"But for us, the cross is the symbol of the dying Christ," he replied, "while our message is a declaration of the living Christ." When the minister asked what symbol Latter-day Saints use, he said that "the lives of our people must become the most meaningful expression of our faith and, in fact, therefore, the symbol of our worship."

Pastor Klemz described soteriology, or how the cross becomes a "saving instrument," by recalling Martin Luther's distinction between the "theology of glory" and the "theology of the cross." The former says you seek to do whatever necessary to get closer to God. The latter "turns that upside down where it's God coming to our human condition in all our weakness and brokenness. The emphasis of the theology of the cross is on where God meets us."

In Lutheran tradition, the cross "is literally the crux of what we believe." In 2 Corinthians, Paul says God made Christ "to be sin who knew no sin so that we might be the righteous of God." Jesus became "that very thing which God abhors," Pastor Klemz said, "which is sin."

"We believe that God forsakes Jesus on the cross so that we might never be forsaken in God's love or promises."

For Pastor Klemz, and he hopes, many of his congregation, "the cross happens whenever I become available to God and what God is doing." Lutherans, he said, talk more about the cross than many Protestants. "Not all of them are going to hold the same view, but the story with the cross is still going to be very central" to their faith.

The Rev. Adam Linton, rector of Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Ogden, believes all Christians "would affirm the centrality of the cross in their faith, but different Christians have different ways of articulating exactly what that is or how that works. That's been the case throughout the centuries."

Episcopalians "would accept in the meaning of the cross that Christ shares our conditions, he shares our capacity to suffer, shares our capacity to die. Christ gives himself over to our worst, and in so doing, Jesus breaks us out of the captivity of death."

It's also symbolic of "Christ sharing the human condition to the point of utter vulnerability, even to the point of death on the cross," which was intended to be not only excruciatingly painful but ultimately humiliating, he said.

Through such suffering, Christ "reveals an indestructible life in the resurrection."

"We view the cross differently because of the resurrection," the Rev. Linton said. People who were alive and witnessing it at the time would see merely the imposition of capital punishment on a Jewish man by the Roman authorities. "If that's all you look at, you see a defeat. But for Christians the cross always points to the resurrection.