I am an Ass, part II: The Sign of the Cross

[I know what you’re thinking: “Where’s part I? I’ve got to know!” Well, it’s HERE. Consider all your problems solved.] 

There’s an old saying that once someone becomes a Calvinist, he needs to be locked in a box for the next year or two. I certainly once fit that stereotype, and as a Presbyterian PK, it unfortunately coincided with my childhood. I remember bits and snippets of my days at an Lutheran elementary school in Lincoln, Nebraska, and far too many of them involve picking fights with teachers over theology. How dare they deny the sovereignty of God by saying that baptism saves. How could they ask me to commit idolatry by bowing toward the altar.

Yeah, I was an ass as a kid.

(And I pray to someday be less of an ass.)

In particular, I remember my sixth-grade teacher holding a couple of open forums to allow students to voice their theological differences, which in retrospect is kind of incredible. During one on baptism, I made my move:

“If baptism saves, then isn’t baptizing kids just playing God?”

Truly, I was blowing minds that day. I could tell I’d caught her off guard, because she simply said, “Interesting point. I hadn’t thought about that before.”

Of course, I had been hoping for an answer. I wanted to see her squirm, trapped in the vice of my logic, like a sinner in the hands of an angry God. Instead, she called me over to her desk the next day, thanked me for my contributions, and said “I look forward to seeing you in heaven, because I know you’ll be there.”

It was endlessly frustrating to have my opinion respected. To hear someone agree to disagree with me. And for the first time the thought entered my mind that maybe the Christian tradition was both wider and richer than I could imagine, and that maybe it wasn’t my calling to iron out all of its foibles by being a dick.

It was humbling.

Well, at least in retrospect.

What particularly stuck in my craw about Lutherans, though, was the sign of the cross. People waving their hands in the air, poking themselves in the face, shoulders, and gut, like it was some sort of magic charm. Like somehow you received extra Jesus because you moved your hand in a certain way. I rolled my eyes whenever someone did it.

When you’ve been taught Calvinistic ecclesiology and sacramentology from the cradle, it’s difficult not to see “superstition” wherever you look. The Reformed tradition can be hostile to the idea of power being ascribed to anything other than God — but then, if God has promised to give power to specific things, it’s no superstition to believe in that power. If St. Peter says baptism saves, then it would be superstition to believe otherwise.

And it might be superstition to treat the sign of the cross as a magic charm, but aside from a handful of the inadequately catechized, I have yet to meet anyone who understands it that way.

When I got to college, I had the pleasure of sitting down to a lot of meals with Catholic friends, and I was always struck by how they would habitually cross themselves before prayer. Here they were, in front of everyone in the room, marking themselves as set aside for Christ. It wasn’t anything magical. Just a way of saying Hey, I’m baptized. I’m not my own. I serve a master.

There’s an idea promoted by Calvin called the regulative principle of worship, which dictates that anything not specifically prescribed in scripture is forbidden in worship. Throughout the history of the Reformed faith, though, it’s never meant anything consistent. In Calvin’s day it meant no instruments and only hymns from the Psalter. Later it meant don’t celebrate Christmas. Now that Reformed congregations sing praise songs and light Advent wreaths, I’m not sure what it means.

The funny thing about the Reformed tradition is that, in our efforts to be super-biblical, we threw out all of the Western Rite, which is one of the most biblical things there is. Confession, absolution, invocation, creed, the word preached, corporate prayer, and the eucharist: it’s the whole Gospel in an hour, every Sunday morning.

And the sign of the cross, reminding us again and again of our Lord’s death and our baptism.

I regret being cut off from the traditional mass for so many years, not because I’m Catholic or ever intend to be, but because it denied me the pleasure of participating in rituals the Church had observed since ancient times. The greeting The Lord be with you — reserved exclusively for Sunday mornings, unlike a bland Good morning or How are the wife and kids? — or a simple hand gesture tracing the outstretched body of our Lord. That the gesture isn’t explicit Scripture no longer bothers me. It’s certainly Biblical to remind ourselves and others of the cross at every opportunity.

And each time I step into the nave, dip my fingers in the font, and cross myself, that’s what I’m doing.

You’re not your own. You were buried with Christ. Now you live for him.

And hey, if you liked this post, there’s a 71.3% chance you’ll like:

Season’s Shootings, or: I am an Ass

Blue Like Jazz: Too Subtle for Its Own Good

Mama, Creepy Kids, and Six Degrees of Humanae Vitae