Look For The Cross

Each week I drive the highways around Oklahoma City generally taking my son the over thirty miles each way to taekwondo class. In town we have a hospital named St. Anthony’s. They have several billboards around town advertising their services. But one caught my attention. It says, “Look for the cross.” The main St. A’s hospital building has a big blue cross on the side of it.  While the blue cross is trying to draw people to their facilities, their advertising slogan is more important than they imagined. It has implications for every believer in Jesus Christ.                 

The whole New Testament is full of references to the “cross.” With that much ink, the cross must be important. But not just any cross. It is only the Cross of Christ that we should look for. I am always amazed at how the cross has turned from an excruciatingly painful execution method and God's chosen method of redeeming our sins into elaborate pieces of jewelry. We have glorified the cross in a way that would be foreign to Jesus’ way of thinking. How many people do you know who would wear a guillotine or electric chair around their neck? While I would love to see Madonna (not the one who was Jesus’ mother) wear a guillotine but I am not sure it would make the fashion statement she is looking for. 

While crosses as jewelry have received much attention (just look at any jewelry section of any department or specialty store), so have people who make a sign of the cross on their body. I am not talking about body art or tattoos but a series of four motions. This has drawn a lot of ridicule from some branches of Christianity as a ritual that borders on the superstitious. While in some circles that may be true I am afraid that ignorance of the meaning behind this motion looms large. When I discuss this with people I am always reminded of the movie (I know, here we go again with the movie references) “Keeping the Faith” with Ben Stiller and Edward Norton. Stiller plays Rabbi Jake Schram and Norton plays his best friend Father Brian Finn. The story is about their friendship and how they are both attracted to the same girl, played by Jenna Elfman. In one part of the story, when the two guys are younger, they check each other’s way of worship. Schram asks Finn about making the sign of the cross on your body. Finn replies with a simple method of remembering. The method tells the order of touching your body to make the sign of the cross: “spectacles, *~&+^ (a man’s private parts that rhymes with spectacles) wallet, watch.” While the wallet watch steps may be either left or right depending on which side you keep them, the head and lower torso must be done in that order.

Many people practice this order religiously without ever knowing why they do it or what it means. If everyone else is doing it I probably should too. Some people do it at the drop of a hat and at every mention of a certain word or phrase. In essence, many people drain the motion of its meaning. As one who does not do anything like that without understanding its wider implications, it took me a while after becoming a Christian before joining in this practice. No one could explain the practice satisfactorily to me. When I lived in Florida, I was on our Vestry (church board) and we had bought a new building. Someone wanted to paint the front doors red. I asked why? I got two not so good answers. The first was that every church “up north” had red doors. In Florida that is a common excuse for doing many things. The other explanation was that if the church had a mortgage then the doors were painted red. Needless to say, I was the only “nay” vote on the proposal. It is not that I am opposed to red doors per-se but we must know why we do what we do. God in his infinite wisdom redeemed this situation. The following Sunday was Palm Sunday and we always reenacted the Triumphal Entry from the back of the building outside and in through the front doors. A dear retired priest who saw every moment as a teaching opportunity explained how and where the procession would go. He reminded everyone that we would go around the building and enter through the newly painted red doors. He went on to explain that in walking through the red doors, we were walking through the shed blood of Christ. Now that made sense! At the next Vestry meeting I changed my vote.

So, what significance does making the sign of the cross on our bodies have? I realized this significance of this while in seminary. The church we attended had a cross hanging over the altar at a slight tilt. The cross was constructed out of wood molding. The design was an outline and the interior void was in the shape of a cross. Every time I received Communion, I felt God was looking through the cross at me while I was receiving the Body of Christ. Wow, what a powerful reminder of the cross. This is also a powerful reminder of why we make the sign of the cross on our bodies. The cross is not just a piece of jewelry. The cross is the only thing that can make me acceptable in God’s sight. When I make the sign of the cross on my body that is how I want God to view me, through the cross of Christ. That motion means something: something powerful, something meaningful, something eternal. In an Anglican service of worship, there are appropriate times when this is done. The reason to do it is to bring home the importance, the significance of what Jesus has accomplished for us. There is a big difference between ritual and reminder. If what we do does not bring us to the cross, the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf, then we probably should not do it. We miss the depth of meaning when doing things by rote.

I am not trying to shame people into doing something they do not feel comfortable with. I am explaining the reason why certain things are done. I do not want people to jettison meaningful portions of their religious practice but to understand the deeper meaning contained in them. And I don’t want people to take on things that are not meaningful to them either. I know when I make the sign of the cross it helps me understand the price Jesus paid for me. It also calls me to something that is beyond my total comprehension. Think about this. Evaluate all of the religious stuff (baggage) you are carrying to see if there is something you need to participate in to add significance to your relationship with Jesus Christ. Also evaluate to see if you really need to stop doing something because you have no idea why you do it. Just remember, making the sign of the cross points to the foundation of our faith. It points to Jesus, our redeemer and the Lord of Life.

In closing, this subject reminds me of the words of Jeremy Riddle’s song “Sweetly Broken.” I hope you will remember why the cross is important. Go ahead and make the sign over your body. Go ahead and wear one as a piece of jewelry. Just never forget what it points to. The first verse of the song say it best: “To the cross I look. To the cross I cling. Of its suffering I do drink. Of its work I do sing. On it my Savior, both bruised and crushed, showed that God is love, and God is just.” Because every cross should remind us of Jesus Christ, the Lord of Life.