WHY WE MAKE THE SIGN OF THE CROSS
At many points in our worship we make the sign of the cross. Joining together 2 fingers and thumb we touch first our forehead, then move down to the bottom of the chest, back up and over to the left shoulder, across to the right shoulder.
It’s something that keeps cropping up in Christian Worship. Anglicans and Roman Catholics do it left shoulder to right shoulder; Greek Orthodox do it right shoulder to left; at baptism we make a little cross on the forehead of the baby; at the gospel we make a little cross on our forehead, lips and heart, asking that God may be in thoughts, our words and our heart as we receive his Gospel. So why do Christians keep making the Sign of the Cross?
The sign of the Cross is (quite obviously) a body prayer that Christians make and members of other religions do not make. We have much we can learn from the adherents of other religions: from their level of commitment to their beliefs; from their refusal to compartmentalise different parts of life as "religious" and "secular"; from the generosity, kindness and love that many of their members show. BUT all religions are different, and there are things we believe as Christians that are very different from what the adherents of other religions believe. In making the Sign of the Cross we are not just performing some ancient ritual for the sake of it. We are boldly asserting Christian truths about the way the world is.
IN MAKING THE SIGN OF THE CROSS WE ARE DIFFERENT FROM MUSLIMS
Muslims hold Jesus in high regard as a prophet - Isa al-Masih they call him. It is part of why they respect Christians as fellow "people of the book". But Muslims have a problem. They do not believe that someone as beloved to Allah as the prophet Jesus could have been degraded by the most humiliating and painful form of execution possible - death on a cross. Allah would not have allowed that to someone he loved so much. Therefore Muslims hold that at the last minute Jesus was miraculously swapped and someone else died in his place.
In making the Sign of the Cross we Christians assert that Jesus really did die on the Cross. That that death is not a failure but a victory - God’s plan by which we can receive eternal life.
Muslims hold that after death we are judged. If we have done enough good deeds to outweigh the evil deeds we have committed, then we will go to paradise. But if we have done more evil deeds we will go to hell. That is a scary thought. Every bad thing you have ever done takes you a step closer to hell. I know that if they are right, I am doomed. I certainly do not deserve to go to heaven. None of does. "All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God" (Romans 3:22).
But the wonderful news that the New Testament teaches us is that we don’t have to earn our way to get to heaven. Entry to heaven is a free gift from God that we don’t deserve, but that he gives us because he loves us. On the cross, God took the punishment that we deserve upon himself - so that we might be free to receive eternal life. All we have to do is say yes. In making the sign of the Cross we celebrate that wonderful, free, and undeserved, gift of everlasting life.
IN MAKING THE SIGN OF THE CROSS WE ARE DIFFERENT FROM JEWS
Obviously, in one sense we all are Jews. Before the fall of the Temple in AD70 there were many schools of Judaism: Zealots, Sadducees, Essenes, followers of John the Baptist, Pharisees, and followers of the Messiah Yeshua (Jesus). After the Roman armies crushed the rebellion of AD70, only two schools of Judaism survived - the rabbinic Judaism of the followers of the Pharisees; and the followers of the Messiah Yeshua - Christians. But while the New Testament describes us as "The New Israel", in every day parlance, we tend to talk about the heirs of the Pharisees as "Jews" and not use that term for ourselves.
Of course, we have much in common with our Jewish sisters and brothers - two thousand years of history, and large chunks of what we call "the Old Testament" (though in AD90 they cut out certain books that we kept on the grounds that they were "too Christian"). We both assert that we should "love [our] neighbours as [our]self" (Levit 19:18) and that we should "love the Lord God with all [our] heart and soul and mind" (Deut 6:5).
Nor should we ever fail to apologise for the atrocities that Christians have committed over the years towards our Jewish brothers and sisters - pogroms, genocides, knifepoint conversions, and (to some extent at least) complicity in the holocaust. Such atrocities have nothing to do with the message of Jesus, but we cannot deny that our people have committed them.
