Those weird crosses on golden onions

It has a long and interesting history. It's been the semi-official cross of the Orthodox Church since the sixth century, since before the split  that separated the Orthodox and what became the Roman Catholic church. (Protestants are Johnny-come-latelies.) 

It grabs you if you've never seen them. It's almost shocking when you see them for the first time atop those golden onions so Russia-redolent. It seemed so strange, last summer, to stumble off a main road somewhere in Alaska, poke through some trees, and there find a little country church like this one, a cemetery beside it, home to dozens of these strange crosses.  

It's as some well-meaning craftsman nailed a cross together and found a couple of crosspieces left over and simply tacked them on too.

Which isn't, of course, true. There's meaning behind those extra adornments, one of the arms completely understandable, the other a bit more imaginative. There are three here, although in the closeup below one of them, on the closest cross, is blessed with an abundance of roses obscuring the arm most of us are accustomed to seeing. 

Up top is the one Herod used to designate Jesus of Nazareth as, mockingly, "King of the Jews." There's nothing written there on any of them in this cemetery, but that's the explanation commonly offered. The one beneath the traditional arm, the bottom crosspiece, is crooked, bent so as to aim, at once, both up and down.

The Orthodox cross more explicitly rehearses the original story by suggesting Christ's companions up there on Calvary, two thugs, two thieves, one of whom recognized the Jesus's innocence and the horror of what was happening beside him, while the other just, well, harrumphed. The right side of the cross, aimed upward, points toward the paradise Christ promised the repentant sinner. The left side reminds us of the other thief and his far less pleasant eternal destination.

Maybe it's just me, but this morning it seems to me that it's easy to be orthodox (small o). It's not difficult at all to look at this salad of golden onions, each thrusting skyward, and think that something is askew, something off, something is wrong here, almost heathen, a kind of perversion maybe. Why on earth would people with put those gold onions on their roof, then adorn them with that weird cross? They must worship some strange God. 

Not really. 

We didn't visit the Transfiguration of our Lord Church on a Sabbath morning. Front door was locked. We couldn't get in. But the stairs are worn, even a little beaten up. People attend that church. People belong. People--members--see that third cross bar on crosses all over the place, that bottom arm pointing at the only two directions all of them understand are real possibilities.

It's easy to create lines where there not needed, to create boxes in which to enclose our self-righteous selves, to construct a fortress to keep out the chaff. We're good at drawing lines in the sand that only a good and blessed tide can erase. 

I'm more than happy to be part of the Reformed family of a Protestant tradition borne of the Reformation. I'm not looking to change.

But I'm not alone and I'm not a judge.