Traveling in Place

Reclaiming Our Central Symbol

In his book Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World, Jonathan Wilson relates the story of a friend entering a jewelry store and telling the clerk behind the counter, “I would like to see some crosses.” The clerk replied, “Would you like to see ones with the little man on them, or ones without?”

The symbol of the cross, like most other important symbols, is losing its meaning, because, as Wilson rightly points out, we live in an increasingly fragmented world where there is no center of meaning. In the time of the New Testament, the cross, according to Paul, was a “scandal” and “foolishness.” It horrified and repulsed most people, even as it inspired great courage among Jesus’ early followers. It was a controversial symbol, to say the least. Why would any religious community choose a place of execution as their central symbol?

Over time, as Christianity became the dominant religion, the cross ceased being scandalous. Rather than a reminder of the humiliating death of the Savior, it served as a symbol of victory. Portrayed on the flags and breastplates of battle, it represented the triumph of Christianity as the religion of the West – justification for slaughtering the perceived enemies of the faith.

More recently, the cross has become a symbol of personal belief. As a popular form for jewelry, it neither depicts the shame and humiliation of Jesus’ cross nor serves as a public witness to the Lordship of Christ. It is simply a modest way of testifying to one’s faith.

Remembering a Great Speech

Today marks the 150^th anniversary of one of the greatest speeches in American history. On March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. It is best remembered for its closing sentence.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The Civil War was finally drawing to a close. On the steps of the Capitol, surrounded by thousands of officials and onlookers, Lincoln delivered a brief speech dripping with biblical references. He invoked the words of Jesus when he quoted Matthew 7:1 (“Judge not that we be not judged”) and again when he recited Matthew 18:7 (“Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh”). He also repeated Psalm 19:9 (“The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether”), and alluded to Psalm 147:3 (“Let us strive...to bind up the nation’s wounds”) and James 1:27 (“to care for him who shall have borne the battle for his widow and his orphan”). The speech was as much about Lincoln’s own doctrine of “divine necessity” as it was political. Asserting that “the Almighty has his own purposes,” he suggested that the four-year war was punishment for the institution of slavery and that no American could object should God will that it continue until