A CRUCIFIX OR A BIKE?

"And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." (John 12:32)

This morning as I drove along Route 2 Westbound somewhere in the Concord, MA area, I was suddenly struck by a very strange sight. On the roof of an SUV driving along the road somewhat ahead of me was was appeared to be a "good sized" crucifix! It was like looking at a crucifix from a rear view. There was the familiar "t" shape. There was also what looked like a human figure: a thin human figure with arms and legs (especially legs) slightly bent. There was what looked to be a white cloth around the mid-section.

"That can't be a crucifix, can it?" I quickly thought.

Many of you know that I was raised in a Roman Catholic home. My mother was a particularly religious Roman Catholic. There were crucifixes and other religious objects all over the place! After I became a "born-again Christian" in my teens, I learned that most Protestants don't particularly like crucifixes. Protestants will often use the cross symbol, but usually it's a plain wooden cross. Most Protestants take very seriously the commandment about not "making a graven image" depicting God. Now, Catholics don't even acknowledge that commandment! (Instead, they have two commandments against coveting!) I was surprised to learn from my friendship with Rich Hurst, a Lutheran minister, that Martin Luther never got rid of the devotion to the crucifix, and that the crucifix is just as important to Lutherans as it is to Catholics. At Bread of Life Church where I'm now a Member, we've been doing a very cerebral Adult Sunday School class studying J.I. Packer's classic book, "Knowing God". Early in that study is a chapter absolutely condemning not only crucifixes, but all statues of Jesus and even any pictures of Jesus! Most evangelical Christians get all freaked out about statues and crucifixes but will give paintings and drawings of Jesus kind of a "pass"!

The "crucifix" on the roof of the SUV was indeed a very strange sight. I strained to look at it and see if this really was a crucifix or if it was something else that looked like a crucifix. Upon careful optical examination, it turned out to be the latter! In fact, what I "saw" as a crucifix was some sort of a bicycle affixed to a rack on the roof of the SUV! There was something about the handle bars, wires holding the bike, and the whole configuration that absolutely gave the optical illusion of it being a crucifix! As I looked at it further, at times it looked like a crucifix and at times it looked like a bike! Inwardly, I chuckled! Surely the driver of the SUV had no idea what the bike affixed to the roof looked like!

I know this will make me sound terribly old fashioned, but I literally have never taken a picture with my cell phone, much less a video. NEVER! I don't have a "smart phone". Mine is a "dumb phone"! It's about seven years old. It does have the capability to take pictures but I never use it for that reason. Yes, I am very old-fashioned. I believe a telephone is a telephone and a camera is a camera and that "never the twain should meet"! It would have been interesting, however, if I'd have taken a picture of that "crucifix" and posted it on-line. Would it have "gone viral" on the internet? Would it have had the same kind of reaction as the grilled cheese sandwich which "contained an image of Jesus" a few years ago, or the "image of Jesus in the window's condensation" at the Milton Hospital in Milton, MA a few years back? I take seriously all that "graven image" stuff and I'm not a big fan of crucifixes, but could God have allowed drivers to see a bike on the roof of an SUV as something looking like Jesus on the cross to "speak" to some of them about this? Could it have been one way of God's speaking to me this morning; to say that in the midst of the mundane and routine (driving on good old Route 2 on a Sunday morning) He is still there overseeing everything and in control? Or was the whole thing just a bike tied to a roof and that's it?

Well, that was my unusual sight on the road this morning! What was yours?!