“But they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”- Isaiah 40:31
“So the last shall be first, and the first last.”-Matt 20:16
In our society, we are obsessed with winning. We race each other to the bathroom, to the top of the slide, even to the ocean as if there isn’t enough for all of us. “Last one to the picnic table is a rotten egg!” So we imagine that the one who trips on his laces, skins his knee, and tags the table last has rotten yoke on his head. Weird.
When the Creator of the universe scandalously hung on a tree, Nietzsche got it right when he said: “God is dead”. He was no modalist. As Catholics, the words should give us chill bumps; the scene should take our breath away. Yet, somehow it doesn’t have that effect. Somehow we stand at the foot of the cross with the Roman soldier–indifferent. Blood staining our clothes, the dream of our life, angry birds, or something else has us so preoccupied we don’t have time to get small. Small enough to see who it is that hangs just above our head. Are we callous? Distracted? What is it that inhibits our perception, and where is it that we make this encounter?
First, I blame winning. The world is enamored with the winner. “Best in…”, “Greatest ever…”, we laude those whom appear, even just momentarily, successful. Sure history is full of failures, but we don’t fête those people. Sunday afternoon is about the “big play”, the moment when an übermensch, on the ground, makes a play and the crowd goes wild. We worship in awe at the ground.
Yet just above the clouds, where our eyes don’t allow us to see, we are called by faith to believe in “witnesses”. The book of Hebrews tells about this list of tragic failures, and of course we know the lineage capitulates in a stall, with an ass and maybe a pig and of course a new child’s voice. In this odd place, strange men gather around and offer the most paradoxical gifts for the setting. The child grows up in Nazarenean obscurity. Learning a blue collar craft, he fades away–becoming even smaller in the eyes of the cult of success.
His ministry is marked by failure. Even in the face of miracles, he is rejected. At the moment he frees the demoniac, they seek to kill him. His dearest friends betray him, fall asleep on the job, sink into the ocean of doubt, and his own people mistake him for an impostor. When the tree is thrust into the ground, and he is placed upon it, finally there is a response appropriate to the moment. While the crowds cry, “crucify him”, and the soldier’s beneath play a game on poker.net, the sky begins to unsettle. Thunder. Lighting. Night quickly falls upon them. The veil is torn. Dead men rise. The crowds are silent because when the universe genuflex, you feel it.
The space between his feet and the ground, places him on a throne above all others. He is now king of the universe. Is this what you expected? Did you expect this as a king’s throne? Only a few inches separates him from the ground, but it is in those inches that he is infinitely above us–for we are men and women of the earth. Our übermensch flexes his calves, only to make it up and back down again. Christ’s ascension began at his crucifixion. Don’t be confused. They did not truly take him down off the cross. No one can do that, for the height of that place is beyond what we are able to reach. In the Resurrection, we learn that on the cross he made a way for us to fly. At his ascension, he showed us what it would look like.
And to my second question, where is it that we find this place of encounter? We miss it because we are obsessed with winning. “Mea culpa” should give us a hint that this isn’t about being a winner. It is about being small; being last. When we make ourselves last, when we let the words, “Mea maxima culpa”, singe our soul like a flame off of the altar of heaven, we can truly see what takes place in the Mass. That’s right. The Mass is God’s liturgy. His drama to invite us to become last. “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you but only say the word, and I shall fly”.
When we watch birds in the sky, we get this strange feeling of jealousy. In our dreams, we work out this tension and resist the urge to awake when finally we take flight, if only for a night. Not all dreams come true, but against all of our scientific prejudice this dream will come true. Flying is for losers. We aren’t confused by the pattern of this world, because just above the clouds–and who cares if it isn’t literally above the clouds–there is a place being prepared for losers. We know we can’t get there by flexing our calves and jumping. No.
We needs wings.
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(photo source: here)
