When Lutheran clergy and parishioners were arrested and questioned, and sometimes tortured, many reported that the subversive cross was in the interrogation room with them. "Look at this," they were told. "This is how Communists talk. This is subversive." After the civil war was over, the president of El Salvador, Alfredo Cristiani, a man from the political party which had sponsored the death squads, personally returned the subversive cross to Bishop Gomez.

That nasty conflict between the government of El Salvadoran and dirt-poor peasants who worked land they could never own . . .

May seem light years away from our middle-class life together in this community of faith
             When we pass by the crosses clustered together as we enter and leave
             When we lift up our eyes to the wall behind the altar
             I doubt that "subversive" is the first word we think of

Now you know we Lutheran pastors are pretty conservative when it comes to preaching politics

             You won’t hear us telling people how to vote or what strategies are best to solve our nation’s social problems

             Or supporting some candidate or government policy

But the simple truth is that the cross of Jesus is a subversive cross
             Not just in spiritual matters, not only in the realm of forgiveness and eternal life
             But in the gritty world of real tyranny, oppression, injustice and unfairness
             It is a politically and economically subversive cross
             It’s not a left-wing or right-wing subversive cross
             It’s a Christian subversive cross
             A cross lifted high by those people who in the book of Acts were accused by angry mobs of

             Turning the world upside down