Rosenstock-Huessy’s brilliant “cross of reality” is an incredibly helpful way of thinking about life and ministry. The “cross of reality” integrates the tensions of human/Christian experience across time and space. One axis of the cross is the tension between past and future, the other axis is the tension between in-group and out-group. We are constantly pulled in each of these directions in life. The key is hold them in proper tension at all times. I have found the cross of reality to be a very useful model for pastoral ministry and church life. If we hold the different axes of the cross in proper tension, our churches will be balanced and well-rounded. If we move in one direction on either axes, and fail to move in the other direction simultaneously, the church will become imbalanced, unhealthy, and misshapen. The challenge of being the church is that we must allow ourselves to be stretched out on the cross of reality, which is the cross of Jesus. This is what it means for us to take our crosses and follow him.
For example, a church that is only concerned with the past (preserving tradition) will get left behind at some point because history is constantly moving forward. God keeps giving us new things to deal with as he calls us into maturity. On the other hand, a church that completely ignores tradition and tries to constantly reinvent itself will never mature either. You can never get anywhere if you reject your inheritance and insist on starting from scratch again and again. We are called to build on a foundation that has already been laid down. A healthy church will live in the tension between Jeremiah 6 (“stand in the old paths”) and Revelation 21 (“I am making all things new”). It is painful to stand in that tension that holds past and future together, but that’s what we are called to do. We must move forward, but on a trajectory that is already established.
We have to live in the tension of the other axis as well. A church that only cares for its own in-group will not obey Jesus’ command to “go.” Yes, we must build up the inner life and community of the church. We must care for one another. We must carry out discipleship within the life of the church. We must develop our own internal culture in the church. But ministry within the body of Christ does not exhaust what we are called to do and be. We also have a calling to the out-group. In a very real sense, the church exists for the sake of her non-members. A faithful church is always on mission. A faithful church seeks to not only strengthen the bonds of fellowship within but also minister as salt and light to those without. Again, it is often excruciatingly painful to live at the intersection of community and mission, insiders and outsiders. But that’s what we must do. A great illustration of this inside/outside dynamic is found in the book of Acts, especially the end of Acts 2. The church there is reaching outsiders — the Lord is adding to their number daily. But they are also fortifying the church’s life on the inside, building up the community, forming a culture of learning and feasting, and meeting one another’s needs.
A church that lives on the cross of reality will often feel drawn and quartered. A faithful church will be pulled in multiple directions at once. This is what is means to be called to a life of sacrifice. This is what it means to live on the cross, and to live out the cross.
—
This is a paper I wrote 20+ years ago to serve as introduction to the church and church membership. While I’m not explicit about it, the basic underlying framework of the paper comes from a simplification of Eugen Rosentstock-Huessy’s brilliant “cross of reality.” The “cross of reality” integrates human experience across time and space: one axis of the cross is the tension between past and future, the other axis is the tension between in-group and out-group. This “cross of reality” has defined my philosophy of ministry for nearly 30 years now and it provides my template for this essay. In the paper, the past/future axis becomes tradition/eschatology and the in-group/out-group axis becomes community+discipleship/mission+mercy. At the heart of the cross is the Divine Service — the Lord’s Day covenant renewal liturgy. I hope this is helpful to pastors and church members seeking to think through what it means to be churchman, because every Christian must be a churchman.
Again, here is paper.
—
“Crucifixion and resurrection would not be known as everyday occurrences in our lives if they had not happened once for all, with terrific majesty.”
— Rosenstock-Huessy, on death and resurrection as the pattern of life for the Christian
—
“Our chronology of B.C. and A.D. makes sense to me. Something new came into being then, not a man as part of the world but The Man who gives meaning to the world, to heaven and hell, bodies and spirits.”
— Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
—
“The Crucifixion is the fountainhead of all my values.”
— Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
—
“He who suffers wins in politics. The martyr does not obtain the victory personally, but his group, his successors, win in the long run.”
― Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
—
“Thought is not consecrated unless it resists trends.”
— Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
—
Sexuality throws no light upon love, but only through love can we learn to understand sexuality.
— Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
—
Peter Leithart:
“Rosenstock-Huessy’s cruciform existentialism is a superb instrument for working through the demands, perils, and agony of pursuing unity in the church. The church is at the intersection of the Cross that Rosenstock describes. Attentive to her heritage, she is also, in essence, an eschatological community, reaching forward to a future that has not yet arrived. Though her gates are perpetually open (Revelation 21), she has gates and guardians at the gates; there is an interior and exterior to the church. But she cannot be content to bask in the glories that are within; if the church is to be the church, she must shine the light of God and the Lamb into the world. She cannot be healthy within unless she reaches out; she cannot shine outward unless she is filled with the glory.
All this is true in the nature of the case, whatever the church’s historical circumstances. But the church is an historical polity and people, and her past, her inside, and her outside have taken specific form over centuries. And this sharpens the anguish of the cross. In general, the church is suspended between her checkered past – a past that includes unfaithfulness, idolatry, brutal tyranny, and fragmentation, as well as glories – and the promised future of God. She is suspended between the demands of her own life and the challenges of mission to the world outside, a world made, for good and ill, by the church herself.
In particular, she is stretched between her current state of disunity and the promised future when we will be one as the Father and Son are one. The pain of this condition is intense. We cannot, on the one hand, renounce the specific traditions of which we are a part. Each church today has a history different from many other churches. In a broad sense, Presbyterians and Lutherans and Catholics and Coptic churches share a single past, but we aren’t conscious of sharing a single past. The tangles that preoccupy Presbyterians don’t register at all in Coptic or Catholic churches. How can we pay due respect to the obligations of our past history while also stretching out in hope for the future.
For some, “ressourcement” is the answer. Each church retrieves its own tradition. Nearly everyone who advocates retrieval wants to recover older sources for the sake of the present and future. Yet ressourcement can become a nostalgic quest for a safe haven in a past tradition that neglects the call of the future. It can encourage the belief that the past has all the answers, which is not true. On the other hand, those who urge churches to pursue future unity (like me) run the risk of detaching themselves from roots that give stability and provide the nutrients of growth. Ressourcementists and futurists need each other, and, if Rosenstock is right, a mature catholicity doesn’t arise from an effort to “balance” these demands but can only from their painful, explosive clashes and combats.
Along the spatial axis, the church faces similar challenges. Each denomination or tradition has its own ‘interior,” but churches will remain infantile if they retreat behind their own walls, where everyone is the same. Denominations must also reach beyond the denominational barriers, and, without abandoning their denominational distinctives, history, character, must seek ways to love and honor other denominations with their own distinctives, history, and character. However painful the stretch, churches must seek to indwell one another, and to be indwelt by very different sorts of Christians and exotic forms of church.
Rosenstock-Huessy says that “humans can progress from fragmentariness to completeness only by the cross, only by surviving the death of old allegiances and beginning new ones.” This was the theme of Jesus’ whole life. He lived under the law in order to do away with the law, to die to the law. His entire life scoured away the old to make way for new. He renounced “success” in his own life, giving Himself to the founding of the church, and through this “unsuccessful” career makes himself the most successful man in history. He gave Himself to death to gain abundant life. We His disciples can reach that abundant life – which includes the abundant life of a united church – only by sharing His cross.”
TPC Pastor's Page 