Dear New McKendree Church Family,

Just the other day, while doing a little sermon preparation, I was reminded once again of just how rich, deep, and often paradoxical our Christian heritage and the symbols of our faith really are. I was also reminded of how we “veteran Christians” (me included) too often take our Christian heritage and the symbols of our faith for granted. 

Take the Cross, for example. It seems that everywhere you look, there’s a Cross: mounted on churches, carved into historical buildings, worn as jewelry, hung on walls as ornaments. Crosses are everywhere! I guess it makes sense. After all, the Cross is the universal symbol for Christianity. Right?

But the Cross, as far as faith symbols go, is a rather odd choice. Doesn’t it seem strange that a tool of torture and execution would be used to represent love, grace, promise, hope, and joy? After all, would you wear a tiny electric chair as a pendant on a necklace? Would you hang a gold-plated hangman’s noose on your living room wall? Would you print a firing squad on your stationery or business card? You probably wouldn’t. And yet, isn’t that what we do with the cross? 

Why is the cross the symbol of our Christian Faith? To answer that question, we need to look no further than the Cross itself. Consisting only of one horizontal beam and one vertical beam, it’s perfectly simple and simply perfect. One beam reflects the breadth of God’s love; the other reflects the height of God’s holiness. The cross is the intersection of both ─ where perfect love meets perfect holiness ─ where God forgave his children without lowering his standard. It’s perfect!

And not only that. Our God is in the business of turning death into life. After all, on that first Easter Morn, God turned a graveyard — a place where we expect to find only death — into a place of resurrected new life. Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise us that our God would redeem the most brutal instrument of humiliation, pain, and death into a forever symbol of God’s mercy, grace, and love for sinners like you and me.

So, on second thought, perhaps the Cross isn’t such an odd choice for a symbol after all. As with anyone or anything that meets the Savior, it can never again be the same. That’s what happened to the Cross. What was once the universal symbol for merciless torture and death now and forever universally represents the height of God’s holiness and the breadth of God’s love! 

Your brother in Christ,

Pastor Bryan Wendling