remembering the Cross, reflecting on Christ’s Church

If there is one thing I have learned as one having “grown up in” the church, it’s that if we forget we do not worship or serve Christianity, we are lost indeed. When I hear stories, read statistics and experience “church as we know it”, I must continue to draw closer to THE ONE even if at the expense of distancing myself from the religion that shouts his name - - often as a propaganda tool for advancing its own causes. When the cross is mis-used and abused by the very people who claim to bear it, the only thing one can do is go back to the ONE who hung and died on it.

So, lest you think I am too cynical to be redeemed I have hope in the ONE “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!”

This time of the year should always bring us back to the ONE THING we know and proclaim - - Jesus is Lord. Across denominational lines, beyond human failings and differences of opinion and interpretation, we can find unity in that truth, in that proclamation - - Jesus is Lord.

As we all strive (and often fail) to be worthy servants of Jesus and when the institution of Christianity fails us, let us always return to that truth and remember : it is Jesus we love and serve, it is Jesus we adore, it is Jesus we follow; and ultimately, it is in Jesus, Word made flesh, that we put our trust.

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