Crossless-crosses

One of my favorite quotes are those words of T.S. Eliot:

“Remember the faith that took men from home

At the call of a wandering preacher.

Our age is an age of moderate virtue

And moderate vice

When men will not lay down the Cross

Because they will never assume it.

Yet nothing is impossible, nothing,

To men of faith and conviction…”

I was overwhelmed the other day with this display of crosses in a hobby shop.Wonder why we are so hung up on crosses today? Wonder why they are displayed everywhere? They mean many things to many people—and yet it seems like most of us have missed the point. Like Eliot said: We need to assume the cross.

But we live in a sacrifice-less age. Nobody wants to give up or pare down or cut back. Everybody wants tax cuts. We have had so much trouble with our “volunteer” army that we have employed 100,000 mercenaries. I have been told they make a whole lot more than our boys and girls who wear the uniform.

Any politician that wants to win better not talk much about giving up and taxes. Remember Jimmy Carter trying to get us to look long and hard on imported oil which was killing us then—what about now? He talked about the malaise of the American people and was followed by sunny Ronald Reagan that made everybody feel good.

But what part of life goes very far without sacrifice? Whether it is art or sports or writing a book or struggling with faith—every part of life demands hard and consistent work. Wearing a cross is not the same thing as bearing a cross. Martin Luther King and the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights movement certainly knew this. And so has every person or group who has struck out on a road to make the world different. They all did it—they bore their crosses against terrible windstorms of hate and violence and great difficulty.

So Good Friday let’s stop and ponder the mystery. “Surely he bore our pain and carried our sorrows and God has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” If we think long enough we know we have to go beyond putting a cross on the wall or around our necks. We are to bear our cross and one size never fits all.

Remember the old song:

           “Must Jesus bear the cross alone,

            And all the world go free?

            No, there’s a cross for ev’ryone,

            And there’s a cross for me.”