A THING OF BEAUTY

       There was nothing beautiful about a Roman cross.  It was made out of rough lumber, a simple cross beam, either at the top or nailed on part way down.  Some had a protruding piece at the bottom where the victim could rest his feet.  Crosses were not attractive things that you would use to decorate your house.

       Nor was the person hanging there a thing of beauty.  A beaten, bloody body is not a pleasant sight.  In a prophetic word about the suffering servant Isaiah said, "he had no beauty that we should look upon him" (53:2).

       But today the cross is used as a thing of beauty.  I tried to find a picture of a typical Roman cross on the internet but what I found looked too nice.  We use precious metals to make it into jewelry with which we adorn our bodies.  Or we use fine lumber and make beautiful replicas to decorate our churches.

       For a long time this struck me as ironic.  Picturing or thinking of the cross as beautiful surely must be misleading.  How can a cruel and ugly instrument of execution be turned into a thing of beauty?  How can we do such a thing?

       Well, we can't -- but God can.  He transformed it by placing Jesus upon it.  In his book, Beauty Will Save The World, Brian Zahnd points out: "The unique form of Christianity is the cruciform -- Christ upon the cross, arms outstretched in offered embrace, forgiving the world of its sins.  This is the beauty that saves the world, and the symbol of this saving grace is the cross."

       He goes on to say: "That the Roman cross, an instrument of physical torture and psychological terror, could ever become an object of beauty representing faith, hope and love is an amazing miracle of transformation.  Every cross adorning a church is in itself a sermon -- a sermon proclaiming that if Christ can transform the Roman instrument of execution into a thing of beauty, there is hope that in Christ all things can be made beautiful" (60).

       However, it must be said, that to see the beauty of the cross in all of its glory, as with many beautiful images, we must stand in the right place.  It must be viewed from this side of the resurrection.  It must be seen through the prism of the resurrection.  From that perspective we can join with the hymn writer to say:

In the old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,

A wondrous beauty I see.

For twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died

To pardon and sanctify me.

As we see him on the cross let us also hear his words spoken at the last supper: 'this is my body, given for you; this ... is my blood shed for you.'  How beautiful is that!