The Crosses We Wear

I've recently started wearing a cross, more as a reminder to myself of what I want to live for, than any attempt to outwardly display my faith. It's a simple cross: stainless steel, small, and I like it. I always thought that Protestants were more inclined towards empty crosses as symbols, because we want to point more directly to the resurrection than to the crucifixion of Christ (not that you can have one without the other, but it seems somehow more hopeful to celebrate an empty cross). I assumed that this was equally the case for the crosses some of us wear around our necks.
I heard recently though, that--at least in terms of the crosses we wear--I'm at least partly wrong. Though I think I'll still hold on to my original assumption, it has certainly been expanded. What I've learned (from a professor who was talking to another professor, who specializes in religious symbols and iconography at Trinity College, Toronto School of Theology), is that when we wear empty crosses, we become the body on the cross. That's pretty heavy.
It's heavy, but helpful. Helpful, because it reminds me that we have been, through faith, "united in a death like his, [and] will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is free from sin." (Rom. 6:5-7) Though I try often to live as though Christ didn't die to offer me this freedom, that I haven't died to sin, though I often look longingly to that old master, the cross around my neck reminds me that I am freed from the slavery that keeps me from being free for God.
However, while this has been an expanding revelation for me, it has made me awfully sad for those who wear a cross simply as jewelry, as a fashion statement, as an ironic or passing glance at a faith they don't profess. I wonder at the crosses onto which they are climbing--presumably without recognizing it. I wonder if in fact, they are simply clinging to, climbing onto, the slavery and death of this world. It strikes me as a painful possibility.
Or perhaps, even the most ironic sporting of a cross, even the most flagrant abuse of the central symbol of Christian faith, is at least an accidental recognition of the power and promise of the Cross. Regardless, I have started to see such distasteful appropriation as a reminder that Christ died for all--not just for those of us who know, who have experienced and tasted the freedom that God longs for us. The sick--which we all are, to one degree or another--are the ones who need the doctor. So, if in the pain and horror of crucifixion, the humiliation and cruelty of death on a cross, God shows us, or rather becomes for us, the way to freedom, to truth, to life, it may be possible that in the unwitting--or otherwise--misuse of crosses can stand as a significant symbol for all sin, which was destroyed at the Cross and replaced by the grace we all need.

In Christ Alone

I wonder what that would be like. Soren Kiekegaard wrote about the risk of getting too close to the Bible, the risk of actually living according to the new testament: "'My God,' you will say,'If I do that my whole life will be ruined! How would I ever get on in the world.'" He suggests that this is the danger of Biblical (and probably theological) study. We sit and talk an awful lot. The difficulty for most of us is that the paradigm of the gospel and the paradigm that we consist in have very little overlap. So it becomes virtually impossible sometimes to do much more than speculate--though we (I) occasionally proclaim some righteous indignation at the state of things.
In a worship service we offered yesterday we sang the song 'In Christ Alone.' It's a beautiful song and falls nicely in my vocal range, but I wonder if we don't take a pretty significant risk in singing it. Kind of like praying for God's kingdom to come--we'd better be careful what we ask for. "In Christ alone, my hope is found" sounds great (it's nice to have hope taken care of), but what would we look like if that were true? I don't think I need to list here all the ways in which I fail to hope in Christ alone. But, suffice it to say, I have some backup plans!

Nevertheless, as I move towards the possibility of surrendering to my God, I have begun to wonder what I am so uptight about. Although from the outside allowing God to be God, seems a bit crazy, the freedom of knowing that worth and purpose are not tied up in the things we do, but in the things God has done is a strangely and wonderfully disorienting thing. The world is suddenly not so complicated--not simple mind you, and definitely not easy, but not so concerned about the silliness that we put ourselves through, for the sake of our security, for the sake of our sense of value, for the chance to individuate. That I don't have to overcome you, or look out for number one, is a freedom from violence, anger, jealousy, hatred etc. etc. It is the freedom to love, to live life to its fullest, to engage the world instead of trying to hoard it up in a special box that only I have the key to.

I'm not there yet, but I'm pretty sure it's just over that hill. Fortunately, my God walks with me, so we'll find out together. (Luke 24:13-35).

I once was lost...

The timeless words of 'Amazing Grace' are rattling around my head this morning as I reflect on yesterday's Easter celebrations. The Easter story--indeed the whole Gospel--reminds us that we have been found, that God has sought us out in an unimaginable way, in a way that we could never have anticipated. I think this is often lost on most of us. Especially at Easter, we might have the tendency to congratulate ourselves on recognizing the truth of the salvific event, on seeing in the Cross, the "right way". But this draws us no closer to the reality of Christ than those who seek to eliminate him from the Christian experience.
This past week a Jesuit friend of mine sent me a newspaper article that featured an interview with Gretta Vosper, a United Church minister and "trailblazer" in the progressive Christianity movement in Canada. At Gretta's church this week, the words of hymns about the resurrection that featured Christ, or Jesus, or God, were changed and the offending words substituted for something innocuous like "Glorious Hope"...Needless to say, even non-Christians might be left scratching their heads at the theological ineptness required to pull off such a self-aggrandizing maneuver.
Nevertheless, I fear that often those of us who would consider ourselves more theologically orthodox also run the risk of turning Jesus into what we want him to be, and assuming that when we force him into our self-specific molds we have suddenly "found Jesus" as the saying goes. One thing Easter teaches us, is that if we had looked for the God that washes our feet, cries out in agony, sacrifices himself on a cross and dies that death would be overcome in his resurrection, we never would have "found God". This event is so remarkable, so unapologetically other than what we expect from God, and yet this, and not any other idea we have, holds the truth of God, that God has chosen to reveal to us in a brazen act of Love. The god that appeases us, or who waits to slap our wrists when we're bad or bullies us into submission, is a god of our own creation. The God who loves, who challenges us, and who fills our lives with meaning is the One who reveals Godself to us.
The event of the Cross--the life, death and resurrection of Jesus--is not the divisive point that separates those of us who are right about God from those of us who aren't, but rather the point at which all people are gathered in equality--equally in need of love, meaning and renewal, and equally amazed by and in need of Grace. The Cross is not a reason for Christians to claim God, to accuse others, not even to debate theology; it is God's choice to seek out creation, to enter into our lives and to free us from all that holds us back from abundant love for God, neighbour and ourselves.

It's all been said...

Today seemed an appropriate day to begin. It's Good Friday, 2008 and it occurs to me that all that is worth saying exists in the light of what has been said, and done, today. This is the beginning of a new year. This is the new beginning of new beginnings. It is where the mystery of our lives finds its meaning. I want this blog to be a venue to for considering what it means, what it might mean, what it will mean to live within this meaning; to think about what it is to live as though what was celebrated today, in the shadow of the Cross, matters, as I (we) seek to learn and understand what living in a new light will look like.

We gathered at Kingsway-Lambton UC this morning to meet at the foot of the Cross, to ponder the sacrifice, to acknowledge the love of God. It was a tenebrae (shadows) service. It was appropriately solemn. It's good to know the next part of the story, as it turns our solemnity to anticipation--our quiet, awed submission into dancing for joy at the awesome love of God--love that passes all understanding.

Now we look towards Easter morning, as we once more approach the open tomb, amazed, and leave everything to run like Mary to tell the world. I want to tell the world about the wonder of servant love--I might even use words.