Tuesday, April 07, 2009

What does your cross stand for?

The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

1 Corinthians 1:18

The cross has been a powerful symbol for nearly 2,000 years, but what does it symbolize? I bought a slice of pizza in Philadelphia one day, and the clerk asked me what my cross meant. He was wearing a coptic cross. Someone had told him the coptic part, but he didn't seem to understand that all the variations of the cross represent the same thing -- Christ's total sacrifice of himself for us.

Conversations like that one in the pizza place make me wonder whether a cross is really an appropriate accessory item. We wouldn't wear a tiny electric chair or a miniature hangman's noose. Does a cross pendant or cross earrings trivialize the solemnity of that first cross and the value of what we were offered on that hill outside Jerusalem?

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