The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
THE EMPTY CROSS There's a story that I heard a time ago. It was set in Nazi Germany and had to do with something that happened in a church on a Sunday morning. As I recall, the person telling the story didn't specify whether the church was large or small, only that at the front of the chancel there was a very big cross on which was hanging a more than life-sized figure of the Christ. The morning service was well underway when all of a sudden the doors at the back of the church were flung open and a bunch of armed men stormed in. They were soldiers, and they levelled their guns at the terrified worshippers before grabbing the preacher and flinging him to the floor and kicking him into silence. Then they proceeded to size up the congregation. Their first order was that all the trade unionists should stand up and move with dispatch to the back of the church. Here and there people got to their feet Ð men, mostly, but a handful of women among them. Next it was the gypsies who were singled out. There were only a few of them, mostly near the back, all of them obviously wretchedly poor. The homosexuals were next. Then it was the Jews. It was largely children who got up this time, leaving adults behind them who wept at their going. Having rounded up their quarry and herded them out into the street, the soldiers withdrew. The people still seated in the church came to life very slowly, embarrassed to show the relief that comes with finding that one is still intact when the danger is past. At the front of the church, the preacher was using the edge of a pew to haul himself to his feet when he heard the people gasp. Turning to follow their gaze he beheld the ravaged figure crawling down from the cross. Head bowed, shoulders stooped, laying one wounded foot in front of the other, the Christ made his lonely way up the aisle, looking neither to the left nor the right. Doggedly he kept going until finally he passed out through the doors at the back of the church, there to enter upon the grim reality of the ones who live at greatest riskÉ those who challenge power, the poor, those who are by nature different, those who do not conform to the dominant culture, and the children. It is, I will grant you, an old story; but, I wonder, might it still be a story for our day?
