Pastor's Message for November, 2006
Look in Any Sanctuary
On my youthful trips to and from school, sometimes on foot, sometimes on bicycle, I would invariably go past the All Saints Roman Catholic Church, where my best friend, Bruce Connor, went to church. The church doors at All Saints always seemed to be wide open in the mornings as I went by, and I would peer in from the sidewalk and feel caught up in mystery, because this sanctuary was so unlike the one where I worshiped, just a half a block away. I dared not go inside, but from the sidewalk I could see that it was much darker than my sanctuary, that there was a marble altar in the front, and we didn't have one of those, and a red lamp suspended from the ceiling near the altar...and we didn't have one of those. There were also statues in there I could see from the doorway, and we didn't have those, and a bank of little candles near the back, some of them lighted, and we didn't have candles. So it was different...and mysterious for someone who went with his family to worship in a low-church Protestant sanctuary.
But one day, when my friend Bruce convinced me that we could briefly step inside the All Saints sanctuary and there would be no sanctuary cops to whisk us away, I noticed something very similar to an object we did have in our sanctuary - and that was a cross. Now there was a difference, because this cross also had a statue of Jesus hanging on it - a crucifix - whereas the cross in our sanctuary was bare, the vertical and the horizontal members only. But in either version, the cross is the cross and stands for Christ's suffering on our behalf.
Whatever differences there may in the sanctuaries of the many branches of the Christian faith, the one thing you will always see - excepting only the most radical and primitive versions of Christianity - is the Cross of Jesus Christ, whether empty or with the Crucified One thereon. And most always, that cross is front and center in the sanctuary and usually lifted high above all else, as the sign that this is our true identity and our guiding image. For here is where we see what love is really all about. Of course there wouldn't be a church or a faith to proclaim if the cross were the last word and there were no resurrection to celebrate. But how ready and eager we seem to be to forgo Good Friday and skip right to Easter Sunday, to celebrate the triumph and forgo the tragedy, the death of Love, without which the way to eternal life would be barred for us.
We can take heart that such is the way it was from the very beginning, with the very earliest followers of Jesus. The disciples were anticipating a triumphalist faith, not a journey to a cross. And nowhere do we see this more poignantly that in Peter's dialogue with Jesus in a village in Caesarea Philippi; for Peter, the word Messiah was simply incompatible with Jesus' obedience of God that would lead to suffering and death. And Peter was only the most vocal of the disciples, all of whom, we know, were seeking a path of glory rather than affliction because they were obsessed with and argued about who would be greatest in the kingdom, getting to sit on the right or left hand of the King. the seat of power and privilege in this venture.
But it's the Cross we see in any sanctuary - not the scepter of power nor the throne of status nor the testimonials to success. We may forget all that the cross implies - it's rather easy when the cross has become so familiar and our crosses are so excellently crafted and finely polished... easy to forget that the cross is one of the cruelest instruments of human torture. What a paradox: the gateway to life is opened by a cross, not a golden key.
The cross, then, is central in our formation as disciples of Christ and also the splintered key to understanding life...and understanding how and where God is present in life. The cross means that, just as at Golgotha, where God knew the anguish of losing a beloved Son, God is present whenever and wherever there is suffering and sorrow. Yes, God is everywhere, but the testimony of God's people through the ages has been that somehow God draws closest in the heartache and the misery and the horror more than the glory and the triumph.
It is why in the devastating loss and immeasurable grief of September 11 - which we remembered again on its fifth anniversary, and in which again we heard the that fierce question, "Where was God in this unspeakable horror?" - we know the only answer is that God was in the midst of it, present with his people as they perished, his the very first heart to break as the fires raged and the buildings crumbled. The cross erected amid the rubble and the death of Ground Zero.
As you walk the walk of faith today with whatever is heavy on your hearts, with whatever wounds you may be inflicted - bodily, emotional, spiritual, relational - the cross in our midst recalls that God has been where you are and is present in your suffering and heartache even now...and holds you fast in his care. "Nothing in life or in death," writes Paul, "can separate us from the love of God."
God never promised that faith would insulate us from hurt and heartache. What God did promise us is that in God's time and in God's way, the cross would not be the last word, that all suffering will be transformed by resurrection love, that the End is Life, not death. Sometimes we see that transformation, or at least the beginnings of it, in this life; sometimes we await the complete vision of transformation in life beyond this life. However, the promise is sure and sealed in the resurrection of the crucified Christ. Easter will follow Good Friday, the empty tomb will interpret the ugly cross. The world will often be a "Good Friday world," but it will not be a godforsaken world - rather a place of God's loving presence and divine solidarity with us.
How to remember this promise? Look in any sanctuary.
Blessings to all,
Rev. Dr. Floyd W. Churn
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