skyscrapers

by Zach Kincaid

Up a bent back of stairs, I climb these great quasimodo heights. Year after year, layer upon layer, floors on floors have slowly formed a breed of long-necked giants. Looming over their creators, these skyscraping beasts with their thousand glass eyes demand homage. Below, mazed serpents slither in each day and retreat at its close.

Why do these industrial goliaths stand? Who holds David’s five smooth stones? Where lies a Babel resolution? Has the church simply bent its knee?

Stale steeples dot the stolen landscape. Before the giants, they dominated. Now, with low loftiness, they hardly peer into a city’s heart let alone a people’s – those single swords dangling, fledgling in a sky full of options. They have surrendered it to economic monuments. Yet, their bellies lay bloated, complexes constructed not for glory but for greed, not to service and worship but to self-serve the ego.

Stretched out to accommodate, they applaud on queue, “Yes, we will find peace in barna’s circus polling through our parking lots and Bible shows.” Might the church stretch and fly with St Francis' birds, who after hearing the gospel, flew out in the shape of a cross to tell the world?

Skyscrapers own the heights now, and street corners seldom ring with fiery preachers. Attempt to drive camels through the eyes of heaven's needle with the dead weight of these giants who prick the sky. Keep climbing up that babel altar and see what you find.

Thank you to Victor Hugo who placed Quasimodo atop Notre Dame to survey the city of Paris. Though the point of view today is predominantly different, it is fundamentally the same. Might we have the love of church to enliven her with Quasimodo and courage enough for Christ to ravish even our mortal bodies to lie, in the end, with the one we love.