Driving home last weekend I passed many crosses, big ones and little ones. The big ones were always in groups of three, always on a prominent elevation, and the middle cross was always bigger. Sometimes the middle cross was painted gold. The little crosses I saw were not so uniform in size or number but they were always near the road – never on a hill or promontory. The little crosses were always garlanded with flowers. Sometimes there were notes attached. Sometimes other items lay there. The space around the little crosses had the reverent and offertory effect of the household shrines one sees in the home of a Hindu, or Buddhist.
I know what the crosses are there for. They are there to remind us of the dead. The big crosses remind us of the sacrifice of Jesus. There are three because he was crucified between two thieves. I don’t know exactly who started erecting the big crosses along the interstates of America, but he is the Johnny Appleseed of crosses because they are everywhere. The little crosses are for people who have died on the highway at the spot where the crosses are erected. They are part of another phenomenon that has risen recently in our country – the spontaneous erection of memorials for the dead. It happened at the chain-linked fence outside the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, it happened at the Pentagon, and at Ground Zero. It happens everyday at the Viet Nam Memorial on the Mall in D.C. Flowers, notes, and personal items are left as offerings in memory of the dead.
I know what the crosses, big and little, are there for. I know who, specifically, the big crosses remember. They remember Jesus, and the two thieves. I don’t know the names of the ones the little crosses remember. I suppose if I pulled off the road, and went to look at the little crosses there would be names on or around most of them. Still, to me the name would be name alone. In my youth three very dear friends were killed in separate automobile accidents. Back then people didn’t erect roadside crosses. I remember their names, faces, voices nonetheless- and always will. I know that each of these crosses represents someone loved and missed. I know that each cross represents loss, agony, despair, and the hope that the cross itself will provide a little relief now, and a lot of relief over time.
That hope is justified. Although I don’t know the names of those represented by each little cross, there is Someone who does (Matthew 10.29-31). That Someone has made sure that grief need not be hopeless, because he has provided for reunion (I Thessalonians 4.13-18). We also know how he has accomplished this – he accomplished it through the One who hung on the big cross (I Corinthians 15).
And so there is a connection between the big and little crosses. The great cross in the middle reminds us of Jesus and all he accomplished on that cross. The large crosses flanking his remind us of the choice we make – the response to his cross, because one thief believed and the other did not. The little crosses below remind us that the uncertainty of life, the often unforeseen violence of it need not be all there is left to us. They remind us that there is more, that there is something that, unlike mortal life, cannot be taken away. The big cross in the middle makes it so.
