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Adorning almost every Protestant church is a cross—inside, outside, over the altar, in the vestibule, in the minister’s office, and sometimes many stories high on top of the building. The cross, in the Christian tradition, is a sign of victory. Jesus suffered, died and was buried, but on the third day he rose. He suffered and died on the cross, but that cross became the gateway to everlasting life. Jesus conquered death and because of that, we will rise again in body and in spirit. It’s a sign of triumph; our greatest fear has been defeated. We will live forever. The cross is a sign of hope and of glorious things to come.

Roman Catholics are also Christian, but the clean, straight cross isn’t likely to be seen standing ten stories high in their church yards. Instead, Catholics have opted for the crucifix. This is a very different symbol, one that shows us Jesus nailed to the cross, broken, bleeding, dying. Sometimes it’s quite graphic—full-bodied suffering in Technicolor. He’s suspended in anguish, nails through flesh and bone, a crown of thorns pressed into his head, blood dripping, eyes beleaguered. This man is struggling for his last few breaths and the moment of the crucifixion has been captured and memorialized for believers down through the centuries.

On first glance, it’s not pleasant. Certainly not triumphant. Who wants to stare at the image of a young man at the height of his distress, in the last throes of a painful death? I’m sure many of you spent a good number of days in Catholic school looking at the crucifix over your teacher’s head, wishing just about any other symbol was hanging on that wall. Plenty of people find it disturbing, and for good reason.

I, on the other hand, love that symbol. It’s far more powerful for me than the cross. The cross is all cleaned up; it’s the end of the story. Easter, not Good Friday. See, everything worked out in the end. Some stuff happened and then we won. Victory. Triumph. Success. But, that’s not my theology. My theology understands, and even needs, that broken body.

I know that broken body well. I have known it in my own life and I have held that body, beaten and bleeding, for many others. In some theologies, the cross is all that matters in the story of Jesus. In the end, there is victory. In the end, there is resurrection. To me, the story of love and healing and inclusion, the story of a man who inspired his followers to give all they owned to the poor and devote themselves to radical community and preaching news of hope—that’s the story of Jesus, that’s the triumph. But that story only has a happy ending because of the risk of love so many people took. Jesus on the cross becomes for me a metaphor of what it looks like when we allow our hearts to be broken, when we break ourselves open in service to the world.

I believe our power comes from our brokenness. I don’t think the end of that story is the crucifixion. In fact, I’m not sure there is an end to the story. We are still called to live our lives with our hearts wide open. A heart that has been broken is a sign of strength. It’s when we allow ourselves to feel the pain of the world that we become brave. Courage and compassion are byproducts of healing a heart that has been smashed.

Mother Teresa once said: “May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.” It’s when our hearts break open that the world can fall in.

But allowing our hearts to break is an act of courage. To love is a risk. The loss of love, the betrayal either from the beloved or from this difficult world with its sickness and violence, can so completely devastate a life that it sometimes seems easier not to love at all. When we parent, when we fall in love, when we bring animals into our homes, when we enter ministry or join congregations, when we befriend each other, we risk both great joy and great loss.

Not having relationships is a difficult way to live, and in almost every case, humans take the risk. We allow people to enter our lives even knowing that pain could be on the other side. We pour ourselves out for our children, knowing they will one day leave. They may even reject our devotion, and yet humans continue to parent. We fall in love and commit ourselves to another person over and over again from the time we’re teenagers, even though much of that love is temporary and sometimes ends in shattered lives.

This is our work, this is our risk. And this is our joy.

To be who we want to be, to live our faith by risking love is a core value. The UU story started as a Christian story, with the story of Jesus who broke himself open in love for the world. And it continued with the Universalists who knew that love to be open to all, inclusive of everyone without question or hesitation. Loving everyone, loving the world in all its complications, is Universalist theology. It’s a call to radical inclusion grounded in the idea that God has saved us all, that we are all worthy.

Brave love is critical to the call to ministry. Ordained ministry for sure, but I think we’re all called to minister to and with each other. And that’s a call of love toward people who aren’t living up to expectations or who behave in ways we might think are inappropriate. And it’s a call to love for the stranger, the newcomer, the person with mental illness who acts in ways that feel foreign; it’s a call to love for the crying child and ornery teen and for all the people who just plain bug you. Our faith asks us to open ourselves to loving the whole world.

The whole world and all its hate and violence and xenophobia and homophobia. It’s loving the world with all the racism, sexism, ableism, ageism and speciesism. It’s loving the climate deniers and anti-vaxers and creationists. Brave love faces all our wild contradictions, the many ways of being human, and brings love to bear on all of them.

That’s the message of Universalism. Everyone is loved. And the message of Unitarianism is that we must be the ones to do the loving. Whether there is an all-powerful God or not, we are the ones on the ground. The work of love is our work.

But promoting love is only part of the call. I can promote love without the vulnerability of loving. I can fight for justice without letting the borders of my heart dissolve, without breaking myself open.

Brave love is different from promoting love or fighting for justice. Brave, honest, open, vulnerable, compassionate love is bold and courageous and life-affirming. It’s a world-embracing love, the kind of love that leaves us exposed but not defenseless. Brave Love is the kind of love that has the power to transform the world. When done properly, symbols of that love might adorn houses of worship and cemeteries and schools and people’s bodies for millennia.

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Rev. Peggy Clarke

Minister at First Unitarian Society of Westchester, New York

Rev. Peggy Clarke is a Unitarian Universalist minister currently serving the First Unitarian Society of Westchester in Hastings on Hudson, NY.  She is also the Racial and Social Justice Consultant for the NY Metro District and the chair of the national UU Food Justice Ministry. Rev. Clarke sits on the Steering Committees for both UU Environmental Justice Collaboratory and Commit2Respond and chairs our UU Food Justice Ministry. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies and Peace Studies and a Master’s in Historical Theology with a concentration in Medieval Mysticism from Boston College.  Her doctoral work was in American Religious History.  Rev. Clarke was the college Chaplain at Iona College where she also served as Adjunct Professor in the Religious Studies Department and Co-Directed the Iona Spirituality Institute for 12 years.  She is a GreenFaith Fellow and the co-founder of InterGenerate, an organization dedicated to food justice, thus creating the possibility in Westchester County for equal access to food that’s good, clean and fair.  Peggy lives in the woods with her husband, son and two dogs.

Latest posts by Rev. Peggy Clarke (see all)

• Silence as a Spiritual Tool - December 1, 2020
• On Love and Death - October 1, 2020
• The Creative Spirit - April 1, 2017