More Lenten Crosses

This is called the Greek Cross, and it looks like a plus sign.  I have to confess I didn't want to come to church the morning we were going to interact with this cross because it's also called the cross of suffering.  The 4 points of the cross and the center represent the places where Christ was pierced for our sins -- head, two hands, feet and heart.  As the pastor spoke of each of the places, he smeared a bit of red paint on that area (above you see the bottom of the cross, the feet).  He talked about us asking God to pierce us -- to pierce our minds so that we are more focused on God and his kingdom, to pierce our hands so we are more open to serving, to pierce our feet so we begin to really go where God wants us to go, and to pierce our hearts so that we become more passionate about the things that God wants us to be passionate about.  During our response time, we were invited to come up and drive a nail in the place where we want Christ to "pierce" us.  It was a powerful time as we heard the nails being driven into the wood.  Here's a picture of the whole cross as we used it during our prayer time last week.  During that time, we had a chance to gather around, placing our hands directly on the nails and praying for our church to be "pierced" in those 5 areas.

Last week was Palm Sunday, and we studied the Celtic Cross.  I didn't get great pictures, since our worship space is quite dark and I didn't want to use the flash.  The Celtic Cross looks like a regular cross with a circle in the intersection of the two beams.  Our pastor talked about crossroads in our lives -- the horizontal piece was like our lives as we move in the dimension of what we can see and know.  But the vertical piece represents the fact that God intersected our lives in the person of Jesus.  The circle represents Christ unifying us with God and with each other. . We set up a large celtic cross out of burlap so that we could walk on it and pray though these conceps. We made the circle out of palm branches with candles interspersed. At the base of the cross, communion was set up, since it is at the base of the cross that we all meet together.

I'm probably not explaining it very clearly, and sorry the pictures are so dark, but it was a really meaningful time.

Tomorrow is Easter -- hallelujah!  Here's a couple of pictures which gives a little hint of what our celebratory worship is going to look like:

Happy Easter!