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By Pastor Glenn Pease
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 hour was not yet come."
And once more, "No man took Him, because His hour was not yet come."
Now all of the sudden when some Greeks want to see Him Jesus announces that the hour has come.
The countdown in God's timetable of salvation is about to be completed, and zero hour has arrived.
The central hour of all history was approaching, and when it was over the most crucial act for time and eternity would be completed, and God's purpose fulfilled.
The beauty of the cross is the beauty of a finished project, plan, and purpose.
Marie Zwiller painted the picture, "The First Night Outside Paradise."
Adam and Eve have been driven from Eden, and they are looking back at it.
An angel with a flaming sword guards the gate.
They are not looking at the angel, however, for above him illuminating the sky is the bright outline of a cross.
Their eyes are lifted, and they are gazing wonderingly at that.
The cross was in God's plan from the beginning.
There was only one bridge that could span the gulf between paradise lost and paradise regained, and that was the cross.
No one could get past the angel's flaming sword until God solved the sin problem through an atonement for all men.
When the Greeks came to Jesus they were ready to receive Him as their Lord, and Jesus knew their hearts.
He knew that His hour had come to fulfill the purpose of God for all men, both Jews and Gentiles.
No longer would He be limited to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
He says in verse 32, when I am lifted up I will draw all men to myself."
From the perspective of the divine plan and purpose the cross was the beautiful fulfillment.
Jesus demonstrated the reality of the completed work by saying to the thief, "This day thou shalt be with me in paradise."
The hour had come for opening the gate of paradise where man could again enter the presence of God.
On the cross Jesus reconciled God and man, and made it possible for man to be forgiven and cleansed of all sin.
What could be more beautiful than the gate to paradise?
The cross was that gate.
This was the hour of glorification for Jesus.
Others were horrified at the cross, but Jesus was glorified.
It was for this purpose that He came into the world, and in fulfilling that purpose in deep humiliation God exalted Him and gave Him a name above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.
The cross was the hour of man's redemption and Christ's coronation.
The life of Christ is beautiful, but the death of Christ is even more beautiful when we see it's purpose.
Christ does not save men by His life,
Though that was holy, sinless, pure,
Not even by His tender love,
Though that forever shall endure;
He does not save them by His words,
Though they shall never pass away;
Nor by His vast creative power
That holds the elements in sway;
He does not save them by His works,
Though He was ever doing good-
The awful need was greater still,
It took His death, His cross, His blood!
Author unknown
Napoleon once took a map, and pointing to the British Isles, remarked, "Were it not for that red spot I would have conquered the world."
The devil can take the chart of history and point to the hour of the cross, and say the same: "Were it not for that red spot I would have conquered the world."
Jesus came to satisfy His Father, to redeem man, and to defeat the devil, and He did it all on the cross.
That is why it is a symbol of beauty.
In verse 24 Jesus gives us another basis for the beauty of the cross, for there we see-
II.
THE BEAUTY OF ITS PRODUCTIVENESS.
Jesus says that a grain of wheat must fall into the earth and die or it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.
Death is a means to productiveness in nature.
Jesus uses an illustration from nature, for the Greeks would understand this.
Proof from the Old Testament would not be as valuable with them as with the Jews.
The Greek mystery religions made much of the reproductive cycle of nature, and so Jesus was using a very contemporary and relevant illustration.
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