Jews can just about accept our claim that Jesus is Messiah - there have been other messianic sects down the centuries, and while mainstream Jews regard them as weird and wacky, they still regard them as Jewish. But it is the Sign of the Cross that points to the crucial divide between Jew and Christian. "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" - we say that out loud at many points as we cross ourselves. And when we don’t say it out loud we say it inwardly. "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit".
We believe that God is a community of love - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - so perfectly united in love that they are no longer three but one. At Christmas God does not send someone else to do his dirty work - he himself is born in a stable. It is not a vindictive God that on the cross forces an innocent man to bear the punishment for our sins - but rather God himself takes the punishment for our sins as God dies nailed to a cross.
God is a community of love - and God calls us into that relationship. In the traditional Icon of the Trinity we see three angels representing Father, Son and Holy Spirit seated around three sides of a table - with the fourth place left vacant ... for us. The one God is a community of love, and he calls us to join him in that love.
"In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" - as we make the Sign of the Cross we celebrate God’s love for us, and his invitation to us to call him Dad.
IN MAKING THE SIGN OF THE CROSS WE ARE DIFFERENT FROM BUDDHISTS
Buddhists have been involved in fewer of the wars of religion than most other religions. The Dali Llama is widely admired as a teacher of peace. Buddhists espouse lives of simplicity that are a useful corrective to our materialistic world.
Yet there are profound differences in our understanding of the world and that of Buddhism. The Buddha taught that everything in this world is at worst evil and at best an illusion. We are doomed to a constant cycle of reincarnation, trapped in this physical world. To achieve liberation we need to free ourselves from all desires, emptying our minds so that we achieve Nirvana - when our mind melts into nothingness, is no longer reincarnated, and is united in one single conciousness with all those who have achieved enlightenment.
We Christians, on the other hand, are as G.K.Chesterton put it, "the most materialistic of religions". When we reject a crude hedonism that is never satisfied with the material goods it has, it is because we think the things we already have are such wonderful gifts that we should treasure them rather than lusting after more. We praise God for beauty of a Sunset over a forest or a cascading waterfall. We say grace to give thanks for the food we eat. We rejoice in the birth of a baby. We think the world we live in is something good - a gift to us from God.
"All things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small,
all things wise and wonderful,
the Lord God made them all"
We assert that God made our physical world - and looked at it and said "Behold it is good" (Genesis 1:9 et al). Yes, we messed this world up through our sin - but God came, born as physical baby to save us. He walked among us healing the sick (As St Irenaeus put it - why would he do that if bodies aren’t worth healing. He died bodily upon the cross to redeem us. On the third day he rose bodily from the dead. He ascended bodily into heaven. And (as Revelation teaches us) at the end of time he will remake the world. In the afterlife we shall not be disembodied minds aka Star Trek - but rather given new bodies in a new physical world.
Yes - the physical world is broken through sin - but fundamentally God made it good. Buddhists seek to escape from this world. We await God’s promised healing and recreation of the world.
And that is why in our worship we do not just sit there silently meditating. Our bodies are good - so we use our bodies in worship. Whether its making the Sign of the Cross; clapping and dancing as we sing; genuflecting as we come up to receive Jesus in bread and wine; raising our arms in the air in praise; or kneeling as we pray ... we use our bodies in worship because our bodies are a gift to us from God and we want to thank him.
It is our understanding of our bodies as important that leads Christians to found charities like Christian Aid, Tear Fund, Caffod and World Vision. It is our understanding of our bodies as important that leads us to go out and pray for our sick friends to be healed. Jesus heals today just as he did 2000 years ago. And it is our understanding of our bodies as important that leads us to worship with them. In making the Sign of the Cross we celebrate these truths.
CONCLUSION
Christianity uniquely teaches:
- that we don’t have to earn our way to heaven;
- that God is a community of love and that he calls us into relationship with him and to call him Father; and
- that we don’t have to hate the bodies we have been given - they are a beautiful gift to us from God.
In the mass there are up to 14 different places (maybe more) where we can make the Sign of the Cross - and every time we make it, we affirm these wonderful truths.
