The photo we selected for our cover picture (see PDF) this month is of the 160-year-old First Presbyterian church of Port Gibson, Mississippi. The striking feature of this edifice is not its architecture, beautiful as it is, but rather the gold-leaf-covered hand fastened to the top of the church spire. A careful look reveals a closed hand with the index finger pointing heavenward. Usually church spires are climaxed with a stabbing pointer or cross.
In conversation with the present pastor of the 250-member congregation, David Daniel, I learned the following story:
Zebulun Butler, the first full-time pastor of the church, punctuated his sermons with frequent gestures waving his hand high above his head with a finger pointed upward. This bodily visual aid became his trademark. Some time later one of the church elders passed a shop window in Philadelphia where he saw a small carved hand with the index finger pointing up. Immediately he connected the thought of Zebulurt Butler's characteristic gesture with the idea of placing a facsimile of this on the church spire. The original hand was carved out of wood and covered with gold leaf, but weather and woodpeckers over the past century made it necessary to replace it with a new gold-leaf-covered metal one.
This emblem could well be placed on the highest point of every building that claims to be a Christian church. It symbolizes the only way mankind can achieve true happiness—looking up and focusing his life on God.
This banishes the cowardly motive of fear of hell, which pushes many a perplexed soul across the threshold of the church. The emotional drives which bring people to the church doors every week must far transcend that of sociality. Even church attendance promoted by love of heaven as some geographical Utopia is basically selfish. If within the walls of our churches, hearts, like the heaven-pointed hand, are raised to Him who "ever liveth to make intercession for" us, then indeed the church has nobly fulfilled its divinely appointed commission. Our subjective age is devastating to spiritual life. Cast the thoughts of the entire unconverted segment of the human race for any given moment of time into the cauldron of investigation and the residue will invariably spell self!
The only way to change this situation is not to further examine feelings but to "set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col. 3:2, 3). When the hands and the hearts of the ministers are constantly pointing upward, then people will catch the meaning of "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me" (John 12:32). It is possible to attract men inside church doors by reason of sociality, fear, and selfishness. It is even possible to build a congregation by producing interesting and even enlightening sermons. But this is no proof of sacred success. This comes only when the mind of man meets the mind of God through reverent surrender and willing worship.
Human dignity and self-respect are not gained by looking into mental mirrors but rather by beholding Him in whom "we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Thus the abstract reality of Christian teaching is transformed into concrete substance, and faith is converted into fact. Let our sermons and conversations be overflowing with hands that have the index finger pointing toward God.
J.R.S.
