Fame Is a Fickle Food

Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set
Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the
Farmer’s corn
Men eat of it and die
-Emily Dickinson

Palm Sunday celebrates celebration. And celebration makes celebrity. In the mid-twentieth century, low Episcopalians like me treated Palm Sunday like it was Easter’s warm up act. The ties were clipped on and the shoes were shined as we waved cruciform-ed palms in giddy post service coffee hours. We ran around, joked, and ate all the morsels of goodness set before us before The Big Show the following Sunday.

Instead of a pre-Easter dress rehearsal, Palm Sunday is better understood as a cautionary tale. The joy of human triumph 2,000 years ago in that processional train into Jerusalem set the table for the Last Supper’s “fickle food” of Fame. One person’s triumph is another’s threat.

The Second Act of Palm Sunday quickly reverses course from adulation, as we abruptly kill the donkey-riding celebrity. No coffee hour, nor morsels, not even origami-ed palms anymore.

In a Puritan morality play, pride goeth before a fall. We all get what we deserve. Our impossibly flawed character will out. We ate the apple. But we want laud. We want recognition. We want justice in recognizing our worth. Our achievements are what we earned. Dammit.

In my day job, I work as an architect, designing houses, renovations, and other miscellany. We architects are good at breast beating love demands. I recently entered three of my projects in a competition. Over the years, I have won over 30 of them — and lost over 300. I am below the Mendoza Line of Fame. When real estate agents want to sell the houses I have worked on, I am “The Famous Architect.” But any designer knows that many who come to you because you are “famous” leave you thinking you are not for them.

And they are right.

Who we are is not the genesis of fame. Fame happens when others see themselves in you. Jesus was triumphant after over 30 years of minor miracles and teachings because others saw God in Him. But fame exposed him to different people, people who were terrified of him. Within just a few passing days, the gears of power moved to turn the people against this would-be Messiah from nowhere. They and the people could not see behind their projections to the God who walked among them. The very same people who shouted “Hosanna” would later shout “Crucify him.” We would call it irony if it weren’t so tragic. If it weren’t so very human.

We are in the golden age of fame and terror. We eat of fame — a food that even the crows wouldn’t dare to ingest — believing it to be nourishment for our souls. The digital hearts that flash before our eyes taste sweet, but the moment its morsels enter our bloodstream, we die. The internet extols in instant, universal exposure of ourselves in unlimited reactionary zeal. Loved or hated, shared either way. Who we are is just what a glowing screen says we are.

The fickle food of fame has become reality for most of us. Jesus was not the rock star of Palm Sunday, or the evil terrorist of Good Friday. He is God. He is human, too — just like every hero and villain we extol and mock, this instant, on the same platform you are reading now.

Famous, infamous, beloved, hated, we are just us — a full on miracle we had nothing, nada, zero to do with. We are what we have been given, and that includes being given the ability to use our gifts. We can hate, we can love, and we can understand. We are so good at loving on Palm Sunday, so good at hating on Good Friday, I hope I can be that good at understanding on Easter.