Repairing and Polishing the Cross

Back on June 13, 2005 I wrote the following journal. After a posting on Facebook by my son relating to churches and helping the needy, I couldn't resist posting this here today. Please read with an open mind:

As one steps out the front door of the clinic that I administrate in downtown Texarkana, TX, one immediately sees the spire of the historic St. James Episcopal Church about a block and a half away. Atop the high spire is a brass cross that can be seen from most points in the downtown area.
Recently I noticed a large “cherry picker” crane pull up to the church and workers ascend to the cross. For two days I observed as they repaired and polished the cross. As I watched I began to wonder how much was invested in that one small brass cross? No doubt, between the crane, labor, and repair materials the cost was hundreds, and maybe thousands of dollars. How many times through the years has the cycle of repair been going on? It seems I always ask myself questions like that. I guess I’m just too pragmatic, or maybe it’s that I just find some things, “wasteful,” spending.
Allow me to explain: If you know anything about old downtown here, you know that within the shadow of that cross homeless people sleep nightly, drug addicts shoot up, alcoholics and derelicts wander, and prostitutes ply their trade. While the cross is being repaired and polished human suffering is abounding at its foot. I’m wondering if this pleases the Christ who died on the cross over two thousand years ago.
Would he rather that a replica of His instrument of death is repaired and polished, or that human suffering is alleviated?
I’m sure I know the answer to that question! After all, He is the one that instructed His followers to care for the sufferings of the poor and needy. It was He who was called, “a friend to sinners.” It was His brother, the Apostle James, who said, “Pure religion and undefiled before God the Father is this, to keep himself unspotted from the world and to visit the orphans and widows in their affliction.”
Over the past 60 years I have not only witnessed, but participated in a huge plethora of cross repairing and polishing. Now I wonder at its validity, and just how much it pleases and glorifies the Christ that we portend to honor?

I’ve sat with committees that spent days, weeks, and even sometimes years poring over things that were basically only “cross polishing.” Everything has to be in order, every “t” crossed and every “I” dotted. We have attempted to “keep the doctrine pure,” and be sure and polish away anything that we see as a mar or defect. Sometimes that even included removing imperfect people, so that the fellowship and the church could “shine.” I’ve seen “imperfect” servants of God polished away and erased because they were seen as a blemish on our brightly polished cross of doctrinal or moral purity. Past sin, long under the blood, is still paraded before them and used to “disqualify” them from service. Take a look at the list of Christ’s followers and disciples, read the list of the faith heroes in Hebrews 11, and one will quickly conclude that many that would be erased in the church today were used of God to accomplish His purposes!

Lately the “religious right” has spent its energies again lambasting the television industry for daring to air a show that shows the humanity of an Episcopal pastor and his family, and his rather unique connection to Christ. All that time and energy could be better spent dealing with human suffering and pain. But after all, we want to be sure our cross is repaired and polished. God forbid that the world should see us as we really are, people who are still much less than perfect and dealing daily with issues of life just like everyone else. Jesus didn’t come into the world to be different from man, but to become man and feel his hurts, frustrations, and pains and to provide a way that those can be redeemed.

Maybe they are right and maybe they are wrong, but what I do know is that recently the news reported that a methamphetamine crazed man and woman killed their own 15 year old son. I received a report today of an 11 year old that tried to hang himself because his parents were drug addicts, among other issues. On a daily basis I meet with people whose lives are wrecked and lie in shambles at their feet. I do know that every where you look and hear mankind is troubled, lost, and helpless.

Yet, it is so easy to retire to our nice secluded brick homes in “safe” neighborhoods, sip our coffee and munch our tasties, and get on the Internet and rant and rave over Hollywood, TV, politicians, homosexuals etc. Then we get in our autos, drive to church, do all our worshiping inside the “sacred” walls, go to a nice restaurant to “fellowship” with those who think like we do. We talk about everything, including the preacher and the song (oh excuse me, the worship leader) and revel in our own sense of holiness. We have become nothing more than cross polishers!

I heard Dan Betzer say once of churches that built up huge bank and savings accounts, “What are they doing, saving it for the anti-christ?” I wonder that also about brazen crosses over copper steeples and buildings that are elaborate and grossly overly ornate. If we truly believe in the soon coming of Christ, would it not be more in order to spend our funds on the people for whom Christ died rather than on buildings and programs that will be left behind?

I recall Dave Roever once saying that if your brother was killed by someone with a gun, would you mount the gun on the wall? Good point, Dave!

Update (January 18, 2006): Today, my secretary and I got on this very subject. She told me of a homeless alcoholic that several years before had wandered the streets of Texarkana. She and the mailman for that area would find him and give him food and necessities, and find him shelter in inclement weather. Later he was beaten to death in the street by an addict. I went into my office and sent her the above journaling by email. As she was reading it, I heard her gasp, and she called out from her office to mine, “Oh my goodness, Len, that is the same church that we often found him sleeping on its back steps.” Yep, they polished the cross, but they missed one of His, “Little Ones.”