Copyright: © 2002 Paul F. Bosch.
This document may be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes with credit to the author and mention of the Lift Up Your Hearts web site http://www.worship.ca/ as the source.

I have a dear friend --I'll call him "Del"-- whom I've known for 40 years. He's a Lutheran pastor in the Midwest, retired now as I am, and serving now, as I did, an interim pastorate. We have a great deal in common, and we try to spend time together every Summer: at least a week. But two topics, politics and religion, are among the subjects we try to avoid, because our views on each are so dissimilar. He's a Reagan-style Republican. If I lived in the States, I'd be a Hilary-style Democrat. I favour the ELCA's new relationship with the Anglicans. He dissents, as a member of the "Word Alone" movement.

Last Summer, after a week with him and his wife at an Elderhostel, we attended Sunday worship together at the parish where he has been serving interim. Since it was a vacation Sunday for Del, he had, weeks before, invited his own son, recently ordained, to preside and preach there in his place. His son is a chip off the old block, an attractive young man with splendid gifts for ministry: a fine preacher, an engaging sense of humour, and an endearing manner in the chancel. After the Service I greeted him warmly --I've known him since he was a little kid!-- and thanked him for his ministry, acknowledging how impressed I was by his gifts. "But," I said, "if you will indulge me, let me seize an opportunity to act like a liturgy teacher, and point out that the Presiding Minister, in Lutheran Book of Worship, marks the sign of the cross, at the Invocation before the Confession begins, on his own breast, joining with the people -- not over them, as in a blessing. It's intended here as a shared gestural profession of faith, not as a gesture of benediction."

Later in the day, I repeated to Del my remarks to his son, including my praise of his gifts, and my "teaching moment." "Yes," said Del, tweaking my nose metaphorically, "we've indulged you before on this issue. You've told us that several times, both of us. And I don't think either of us will change..."

"Then," said I, tweaking his nose metaphorically, "you prefer the sign of the cross here as a hierarchical gesture, not as an egalitarian gesture?" ("Word Alone" folks are famously egalitarian.) We both chuckled, each of us somewhat self-consciously.

There's nothing magical about the sign of the cross. It's most familiar, of course, among Lutherans, curiously enough, as what I am calling here a hierarchical gesture. That is to say, it's been reserved, for several generations among us, to the ordained alone, for their use as a gesture of blessing. ("Hierarchical" = "priests first"!) Lutheran congregations, for generations, have become accustomed to seeing their pastors trace the sign of the cross in the air over the people as a second, concluding gesture of a Benediction --following, that is, the first gesture of a classic clerical benediction: the extending of the raised, open hands over the people. As one liturgiologist puts it, "It's as if you're trying to lay your hands in blessing directly on the heads of everyone present," each in turn, and failing that, reaching out to everyone in a gesture of gracious promise. Then follows the sign of the cross, as above, in a classic, clerical benediction.

But the sign of the cross is also becoming familiar, among us, as a personal profession of faith. When it is traced upon one's own breast, it is intended as precisely that: 1) a personal, gestural profession of faith. With or without a murmured invocation of the Triune God, it becomes, that is, an enacted prayer. When it is traced upon oneself in company with others, it becomes as well 2) a communal gestural prayer. And when the Presiding Minister joins her people in tracing the sign of the cross upon her own breast, it becomes finally 3) an egalitarian gesture, a gesture that reminds ordained and unordained that they are both part of the laity, the laos, the people of God.

It's understandable, to me, that there may be some communities in North America where this egalitarian use of the sign of the cross --as personal faith-profession-- has yet to gain wide acceptance. And it's understandable, to me, that some pastors may be hesitant, for some valid pastoral reasons, to introduce to their people this personal use of the sign of the cross. (To maintain that it's "too Catholic" is, in my view, never a sufficient reason to reject anything in the Church's long tradition, just as it is never a valid argument to reject anything as "too Protestant" or "too Pentecostal." Hey, we can learn, and profit, from anybody's experience! (See Essay 29 above.)

But Martin Luther himself commended this personal use of the sign of the cross among Christians: see the Small Catechism. And although "signing" yourself was never part of the piety of my own childhood or even my own young adulthood, I now cherish its use, and teach it to my kids.

But remember: It's heavy stuff. That personal signing of yourself with the cross: It's nothing you want to do lightly. You're marking your very self --your body, your psyche-- with the cross of Christ's suffering. You're saying, by this gesture: "I take the sufferings and death of Christ upon myself." That's something I'm not sure I want to do, at least not without some heavy thought, some heavy soul-searching. You won't find me, for one, "signing" myself very often.

In any case, if you're among those who'd hesitate, for some valid pastoral reasons, to introduce it in your own parish, I beg you: Don't frustrate the intention of the LBW by using the "hierarchical" sign of the cross --as a blessing gesture-- at the Invocation, where its use is intended instead to be 1) personal, 2) communal, and 3) egalitarian. (Hey, the LBW has been trying -- for twenty years now! -- to invite you into a new, and perhaps unfamiliar, piety. "Get with the programme!" At least give it a try!)

There's a proper and appropriate place, after all, for the "hierarchical" use of this lovely gesture: at the end of the Absolution, and again at the end of the Service; note the rubrics.

My advice, to those timid about that little red cross printed at the Invocation? Don't venture any gesture. Keep your hands to yourself as you say those words. Maybe hang on to the hymnbook.

Whatever you do, don't make it a blessing. We got enough of them in the Service!