Here's Good News! Summary of the Pastor’s Sunrise Message in the Brooks Prayer Garden March 23, 2008 (skies fair, winds calm, temperature 30)   “Someone knocked down the cross!”    I was last one out of the church after Good Friday’s Tenebrae Service.  I noticed something wrong down at the Prayer Garden.  The memorial lights were on, but the cross wasn’t home.    “Someone knocked down the cross!” I thought.  Earlier that week, chalk drawings appeared on our parking lot, some silly, some anti-Christian.  I wondered if that was tied to the missing cross.  With headlights fixed toward the pond, I walked down and saw the cross lying broken on the terrace bed.  It hadn’t been knocked down.  It was blown down by wind.  The fall split the beams.  I was relieved it was wind and not malice felling our Garden cross.    There are those who would fell the cross by wielding it as Constantine did in the fourth century to conquer.  With cross in hand, some taut the superiority of the Christian faith (or purity of their race) with the cross as authorization to force others into their version of the Christian mold.  Some advocate violence and the right to make everyone 'just like us.'  Some advocate making preemptive strikes against sovereign nations in the name of Christ in order to force God’s hand (like Judas) to bring on apocalypse.  Some advocate using the cross to denigrate brothers and sisters in Christ as unworthy and unbefitting of the gospel and thus worthy of condemnation.   Then there are those, who, like Saul of Tarsus, would knock down the cross.   The Romans employed the cross to violently knock down any resistance to Rome.  The cross was a deadly tool of injustice.  Sometimes we see still see political power directed against the church.    The Internal Revenue Service has announced investigation of the tax exempt status of the United Church of Christ.  The IRS questions if the UCC broke campaign laws by inviting Senator Barak Obama to speak to the General Synod of 2007.   The Senator, member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, was one of dozens of persons invited to share how their faith informs their work in their profession (others invited included actresses, reporters, artists).    Then there are those who knock down the cross by standing in direct opposition to Christ’s ethos to care for the poor.  Advocating to spend trillions of dollars for war and inviting bankruptcy upon this nation, they willfully deny basic needs for children in food, health care, education, and safety.  And there are those who knock down the cross as they perpetuate prejudice, intolerance, hatred, and indignity.   In 2 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul pointed to the cross' power of reconciliation.  Through this knocked down cross, we are reconciled to God and to one another.  The cross’ power is its life-giving ability to bring a Pentecost wind, accompanied by a polyphony of voices coming together in harmony, speaking common Good News.  In the cross  Christ draws us all under the umbrella of God's grace with hope.  To those who wield the cross like a club, hope is a dreaded four letter word.  But to those who cling to the cross as life, hope becomes an instrument of peace, emptied of hate, emptied of fear, emptied of threats, filled only with love.   Someone knocked down the cross, but don’t worry.  Christ is risen.  Christ is risen indeed. --  Pastor Wetzel                                                                 The Brooks Prayer Garden You're invited! Seeking to sense God in your life? Seeking a fresh start? Seeking a community where people rejoice for a very present God? Let's talk!