On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross

The emblem of suffering and shame

And I love that old cross where the dearest and best

For a world of lost sinners was slain

                      – George Bernard (1913)

On a hill called Calvary, two thousand years ago, the Son of God was nailed to a cross for the real sins of the world. There was nothing pretty about the Crucifixion. When stripped of the religious sentiment of two thousand years of symbolism and ornamentation it appears as a gruesome and incomprehensible execution of God’s most treasured human expression of Himself.

Though historically central to the gospel and its daily presence in the life of a believer, as of late, the cross has faded away to the back wall of the church. There it stands as a suspended memory, lost in the more immediate attention given to the “felt needs” of people and the marketing of the contemporary church. The hill was far away to begin with; now it is so far away that the old rugged cross tends to be forgotten in the current clamor for attention.

That’s why the unorthodox placement of the cross in a certain Presbyterian church in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, is so arresting. Unlike most churches, whose crosses adorn the front wall behind the preacher, this one is bolted down into the concrete floor in front of the platform, not more than three feet from where the preacher stands.

Nothing about this cross is pretty. It is made of raw, untreated wood, and when you see it up close, you think of splinters, of something hard . . . immovable. It is set deep in the concrete floor as well as bolted to it, so that a blow makes it vibrate rapidly. Strike it hard enough, and it will answer back in a low tone. I’ve heard that it can be removed, but not without great difficulty, because of its size and weight.

I got hit once with a baseball bat when I was a kid — walked right into my brother’s backswing during a family softball game. The blow broke my nose. For some reason, that distant memory makes my face ache when I think about this cross — as if I might forget about it for a moment, turn around too quickly, and meet it head on.

The first time I visited this church, I performed an hour and a half concert from behind the cross. That was an experience I never forgot. There is a wide aisle down the middle so that people on either side can see around the cross, but you have to stay right in front of it the whole time so as not to lose contact with the audience. All I remember about that night is that when I finally closed my eyes in sleep, I realized the cross had been burned into the back wall of my mind.

The Old Greenwich cross has to be reckoned with. It is in the middle of everything — weddings, funerals, concerts, baptisms, dedications, prayer meetings, Sunday morning services. Where do you put the casket? Are the bride and groom going to stand on either side of it? What if the bride’s dress gets caught on a splinter? Where do you put the horn section? Where do you stand? Every event that takes place in this church has to accommodate this cross in some way. It cannot be moved easily like the pulpit or the platform chairs or the Communion table or the planters of ivy that line the platform’s edge. It’s almost as if the church was built around this cross — as if it were the first thing down before the walls went up and the roof went on.

Something tells me it was.