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FireApril 05, 2009 Palm/Passion Sunday Let me offer a suggestion for how you might spend this afternoon. Take a leisurely walk down 5th Avenue – it’s just two blocks away. Travel south, away from the Park and the Plaza Hotel. Take the same route as the so-called Easter parade that will happen next Sunday, but do this with a different intention. Take this stroll as a kind of mini pilgrimage; enjoy the spring weather but continue pondering the mystery within the story we’re telling today. For instance, you could hold the idea that Jerusalem was a jam-packed, bustling crossroads for commerce, and within its walls stood one of the wonders of the world in its day, King Herod’s magnificent temple and the Temple Mount. An immense and astonishing human achievement. The city was a cosmopolitan melting-pot. Herod was a master builder and it reflected his ambitions for place and power within the Roman Empire. Jerusalem was imposing and inspiring and chock-full of human aspiration of every kind. On your 5th Avenue stroll, make note of the impressive emporiums to commerce and the monumental scale of the street and buildings. Note how towers dwarf a few churches. Pass Bergdorf’s and Tiffany’s and Trump and Abercrombie. Slowly flow down the walk until you reach the Promenade of Rockefeller Center. Standing at the curb for a moment look towards the slender, elegant tower of 30 Rock, now the site of Tina Fey’s hit TV show. Perhaps the architecture will strike you as it did me one fine, bright day three decades ago, like the nave of an immense cathedral, the tower rising like the highest of all steeples before a sunken altar with the dazzling sculpture of a golden man. He floats above the gardens and the rink, or seasonally, below the famous Christmas Tree. The centrality of his presence is inescapable, rising 18 feet and weighing 8 tons. He’s thought to be among the most famous sculptures in our land, falling just behind the likes of the Statue of Liberty and the monumental Lincoln in his Washington memorial. The golden man is Prometheus; in Greek mythology he was of the earliest race of gods known as the Titans. The reigning court of Mt. Olympus headed by Zeus had conspired to destroy the world by depriving it of fire. Prometheus stole the fire and gave it to the race of humanity and for this treason, Zeus had Prometheus chained to a rock where by day an eagle would come and tear out his liver; by night his terrible wound would heal only to cause the repetition of the agony as the sun ascended every morning. Over millennia in many works of art and literature Prometheus has been understood as a champion of humanity. The real interest of the story pertains to what he holds in his hand. Fire has been understood as the pre-eminent tool for humanity’s ascendancy and creativity. So Prometheus has been emblematic of human ingenuity. And much like words inscribed on a church wall, the golden words embossed on the wall behind Prometheus proclaim, “Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved a means to mighty ends.” Its fitting that at the heart of a remarkable cathedral to human achievement – a memorial to so-called “mighty ends” – we find Prometheus on prominent display. Like stepping behind the altar, stepping into the lobby of the tower we would behold two monumental murals entitled: “Man’s Intellectual Mastery of the Material World,” and “Man’s Conquest of the Material World.” These are the celebrated Promethean outcomes made manifest in the skyscrapers and the commerce they house. Every once in a while, say at least once a decade, I recommend this pilgrimage specifically on Palm Sunday. A few of you have heard me make this suggestion before. The alchemy in blending the stage-set of New York, the current state of the world and the re-telling of Jesus’ extraordinary story is too good to pass up. If it were logistically possible, our Palm Sunday parade would have slowly led us to 30 Rock, matching the cadence of the hymn we just sang: “Ride on! Ride on in majesty! Jesus rode into his impressive city that was brimming with human aspiration of every kind. It seems well-matched to the impressive, realized aspirations of Rockefeller Center, all of 5th Avenue, Times Square, Broadway and Wall Street. This city asserts to a fare-thee-well the possibilities within human ingenuity. Human achievement at its greatest. The gift of fire unleashed. Hasn’t this fire attracted many of us here, like moths attracted to a bright light? Human nature hasn’t changed all that much over the course of our recorded history – with just a little effort we can begin to understand the dynamics swirling within 1st century Jerusalem. We recognize the players and their motives embedded within their time and place. They’re not so unlike us, right? Surely that’s a principle reason this story rattles our conscience and remains so vital in the telling. If we had taken our Palm Sunday 5th Avenue parade this morning I would have pointed out how the Promethean monument stands across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which was ostensibly built for the greater glory of God. The greater glory of humanity across the street from the greater glory of God. Of course, even the church can confuse the one for the other. But at our clearest and best we remember Jesus for something very different than the supposed gift of mythical Prometheus. Part of the problem Jesus encountered with his own followers was that he did not live up to their expectations of achievement. A stupendously gifted man, he honored something, or should I say, Someone, more than his own abilities, more, even, than his own life. He seemed like a seriously chronic under-achiever. In the process Jesus bequeathed to us a very different sort of monument – the cross – a humiliating symbol of defeat, not of triumphant accomplishment. Or so it seemed. For with Jesus, things were not as they appeared. For him first things were last, and last things were first. For him humility was glory. The lowly and rejected were elevated. For him the poor in spirit, those that mourned, those who hungered and thirsted for righteousness, the merciful, the peacemakers, the persecuted – all these held a place of honor and blessing. And so this strange symbol of the cross, standing outside the city within the garbage dump, a place of death, became the emblem of a very, very different sort of success than what the spirit of the time espoused. As I alluded this week in my email message, Teilhard de Chardin had Promethean energy in mind when he wrote, “Some day after mastering the winds, the waves and gravity, we shall harness for God the energy of love, and then for the second time in history we will have discovered fire.” The energy of love produces different outcomes than Promethean energy. Where that erects a Rockefeller Center, the energy of love erects a cross. Promethean energy creates AIG and warships and General Electric and subways and nuclear fission and cars and Hollywood and on and on in innumerable ambiguous outcomes. The energy of love produces persons who, in the words of the Apostle Paul, share the mind of Christ who took the form of a servant and said things like, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Promethean energy creates things out of stuff. Love creates a family. Fritz Kunkel points out that both Prometheus and Jesus bring us fire. Prometheus was punished by Zeus for having stolen fire and bringing that fire to the world. Jesus also brought the world fire, but ironically was punished by the human race. 2 Why is this? that’s the question that lingers in the air. Why do we crucify the things that matter most of all? Why do we subvert, ignore or otherwise resist the hand of the one who loved us into life in the first place? Why are we more enamored of the gifts than the giver? Why are we like children squabbling over the toys strewn under the Christmas tree oblivious to the one who wrapped them up for us as a wonderful surprise? The world to which the cross points is not attained by amassing our strength and storming the gates. Instead, it would seem to be attained by surrender, by discovery that talent alone does not a human make; that human achievement, as remarkable as it may be, is not the real point of it all. Our own mortality ought to remind us of that. One day we will leave as we came – with very little say in it. What does seem to matter then with the little bit of time we’ve been given, is how well we manage to love. That’s the story of the life and times of Jesus. That’s it. That’s what we’re supposed to get. That’s the point of it. That’s what this week is about: drilling down into the heart of things, walking with Jesus through the bitter end so we might discover the truly astonishing beginning on the other side of suffering, ultimately traveling all the way to resurrection. Go the distance this week. See the conflagration his fire ignites. Pray that your own soul catches flame. __________ Previous sermon: The Heart of the Gospel • Next sermon: Named by the Compassionate Companion All past sermons |
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