Crucifix
Crucifix
Last year I spent many Sundays leading music for a small Anglican church plant called Holy Trinity McKinney. I quickly learned that Anglicans have all kinds of ancient, strange, and lovely traditions.
For example, Anglican churches process and recess. I think of it as two parades - one at the beginning and one at the end of each worship service. The worship leaders parade in during the opening hymn and parade out during the closing hymn. One participant, the crucifer, carries the church’s processional cross, or crucifix.
I didn’t grow up seeing crucifixes in the Presbyterian church that raised me. I would see them when visiting my grandparents’ Catholic parish in Tucson, AZ but I never really understood why they were still displayed.
I wondered, “if Jesus is risen from the dead then why do we still display images of him hanging on the cross?”
In May I got to spend a couple weeks in Italy and I saw crucifixes everywhere - on street corners, in shops, and adorning the country’s countless cathedrals. The haunting image of our man of sorrows, hanging on first century Rome’s lynching tree, seemed to be in such stark contrast with the opulence of the regal cathedrals. That juxtaposition of poverty, suffering, and injustice, mixed with splendor, beauty, and power, stuck with me.
A few months later, back at Holy Trinity McKinney, we were celebrating the feast of All Saints. I had selected the joyful “When the Saints Go Marching in” for our closing hymn and, as the service wound down, I began to strum. Father Erik and his daughter paraded out, lifting high the crucifix, as we sang:
“When they crown him Lord of all / When they crown him Lord of all / Oh, how I want to be in that number / When they crown him Lord of all.”
And then:
“When the kingdom is revealed / When the kingdom is revealed / Oh, how I want to be in that number / When the kingdom is revealed.”
And then it hit me. In this parade, song, and crucifix I was witnessing the collision of unimaginable suffering and jubilant hope. And this startling juxtaposition felt truer than anything.
Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, the most breathtaking Son of Man, was hanged on a tree. This is startling, yes, but perhaps not as surprising as we may think. Study history for one semester and you’ll face the shameful truth that we humans pathologically crucify the most beautiful saints and make kings and presidents of the ugliest strongmen.
However, contrary to our human history, this not how the crucifixion story ends. We know Jesus, homeless and unjustly sentenced to death, to be the King. The Lord. Very God.
It seems as absurd as a child lifting the image of dying man while singing, “Oh, how I want to be in that number.” And yet this is the faith we’ve been handed down. The faith that claims that the suffering servant will, in the end, reign. That the strongman will yet be bound. That the empires and nation states and war machines will one day be overthrown, conquered by a Prince of Peace. And this, my friend, is our great, foolish, and beautiful hope.
Perhaps the truest truth is an absurdity: Jesus, the crucified, is Lord.
