I'm writing this on the anniversary of 9/11, a tragic day in world history that changed many things. I was in classes at seminary that morning in New Haven, Connecticut, some 70 miles from Ground Zero, when it happened. I remember just before class--Christian History--that a Teaching Assistant went up to the professor and told him something that left him puzzled. As class began he explained that airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center and then he proceeded with his lesson as planned. I remember thinking that he should have taken a few minutes to lead us in prayer or something, but like many people he simply did what he knew how to do (teach, in this case).
After class most of us went to the Common Room. One of the Deans had arranged for two TVs to be set up with live feeds from CNN. The footage of the planes crashing and the buildings coming down was played again and again. Confused, we gathered into clumps to discuss possible responses. In the days that followed we were sent off to do what we could. A few of my classmates went to Manhattan to offer spiritual care. Most of us, including myself, stayed in Connecticut and counseled people affected there.
Strangely, the spiritual leader of our community, the Rev'd Sandy Stayner, was nearly killed in Manhattan when the buildings fell. She was with her husband and the Archbishop of Canterbury filming a documentary about spiritual direction at Trinity Church, Wall Street, when the attack occurred. After the first building fell they had to escape the area through a labyrinth of underground tunnels and passages that honeycomb lower Manhattan. Trinity had a daycare, so as part of the evacuation each adult was given a little one to shepherd, carry, and protect. Shortly before following the building fire Marshals into dungeon-like underground, the Archbishop gathered the group in prayer. Sandy recounted later how he prayed that they would see Christ in and be Christ to all those whom they would meet in the next few hours.
I think the instinct of most of would have been to pray for protection and preservation for everyone involved in the tragedy. Or perhaps for the strength and courage to endure a dangerous moment. But this desire by the ABC to pray for Christ-likeness reveals a deep truth about who we are called to be in our times of trial. We are asked to be like Christ--specifically Christ encountering his Cross.
This week the Feast of the Holy Cross falls on a Sunday. It's a way to draw conscious attention to the center of our faith: a God who looks like us most when he suffers and dies. Ironically, we look most like God when love inspires us to take up our crosses, too. So the cross becomes the center of the universe--the intersection between this world and the next. It is the fixed pole around which our salvation and God's providence swings.
A 6th Century hymn, Pange Lingua, says it well:
Faithful Cross! above all other,
One and only noble tree!
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit thy peer may be;
Sweetest wood and sweetest iron,
Sweetest weight is hung on thee.
Bend thy boughs, O Tree of Glory,
Thy too rigid sinews bend;
For awhile the ancient rigour
That thy birth bestowed, suspend,
And the King of heavenly beauty
On thy bosom gently tend.
He endured the nails, the spitting,
Vinegar and spear and reed;
From that holy Body pierced
Blood and water forth proceed:
Earth and stars and sky and ocean
By that flood from stain are freed.
(Latin by V. Fortunatus, Tr. Percy Dearmer and J.M. Neale)
Holy God, even in disaster and death you and there to give us life in Jesus Christ. Show the way of cross to be none other than the way of truth and peace. Give us the patience and love to be Christ-like in our sufferings and to come nearer to you. We ask this in the name of the one who died and rose again, Jesus Christ. Amen.
In Christ,
Tay
