousands have been married at Disney World, fans of Harley-Davidson motorcycles are now buried in Harley emblazoned coffins and many folks flock to IKEA Sunday mornings rather than attend church. Brands are consumerism's icons - that phrase captured my attention. We have icons here at Christ Church, of course. Some on the screen back here date from the 16th and 17th centuries. The large mosaic figure of Christ is an icon as well. From a theological point of view icons are images that point to a reality beyond themselves. They are never to be venerated for their own sake. So it is for most walking into this space: it wouldn't occur to us to worship the images we find here, but the larger reality the images inspire. It's a bit like a window through which we can view the magnificent vista beyond. Indeed, when functioning at its best, that's what this entire sanctuary was meant to evoke - it was meant to take us out of ourselves, out of our culture, and literally escort us into spiritual sanctuary. Brands are consumerism's icons. How does that sort of iconography work, do you suppose? It certainly has the ring of truth. Is it the brand itself which bestows meaning or does a brand open into some larger reality beyond itself, and if so, what is that larger reality? What is the object or value being venerated in such a religion? But this begs the question concerning those altars before which people generally genuflect. Or personalizing it for our purposes today, at which altars do you genuflect? That might seem a bit impertinent since you're here on Sunday instead of shopping IKEA. But honestly, if not IKEA, then Bloomingdales, the Hamptons, the Meadowlands, Wall Street or some other venue could easily have at least as much pull for your attention, right? Knowing myself as I do, I believe that James Russell Lowell had it right when he said, "Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this - that you are dreadfully like other people." Which is simply to say that you and I cannot escape our culture. We're every bit a part of it as the next person. And surely you don't doubt for a minute that our culture encourages, very nearly insists, we worship at multiple altars through a phantasmagoria of so-called icons. I don't think it's an accident that many new churches are designed in the style of shopping malls and secular theaters today. The operating theory for these new buildings is that people should walk into a space that seems familiar and then find themselves sort of tricked into thinking about things that they might not otherwise have considered, things like God for instance. But I wonder about this. I wonder if in the process of building a church that looks like a mall an inadvertent icon has been erected to the glory of that which our culture venerates above all else, complete with food courts, full of all our favorite brands. By the way, Coca-Cola was number one on Young and Rubicam's list-after all, it's the real thing. But I'm not sanguine about pointing fingers at someone, somewhere else. Though we might feel rather self-satisfied with our resplendent space, the fact remains we reside in the city of a thousand, ten thousand gods. And each of us worships at other shrines. Some of these shrines have distinct locations, others are more ethereal. But make no mistake, these gods are real. They are real because we have willed them so. They are as real as the golden bulls the ancient Israelites fashioned when they were wandering in the wilderness of their exodus from Egypt. Ours are just as real and ultimately as impotent and foolish. Now I love New York City. I love living here. I love its energy, passion and diversity. I like living in the place many people refer to as the center of the universe, which is itself a sort of icon, isn't it? A city built to the glory of humanity. An international crossroads, brimming with movement, excitement, danger and opportunity. A place of great ambitions and inflated appetites. This iconic status within the world's imagination accounts for the attention it receives from would-be terrorists. It's a pagan city, really. By pagan, I mean a place of multiple gods. Though the axis of Jewish life and the location of the awesome temple, ancient Jerusalem was also a pagan city in a similar way. For centuries it had been a major spiritual center in the Middle East and by the time of Jesus, Jerusalem had long been a place where people had worshiped gods whose names had become largely unknown. Multiple conquering armies had their turn at imposing their rule and their culture over this strategic crossroads for trade and culture. So in Jerusalem we have an ancient city, a so-called holy city, a commercial city, a geographically strategic city, which still remains at the heart of the world, still the focus of the world's attention, still an epicenter for religious, political and military turmoil. And still an important economic engine for the region. This city, said Jesus, likes to kill its prophets. And so he laments, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How often I would have gathered you and your children as a hen gathers her brood, but you would not!" The population is unclear about its fundamental allegiances. Soon Jesus will be put to death by a collaboration of those various political, religious and military interests which didn't appreciate exposure as the empty icons they were. And his words and their actions reverberate down through the centuries to our present circumstance, in our own iconic city, among our gods. And are the stakes any different, really? Perhaps we're a bit more like ancient Rome than Jerusalem. Rome was perceived as the center of the world's power in addition to being the world's crossroads. New Yorkers, I think, liken their situation to those pleased to be living and moving among the so-called movers and shakers, some yearning for a drug-like hit of a "proximal high." As Frank Sinatra sang, "If I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere. The Apostle Paul, technically a citizen of Rome, when writing to his friends at Philippi told them that first and foremost "we are citizens of heaven. Our Lord Jesus Christ has power over everything." That's the reality that icon up there is pointing to. Walking into this space we are meant to be reminded of where our true citizenship resides. Reminded of who's who and what's what, really. If we miss this we will have missed the crucial point. Crucial, from the Latin crucis, meaning "cross." Coming to understand how this awesome power over everything was born from the cross is the central Lenten discipline. Friends, it's a powerful freedom that comes from knowing where your true citizenship resides. It's a powerful freedom to know from whom you have come and to whom you will one day return. It's a powerful freedom to know who your real family is. That freedom comes only when worshiping at the altar of the real God. Archives: all past sermons |
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