From our Executive Director Rev. Dr. Doug Dyson
There’s a place along a back road that I know—the kind of narrow road that bends more than it runs straight, where the trees lean in close and the hills seem to hold their breath at dusk. If you drive it slow enough, you’ll see it: a cross. Not polished, not perfect—just two beams of wood set into the earth by hands that had something to say but didn’t need many words to say it.
I’ve passed crosses like that my whole life—on hillsides, at the edge of fields, tucked beside gravel roads. Sometimes they mark a loss, sometimes a memory, sometimes just a quiet confession of faith. But they always seem to say the same thing: something happened here… something that matters. On Good Friday, we come to a cross like that—not along a roadside, but at the center of our faith—and like those Appalachian crosses, it stands without explanation, yet somehow explains everything.
In the Protestant tradition, Martin Luther insisted that if we want to know who God is, we do not begin with power or glory—we begin with the cross. He called it a “theology of the cross,” believing that God reveals himself most clearly not in strength, but in suffering; not in triumph, but in what looks like defeat. That runs against everything we expect. We want a God who fixes things quickly, who wins decisively, who removes pain. But the cross tells us something different: God does not stand at a distance from our suffering—God enters it.
From the Roman Catholic tradition, Thomas Aquinas taught that the cross is the fullest revelation of divine love, a love poured out completely, holding nothing back. And later, Pope John Paul II reflected that in the crucified Christ we see both the depth of human suffering and the even greater depth of God’s mercy. The cross is not simply about death; it is about love that refuses to let go—love that stays when leaving would be easier, love that bears what seems unbearable, love that transforms even suffering into something redemptive.
Here in these hills, we understand something about crosses—not just the ones we hang in sanctuaries, but the ones people carry quietly every day:
the strain of making ends meet,
the grief that lingers in small towns where everyone knows the story,
the resilience of communities that refuse to give up on one another,
the deep and stubborn love of place and people.
In a place like West Virginia, the cross is not an abstract symbol—it is lived reality.
And maybe that’s why Good Friday has a way of drawing us together across traditions. Because before we are Methodist or Catholic, before we are Baptist or Lutheran, before we are anything else, we are people who stand at the foot of the cross. We don’t all say the same prayers, we don’t all worship the same way, we don’t all understand every doctrine the same—but on this day, those differences feel quieter. Because here we recognize something shared: that suffering is real, that love is costly, and that grace meets us in places we would rather avoid.
I imagine that roadside cross again. Maybe someone stops there now and then. Maybe they don’t say anything. Maybe they just stand—remembering, praying, wondering.
That feels right for Good Friday. Not rushing ahead to Easter, not trying to explain the mystery away, but simply standing—with Mary, with John, with all who could do nothing but remain. And as we stand there, something begins to shift. We begin to see not only Christ, but one another. And we remember that whatever else divides us, we are held together by this: a God who does not abandon us, a love that does not let go, a cross that stands at the center of it all. And here, in these hills and hollows, in churches large and small, in traditions many but faith shared, we find ourselves gathered again—at the cross, together.
And that, perhaps, is where healing begins.