Central Abbotsford

As some of you are aware, during Spring Break, I, along with two of my children, had the opportunity to travel to Mexico along with Central Abby’s own Brian and Bety Heppner and a group of other Northview congregants, serving at the Ministerios Pan de Vida orphanage in Querétaro, Mexico. It was a wonderful ten days of productive work, connecting with the kids, and seeing God at work in a part of the world that we had never been. If you haven’t already asked me about it, feel free to do so! But that’s not really what this newsletter is about…

As part of our trip, we toured around the area, including the nearby neighbourhood of El Pueblito. While there, we visited a pair of Catholic churches: the Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pueblito and the Parroquia de San Francisco Galileo. Now, there are obviously a number of differences between a Mexican Catholic church building and the context that most of us are more familiar with, but, with Easter approaching, one in particular stood out to me.

In these churches, as in most (if not all) Catholic churches that I have visited, there is a cross in the centre of the sanctuary; however, it is not simply a cross, it is a crucifix – a depiction of the cross with Jesus’ body upon it. Now, a crucifix in church is not purely a Catholic phenomenon – you will find them also in many Orthodox and Anglican places of worship – but it does stand in contrast to the bare cross that you will see at Northview and in most North American Protestant churches.

There are, of course, a multitude of historical and theological reasons for the difference in these traditions, all of which fall far beyond the scope of a weekly newsletter. What I do suggest that you consider is how each of the depictions of the cross serve as discipling tools. A crucifix stands as a stark and visceral reminder of the penalty for sin paid by Jesus – the visual emphasis on His humanity and death. An empty cross symbolizes His body taken down, placed in a tomb, and then resurrected into eternal life – His divinity and the assurance of future security for all those united to Him.

However, there is another, almost subconscious, type of discipling that the presence of the cross in our churches can produce. And it is my worry that this is more likely in the context of a church that displays an empty cross. We can become so accustomed to seeing a cross in a church that it almost blends into the background. In a way, we can take it as a given, or even for granted, that you’ll see a cross in a church. 

Consider the last time that you saw a cross in an unexpected setting (or the last time you were driving north down Gladwin Road at night and saw the illuminated cross of Sevenoaks Alliance Church standing above the surrounding buildings several kilometres in the distance) – did it not make more of an impact on you? I know that it does for me! 

The (non-Christian) sociologist Philip Rieff wrote, in his prescient 1966 book The Triumph of the Therapeutic, “when the cross becomes a symbol of power or beauty, suppressing the historical reminder of a particularly brutal instrument of humiliation and death, then its own moral authority, under the Christian rubric of ‘cross-bearing’, is threatened.” His point was that when the central event of redemptive history becomes watered down to a mere symbol or identity marker, its purpose and meaning is fundamentally undermined. My hope and prayer is that, whenever we observe a cross, it serves as a reminder to us of all aspects of Christ’s work in this world in securing the next – may it never be diminished to a mere symbol, mere marker of affiliation, or worse – something that we lord over others in self-satisfaction.

As we continue together through Holy Week – and especially this weekend as we observe Good Friday and Easter – may our collective prayer be that the power of the cross, as displayed in Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension be refreshed and renewed in, and refreshing and renewing to, our minds and hearts. Whether our focus is on His body taking our penalty, or on the tomb that lay empty to secure our reconciliation with the Father eternally, may we revel and boast solely in what He has done!

In Jesus’ name,

Eric