The cross is generally accepted as a Christian symbol of Christ’s crucifixion. There are exceptions however. The Jehovah’s Witnesses believe it is a pagan symbol and Christ was really crucified on a stake. Latter Day Saints do not use the cross to adorn their temples as it is considered a symbol of death and not appropriate for a living faith. Wikipedia lists 28 different Christian crosses and many more exist for other faiths. Some of the crosses are decorated with symbols of the organization involved. Some, like the Canterbury cross, are developed to differentiate between sects of Christians. There are even different interpretations about what the cross symbolizes. Many Protestants, including Adventists, prefer a bare or void cross emphasizing Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Many Catholics prefer a crucifix emphasizing Christ’s sacrifice for us. The One, Holy, Apostolic, Catholic Church recognizes the whole story regardless of the emphasis of a particular cross.

Although Christmas bears a bigger economic impact on our world, Easter remains the biggest event in the Christian Calendar. The Incarnation is important in the development of Christian Theology, but without the Resurrection, it does not look to the future. The resurrection was the central point of apostolic teaching. When a replacement was being chosen for Judas, the first requirement was that he should be a witness of the Resurrection. The Sabbath was changed from the seventh day to the first day of the week because that was the day of the Resurrection.

Over and over again our Lord foretold His resurrection. After the Transfiguration He said, "Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead." On His last journey to Jerusalem He said, "The Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn Him to death . . . and the third day He shall rise again." On the way to Gethsemane He promised the Apostles, "After I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee." They could not understand and were not prepared for the resurrection.

On Good Friday the weary and heart-broken disciples were thinking only of providing reverent burial for the mutilated body of their Master. For them, everything was over but a precious memory. At first, they could not believe the rumors that he had appeared on Easter morning. The tomb was found empty and by evening He had appeared to all the Apostles except Thomas. Over the next forty days, the risen Lord came to them in both Judea and Galilee giving them instruction as to what He expected of them. At that point they were so sure of the Resurrection; they risked their lives to spread the word far and wide.

The Holy Spirit empowered the disciples to preach the word of God. When they preached Christ Crucified, they did not stop with His sacrifice. They always included the resurrection as proof that Jesus had conquered death. The examples of their teaching fill the Epistles and St. Paul’s crisp ultimatum summarized their thoughts. "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain."

In the Incarnation God took human nature upon Himself in the person of Jesus Christ as Representative Man upon the stage of human history. In His sacrificial offering Jesus made atonement for all mankind upon the stage of human history. But human history will one day cease while God’s work must continue. Therefore the completed work of Christ had to be raised into the realm of eternity without losing its anchorage in human experience. It could not stop at the grave. The inevitable goal of the Incarnation is the Resurrection. Otherwise the whole mission of Christ would be merely an historical episode at a given date – interesting to us in retrospect but impotent as a means of reconciling man to God. If that were the case, Christianity would be reduced from a vital religion to a speculative philosophy.

St. Paul reminds us that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God" but that "there is a natural boy, and there is a spiritual body." The same Body that was buried in the tomb emerged from the tomb as a glorified body free of carnal restraints.

There are three possibilities for the resurrection – a hallucination, a deception or a fact. Hallucination is dispelled by the notion that no one anticipated the resurrection. Solid, sensible men, thoroughly indoctrinated with Jewish traditions were witnesses. Deception is out of character with our Lord and with everything we know about the Apostles. Within a few weeks after the event, the Apostles were preaching the Resurrection. If it were a hoax, the leaders of the temple would have gone to great lengths to expose it. Although opponents were angry about the resurrection, none seem to be in a position to dispute it. The disciples were prepared to stake their life on the fact of the Resurrection – and did so.

The Ascension simply means that Christ returned from whence He came – a fitting conclusion to His earthly ministry. He had achieved the purpose of His Incarnation and returned in triumph. Our Lord returned to the heavenly realm which is spiritual, not spatial. The Ascension is recorded in the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke as well as in the Acts of the Apostles.

In a certain period and in a certain locality Christ lived, taught, and died among men. His divine mission had to be localized in order to make it humanly intelligible. But it was also necessary that His followers should understand the universality and timelessness of His Kingdom and of His Gospel. God was not exclusively concerned with a single generation of Jews who lived in a spot called Palestine at a particular date. He was concerned with the human race in all places and of all ages. His gift of salvation had to be made in human terms, which meant a time and a place. Then it had to be perpetuated in heavenly terms above time or place. Our Lord is not only an historical figure but a universal Saviour. Through His Resurrection and Ascension He becomes available to all people for all time. If He told this to the Apostles, they would not have understood. By demonstrating it to them in the Ascension, He made it unmistakable and unforgettable.

The Resurrection and the Ascension changed the whole complexion of the future for the Apostles. Christians are not to be memorializers of a dear departed friend. They are to be followers of a living Lord. From Easter through the Ascension, we are reminded that we belong to "Christ, who is our life." We are not bogged down by the venerable antiquity of our religion. Instead we are stimulated by its living qualities. On the morning of the Resurrection, Jesus sent word to the Apostles to meet Him in Galilee, promising that He would go before them. He again went before them in the Ascension and has been going before us ever since. Jesus does not invite us into a spiritual hothouse, but out into the wind and weather of life where souls grow strong with effort and exercise – because He goes before us. We do not ask that His life should be reverently remembered. We pray, "Thy Kingdom come."

When you consider the strong personal devotion of the disciples for our Lord, it seems strange that they never erected a monument for Him on Mount Calvary. They never called a convention at the scene of the Crucifixion and they never held memorial services around the tomb of St. Joseph of Arimathea. The Resurrection invalidated the need for that. They were following Christ and He was no longer there. His monument is the Cross but it is the Cross, in many different forms, on thousand of altars where His Life is constantly given to the faithful.

"He goeth before you." You don’t know just where He will take you but you know He will be there. You can’t predict the future but you can predict Christ. His appeal is not to your timidity but to your faith and courage. He is risen – and because He lives, we shall live also.

When we reverence the cross, it does not matter whether it is bare in honor of His Resurrection or contains a corpus in remembrance of his sacrifice for us. It could even contain a risen Christ in remembrance of both. Some Churches have only the risen Christ behind the altar without a cross at all. As Christians, we must emphasize his whole earthly life from his Incarnation to His Crucifixion, to His Resurrection, and to His Ascension. They remind us of his Atonement for our sins and plot the path to his gift of everlasting life.