The Beauty Of The Cross

Luther Burbank took an interest in the common field daisy that was an outcast weed

despised by the farmers in the East. He crossed it with the Japanese daisy and an English

daisy and produced the Shasta daisy, a flower whose beautiful bloom has grown as much as

two feet in diameter, and which will last up to six weeks when cut. Burbank went on to

transform other despised and worthless plants into plants of beauty and usefulness. He said,

"It is my theory that there are no outcasts in nature; everything has a use, and everything in

nature is beautiful if we are eager to ennoble it. Every weed is a possible beautiful flower."

His theory has been demonstrated as fact in many cases. A group of women in Pasadena

years ago inaugurated the first weed show in history. It was an instant hit. People were

astonished at the beauty in weeds. The word weed implies ugliness and uselessness, but as

someone said, "Beauty is where you find it." Queen Anne's lace, for example, is a common

weed in New England, but in California it is raised as a choice flower. The Kansas Gay Feather,

which is a mere weed in the Midwest, is a garden flower in New England. The same

thing is both ugly and beautiful depending upon the perspective from which it is seen.

This is also the paradox of the cross. We could as easily consider the ugliness of the cross as

the beauty of it. One is as real as the other. At one time in history the cross was the most

gruesome object of horror that could be imagined. Cicero the Roman said, "The cross

speaks of that which is so shameful, so horrible, that it should not be mentioned in polite

society." It was so horrible to die on the cross that no Roman citizen was allowed to be

crucified no matter how guilty they were. This fate was reserved for only the worst kinds of

killers, renegades, and robbers. Even Scripture says, "Cursed is every man who is hanged on

a tree."

No one could have ever dreamed that the cross would someday become a universal

decoration and design for jewelry. You can buy a cross made of every precious metal and

with diamonds or any other precious stone. This would have sounded as incredible to the

ancients as the idea would sound to us of wearing a hangman's noose as a silver pin, or

hanging a picture in your living room of a gas chamber. It would be ugly and morbid. Weeds

being transformed into flowers is amazing, but nothing can compare with the wonder of the

cross being transformed from a symbol of horror and death to a symbol of beauty and life.

Jesus converted everything He touched, and one of the most radical conversions of all was

the conversion of the cross.

From Calvary on the cross became a symbol treasured and loved, and Paul could say, "God

forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Christ." You have heard the phrase ugly as sin.

If sin is the ugliest thing is the world, then that which forgives it and cleanses it has to be the

most beautiful thing in the world, and that is the blood of the cross. Jesus so transformed the

cross that it became the central theme of Christian preaching and song. The Lamb slain

from the foundation of the world is even the theme of the saints as they sing in heaven.

Be the cross our theme and story

All through time and into glory.

In our text Jesus says some things that explain why the cross became a symbol of beauty.

First of all we see in the cross-

I. THE BEAUTY OF ITS PURPOSE.

When Jesus made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the whole city was in an uproar. The

Pharisees were so amazed they said to one another in verse 19, "Look the whole world has

gone after Him." Then to illustrate the truth of their impression John tells of some Greeks

who wanted to see Jesus. They were Gentiles who had become converts to Judaism, and to

the one true God, for verse 20 says that they came to Jerusalem to worship at the feast. This

is the last public event in the life of Christ that John records before the cross. When Philip

and Andrew told Jesus some Greeks wanted to see Him, He answered and said, "The hour

has come for the Son of Man to be glorified."

All through His ministry He had been saying that the hour has not yet come. He said to His

mother at the wedding of Cana, "Mine hour has not yet come." He said to His brethren,

"My time is not yet come." And again we read, "No man laid hands on Him, because His