MARKETPLACE!

Meandering through Manhattan yesterday, amidst the jungle of jagged skyscrapers rending the heavens, I spied a quaint Georgian style edifice built in the late 1700s—the home of Elizabeth Seton (1774–1821), the first native-born U.S. citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church (in 1975).

Fascinating was the cross proudly pronouncing its presence on an imposing technological and architectural landscape, located by the pulse of the financial district, the throb of our modern society, the nerve-center of our insensate and materialistic culture—New York City.

I was reminded of a poem by the Very Rev. George MacLeod (1895–1991), once Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and the only Church of Scotland minister honored with a peerage (that made him Baron MacLeod of Fuinary). He called his poem “The Cross be Raised Again.”

I simply argue
that the cross be raised again
at the center of the market place
as well as the steeple of the church,
I am recovering the claim that
Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral
between two candles
but on a cross between two thieves;
on a town garbage heap;
at a crossroad of politics
so cosmopolitan
that they had to write His title
in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek,
and at the kind of place
where cynics talk smut,
and thieves curse and soldiers gamble.
Because that is where He died,
and that is what He died about
and that is where Christ’s followers
ought to be,
and what church people
ought to be about.

Indeed! We must be about the business of proclaiming Christ to a lost world—in the marketplace.

For Christ did not
send me to baptize,
but to preach the gospel,
not in cleverness of speech,
so that the cross of Christ
would not be made void.
For the word of the cross
is foolishness to those
who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved
it is the power of God.
… we preach Christ crucified.
1 Corinthians 1:17–18

The cross raised in the market place! For one, for all. For rich, for poor. For strong, for weak. For all. In fact, God seems to be somewhat “partial” to the poor and weak.

For consider your calling, brethren,
that there were not many wise …,
not many mighty, not many noble;
but God has chosen
the foolish things of the world
to shame the wise,
and God has chosen
the weak things of the world
to shame the … strong,
and the base things of the world
and the despised God has chosen,
the things that are not,
… so that no man may boast before God.
1 Corinthians 1:26–29

On the other hand, we must—we should—boast in the cross, the cross raised in the marketplace.

But may it never be
that I would boast,
except in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ,
through which the world
has been crucified to me,
and I to the world.
Galatians 6:14

The cross raised in the marketplace! And raised by all of us, borne by all of us, suffered by all of us who seek to be Christ-followers.

And He [Jesus]
was saying to them all,
“If anyone wishes
to come after Me,
he must deny himself,
and take up his cross daily
and follow Me.
Whoever does not
carry his own cross
and come after Me
cannot be My disciple.”
Luke 9:23; 14:27

The cross raised in the marketplace! For “that is where Christ’s followers ought to be, and what church people ought to be about.”