All over the community where I live front yards are being marked with small white crosses, simple crosses. There is nothing ostentatious about these crosses; nothing seemingly unique or special. They’re just bright white crosses that catch your eye. Like clothes hangers out of sight in the closet they seemed to be multiplying. Eventually, it was clear it was more than just a few families or a single congregation that was putting them up. It was a simple idea and I liked it. So where were they coming from?
A little typing in a Google search box and I had an answer. Double check it on Snopes.com and it seemed to be true but the story was far more involved than I might have imagined. In the end the story and the outcome appealed to my sense of irony.
The crosses are called Frankenmuth crosses and they began as part of a bit of civil conflict in Frankenmuth, Michigan. Frankenmuth is a small town in Michigan that had been settled by German Lutherans in 1845. As part of that heritage the town had frequently used the cross as part of its cultural identity. On one of the local bridges a cross had been attached to each end. In 2008 a local resident objected to the two crosses on the basis of separation of church and state and the town council on advice of legal counsel decided to remove the crosses. Frankenmuth had, also, used the Luther Rose as part of the town shield. In time the same resident had, also, questioned the appropriateness of that. In time, after a month or so of conflict, he withdrew his request. Although the resident has been accused of being an atheist there is no direct evidence that this true. There continues to be conflict over a 55 foot cross in the local town park. Numerous ugly and hateful emails have, also, been spun out of the story, as well.
The yard crosses began to appear when in response to the controversy. St. Lorenz Lutheran Church of Frankenmuth produced and distributed 800+ crosses and gave them away. The crosses were to be displayed in peoples’ yards. How wonderful a response! An act of simple personal action. How ironic, too.
How ironic that the cross is yet again at the center of such a controversy. The cross has been used for good and evil, for the best intentions and the worst. It is used daily by millions of Christians in the simple signing of the cross as an act of personal devotion and it has been burned on the lawns of blacks, Catholics and Jews as an attempt to instill fear. Often Christians have been the biggest abusers of the cross.
17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. 18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
In the United States of America we have never been solely a Christian nation; not a protestant one, not a Roman Catholic one, not a Baptist one, not a Pentecostal one, not a Calvinist one, not a Lutheran one. Nor have we been a Jewish nor a Islamic nation. We have been all of these and more including atheistic. Alexis de Tocqueville coming to America a generation after the Revolutionary War found a nation with the most vibrant faith he had ever encountered. This was in contrast to the church in Europe which was synonymous with the King and people rarely attended church. He attributed that living faith to the responsibility each man or woman took for the exercise of their own faith. No one could turn to the nation expecting it to exercise the faith of the nation as the King had in England or Europe. In America the practice of faith was in the hearts of the people.
Whatever the motives of the resident who objected to the crosses on the bridge or on the city shield as part of the Luther rose, or in the 55 foot cross in the city park and whatever the motives of the individuals for good or for ill who have put a small Frankenmuth cross in their yard what has happened is that people have taken responsibility for their own faith and an act to exercise it. No government can give you or me faith. No government can teach you or me to believe, not by command of the King nor by command of the Senate, not with slogan on coin or on bill, not by commandments posted in a courtroom.
Faith comes by the very Word of God proclaimed in Jesus Christ and by living as a follower with the cross where it belongs most surely; in our hearts. It is great to put a cross on our lawn. It is appropriate indeed that we take personal responsibility instead of sloppily and lazily deferring it to government but if the cross of Christ is not on or in our hearts, as well, then it is just a couple of pieces of wood and little more.
Put the cross in your yard where you can see it even more than your neighbor and remember that it is where Christ's life was given for your life, remember in your going out and your coming home that Christ died for you and remember to live like that cross matters in your life and let it be as evident in your living as it is on your lawn. That is then double crossed, one on your lawn and one on your heart. Thanks be to God.