As did so many others, I felt a pain-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach sense of loss at the news of Monday’s fire Notre Dame de Paris. And as for many others that sorrow was not just at the destruction of art and history and beauty wrought by the flames, but at the violation of memories deeply personal and important.

Of course, Becky and I were but two of the millions of people who visit Notre Dame every year.  But none of the others among the many at Notre Dame in October eighteen months ago were there to celebrate our fortieth anniversary.  No apologies for personalizing this sad news.

Monday evening Becky and I talked about the tragedy of the fire and during the week we have looked again at our photos and remembered one more time that wonderful week in Paris.  Every morning we saw the spire of the cathedral as we left our apartment on Rue Galande on the Left Bank barely 150 meters from the Seine and Pont au Double.  In the evening the chimes of the bells of Notre Dame echoed off the cobble stones of Rue Galande.  Yes, we’ll always have Paris (and here’s looking at you, kid),  but we will remember we were there before the fire.

The media with their every-twenty-minute-deadline for new copy has made too much of Monday’s fire. It has been politicized, trivialized, twitter-ized, and, yes, spiritualized.  You may have seen the memes on social media or the posts on the theological puff sites about the cross behind the altar at Notre Dame having survived the inferno.  Surely, they say, this is a sign from God.  (“This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah,” Jesus told them – Luke 11:29.)

Fires are random in their destruction, and our God of order and purpose allows such randomness.  The cross at the top of the cathedral spire, like the spire itself, was not spared on Monday.  Its loss signifies nothing, even if we might worry about the West’s spiritual amnesia.

But wood, gold, iron, brass, whatever they are made of, whoever fashions them, crosses are not insignificant. They are symbols, reminders. We humans must have, we live by, symbols and reminders, good or bad.

Last night as we came to the Table in our Maundy Thursday worship, we sang “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” We wondered, “what language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest friend.” The cross is a symbol of loss – on which the Prince of Glory died.  It is a reminder of a death more costly than any death.  “Behold the man upon a cross, my sin upon his shoulders.”

By the random destruction of Monday’s blaze the altar cross at Notre Dame de Paris still stands. The spire cross is lost.  And, yes, deep sorrow for the loss and all the destruction.

Good Friday calls us to live with our sorrow, to contemplate loss and destruction. Easter makes no sense without it.