A Good Question

Someone asked the other day why the church continues to make the cross its central symbol when a fish, for example, might serve better in the modern world. Good question!

The cross anchors our faith in the world of political and social violence. It is about people paying the price of insight, vision and action.

The cross reminds us of the imbalance of power in life. The establishment has the weapons and structures to impose punishment and terror and those who dare to oppose them often end up as their victims.

The cross illuminates human feelings. In the face of it some people run, some hide, some ridicule, some taunt, some grieve, some laugh. No one person or cause is universally seen as good every time in every eye. We work amid both support and criticism.

The cross is a symbol of the ultimate damage to be done. Violent, degrading death marks the range. Before it, all shudder. Yet the cross is only page one of a three-page story. On page two is what happens next after the world has done its worst. The life lost, and the cause it championed, become other than dead, other than gone. They rise again in new ways which no weapon can now kill. Page three involves the heartened support of that life and cause given by countless others in new generations, given by us on ours. Death has “lost its sting”, for “from the ground there blossoms, red, life that shall endless be”.

The “crucifix”, the Christ-figure on the cross, is familiar on the Anglo-catholic side of the faith spectrum. It comes from an early period in the church’s long life and reflects a theology of human sin and alienation before the God.. The Christ, the perfect offering, the “lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world” breaks through the alienation and gives us access to the throne of God. At every Mass this sacrifice is re-enacted as we seek atonement time after time.

The cross in the Protestant Reformation churches is an empty one, signifying that the sacrifice has been made and accepted once and for all. The Christ and his passion for life are alive among us now to empower our own. Our Communion services, the equivalent of the Mass, focus on thankfully remembering the one-time gift, not on recreating it each time.

The cross is, at heart, a tool, a way of ordering and understanding reality. It is a light that illuminates a world view. These days world views are numerous, so the cross will have no meaning whatsoever for millions around us.

Personally, the cross grounds me in this life and its challenges. Faith is about how I live, what decisions I make, what stands I take. If we seek to move the world we will face formidable enemies and risk a cruel death. It has always been so. Yet crosses are not all. Social victories too are real and do change the world. Pages two and three of the cross story assure us that the risk is worth it and the power of new life is with us everywhere.