The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
The Problem with Wood
On November 1, 1918, a Brooklyn Rapid Transit subway train derailed and crashed into the Maldone Street Tunnel entrance killing more than a hundred people and injuring some 250 others. More than a hundred years later, it is still touted as the deadliest subway crash in New York City and ranks among the worst train accidents in the United States. Culpability factors cited concerning the crash include an untrained and inexperienced motorman who was a substitute assigned the task as a result of a Locomotive Engineers’ strike. But other safety feature deficiencies were also spotlighted as a result of this crash. The so-called “Maldone Street Wreck” prompted the addition of dead-man switches, time signals for speed monitoring, and the upgrade of the use of steel in subway car construction to replace the more frail wood.
According to James Folta, Mr. Simsonon, a survivor of the crash, speculated that if “the cars had been of steel construction instead of wood, such an accident could not have had such disastrous results.” (“Crash of the Century”. Narratively: https://narratively.com/crash-of-the-century/ – March 20, 2013). The five cars that comprised the train that crashed were all wooden ones built in 1887.
For millennia conveyances of all types were built of wood, primarily for lack of a better alternative as well as the ready availability of wood for most of our ancestors. As metals became available, many past cultures added metal for durability and defense. But when rail travel first began in the sixteenth century, it consisted of horse-drawn carts drawn over wooden tracks. The problem with wood, however, is that it breaks on impact in a wreck, like the one on November 1, 1918, and it is susceptible to fire.
The cross that Christ died on was also made of wood. It was not sacred to the Romans and could have been used for other executions besides that of Jesus. The Bible gives no indication either way, but Christ had no more use for it once He completed His sacrifice for our sin. It will have long since been re-used and/or re-purposed, in whatever capacity, and likely disintegrated long ago (yes, you can safely disregard those pop-up ads for “real” slivers of the cross encased in clear resin).
When Jesus spoke of the building of His corporate church, He spoke of durable rock and stone, not of wood. In Matthew 16:18, He ordained Peter to lead His church going forward in terms of “…you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” In so doing, Jesus did not take Himself out of the picture. He merely declared Peter part of the permanent foundation of true Christianity.
Mirroring the architectural metaphor Jesus gave His apostles, Paul expresses the relationship of Jesus with the foundation of the building in terms of the corner stone that is crucial to the stability of the walls of this spiritual building, no matter what is going on with its foundation. Ephesians 2:19-22 tells us:
”Now, therefore, you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God. And you are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone in whom all the building fitly framed together grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together for a habitation of God through the Spirit.”
Peter echoes this word picture in 1 Peter 2:6-8:
”Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, ‘Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious, and he that believes on Him shall not be confounded.’ Unto you therefore which believe He is precious. But unto those who are disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed…is made the head of the corner, a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient…”
In 1 Corinthians 3:11-17, the context of the architectural metaphor is different and demonstrates individual human choices as opposed to the corporate church referred to in Matthew, Ephesians, and 1 Peter. In this passage, Paul writes to Christians imploring righteous living based on Jesus, who is our foundation of individual salvation, and our status as living temples of the Holy Spirit. This metaphor does include wood in its most fragile setting, personal deeds and choices that do not survive the fire of God’s righteousness:
“For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now whatever a man build upon this foundation – gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble – every man’s work shall be made manifest. For the day shall declare it because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he has built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire. Know ye not that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man defile the temple of God, God shall destroy him. For the temple of God is Holy, which temple you are.”
It is only in the strength of the Holy Spirit within us that we are able to live in such a way that our foundation of personal righteousness is that which stands up to the light of God’s will – gold, silver, and precious stones. The key to living righteously to the glory of God is the recognition that, with the presence of the Holy Spirit, we are spiritually alive. We have been made alive, taken away from sin-caused spiritual death, and are no longer bound to live in sin, that wood, hay, and stubble that will burn to nothing in the end:
“And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, has He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross.…” (Col. 2:13-14).
