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Shaped by the Cross: University Church, San Antonio, TX by Elizabeth McGregor Simmons ’79 “Christian communities can no longer assume that congregants know their story; it must be imaginatively told, retold, and enacted, so that tradition becomes a living thing.” (Diana Butler Bass, The Practicing Congregation: Imagining A New When new members at University Presbyterian Church are introduced during worship, they are presented with loaves of bread which have been joyfully home-baked by members of the congregation and a charge: that as they savor the bread, bread which represents Christ’s body, at their dinner tables at home, they might ponder and anticipate how their participation in this local and particular expression of Christ’s body might change University Presbyterian Church and thereby intentionally strengthen our ministry to the world and practice of faith.
When UPC members depart, we bid them farewell by presenting them with a cross which has been joyfully hand-carved by a woodworking member of the congregation, telling the story of the cross, and commissioning them for future ministry.
The story goes this way: One Sunday morning in 1950, a group of people gathered to worship.
When the pastor and worshippers arrived that morning, they were met by the construction superintendent who said, “Northrup Hall isn’t yet ready. You can’t come in the building this morning!” What was this brand-new church, eagerly anticipating its first worship service, to do? Their response: They set up chairs outdoors. Two students scavenged the construction site, located two pieces of scrap lumber, nailed them together, propped them up against the side of the building, and on that Sunday and every Sunday since, the jagged-edge, scrap lumber cross, was and has been the focal point of worship at University Presbyterian and served to significantly shape our ministry.
There would come a time, when the congregation was making plans to design and erect its sanctuary, that a benefactor would offer the Session a significant sum of money to construct an imposing edifice and place within it an elegant cross. The Session voted to decline the gift, saying, “This cross, placed within a simple and plain sanctuary, is who we are.”
And so it is.
After I have told the story of the cross and presented the hand-carved replica to our departing members, it is my privilege as the pastor of this amazing community of God’s people to say: “This cross isn’t beautiful in the way that the crosses that you see in some church buildings are, but it is beautiful to us. Its beauty resides in the way that the jagged edges of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection intersect with the jagged, hurting edges of our world. It is where we, the church in this place, and where you, as you leave on your journey of discipleship to another place of ministry, are called to be.”
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