God of the Ordinary
Sermon
Trouble on the Mountain
Sermons For The Middle Third Of The Pentecost Season
Some folks can look at something extraordinary, and write it off as commonplace. Ring Lardner was an avid baseball fan, but every other sport to him was just a bore. One afternoon, when a friend took him to see a football game, Lardner watched the action on the field with total disinterest. Suddenly, in the second half of the game, the crowd came to its feet when a punt receiver ran the ball almost the entire length of the gridiron. "Did you see that?" the humorist's friend screamed. "He carried the ball ninety yards!" "So," Lardner shrugged, not at all impressed, "it isn't heavy." That is taking the spectacular and making it ordinary. But God, conversely, has a way of taking the ordinary, and making it spectacular and extraordinary.
Look at the setting of this story: the enemies of God never seem to learn, and they haven't learned yet, that God will have his way!
For a little while, the death of all the first-born in Egypt, when the death-angel came through, persuaded the Egyptians they had better let God's people go. They hurried them out of the land, saying, "Go, and go now. We'll all be dead if you don't leave!" They even gave them clothing and silver and gold to speed them on their way.
And God gave guidance to his people in the form of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, right in front of them, to give direction. As great as radar may be, this navigational system directed by God is even more reliable and sophisticated.
This lection begins where the Egyptian army and chariots came charging after the Jews - Pharoah had changed his mind again.
The struggling, straggling, fugitive Hebrews were on the move. Both sides, Egyptians and Hebrews, must have thought it was a suicide march. The Jews were bounded by the desert, the sea, and the enemy. They were "sitting ducks" and the enemy was bearing down upon them at full speed. They were breathing down their necks, so close that the rumble of chariots and the shouts of the soldiers could be heard. Most of them must have already lost heart. Moses was about the only one who didn't lose his head or his faith. Moses held his hand - and rod - out, God sent a strong east wind, and the waters parted, and the nation of the Jews crossed over on dry ground.
We don't know exactly how long the crossing took, how wide or long the path through the waters was, or how many poeple there were. It might have been 600,000; others say two million (counting men, women, and children). The details are not important. What does matter is they ventured by faith (Hebrews 11:29) into the waters, and the watery walls did not collapse upon them.
To arrive safely, they still needed help, because the Egyptian army was closing in upon them. What they desperately needed was a rear-guard to cover their passage. And God provided it for them. The symbol of his Presence - the pillar of fire and the cloud - went from the front of them to the rear! They didn't need the cloud to guide right now, they needed it to hide, at their back, as a defense. With the protection of the cloud in the rear, finally, the Israelites all made it safely to the Arabian shore.
The enemy was mired in the mud (strange and wonderful, isn't it? The Jews just walked over on dry ground). The muck and mire clogged the chariot wheels of the Egyptians. Moses' rod was stretched out again, the sea returned to its strength, the water-highway was closed, and the waters, now calm, seemed to have forgotten their former fury and the fact they had made a watery grave for the enemies of God.
You can never lose the war if you are on God's side, and there is no way to win if you are not. We stand, no matter how our present moment looks, as his triumphant people. Another generation sang the old song:
Some through the water, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great trials, but God gives a song -
In the night-season, and all the day long.
That's the story of the text before us, but it gives us some striking lessons. God usually works with the ordinary, and makes it extraordinary!
We go through the days of our lives, longing for a miracle, the spectacular, some sign God is with us. We forget God, more often than not, uses the commonplace to indicate his Presence, his help, his love, and his care for us. The commonplace sun in the commonplace sky makes up our commonplace day, but how terribly bereft we would be without that "ordinary miracle" that rises in the east each morning!
God Uses, For the Most Part, Ordinary People
Moses was used by God in an extraordinary way, but his beginnings were less than prestigious. He was a little slave baby, rescued out of the waters of the Nile, with many ordinary lessons to learn before he became the leader in a nation's deliverance. He must first be schooled, must run for his life, must tend sheep, must admit hi5 ineptness as a public speaker - all of this, and more, before God could mold him into a man of extraordinary character.
True, God chose a learned Roman named Paul as a mighty spokesman for the new, struggling church he was bringing into existence, but more often than not he put his hand on plodders, like tax collectors, fishermen, and common laborers; unlearned men like Peter, Andrew, James, John, and others.
When God wanted to make a spectacular change in the religious world he took a troubled priest, bothered by his sins and brash in his speech, to make him, ordinary as he seemed, into the bold and fearless reformer that changed the religion of his world. Martin Luther's mother may have rocked a reformation in her cradle, but it would have taken a seer's vision to ever see it in such an ordinary infant.
John Wesley's early ministry would have marked him, had any one bothered to notice, as a less-than-average preacher. He was nervous Christian, a scared-of-the-storm-at-sea traveler, a failure as a missionary to the American Indians in Georgia. He unwillingly attended an ordinary prayer-meeting at Aldersgate in London, heard an almost obscure preface to the Romans read (written earlier by that ordinary priest, Martin Luther), when an extraordinary experience occurred which has since changed the course of church history and birthed the Methodist Church.
Even when God wanted to send the world's greatest and most extraordinary Gift to us, he wrapped it in a human bundle that looked like any average baby and brought him to our dark world in an insignificant little village called Bethlehem.
Many of us are bothered by the realization there is nothing special about us; we are average and ordinary folks. Yet, it might be well to keep in mind God has let us come this far, and that is no small miracle!
When I was a child I was so shy I would run and hide in terror, behind my mother's skirts, when neighbors came to call. To recite in school, before a class of my peers, was sheer torture, and almost an impossibility. I hid from facing people by reading books and used to spend long, summer afternoons sitting on a limb in a mulberry tree, safe from the scrutiny of others by the lush leaves that made me invisible - caught up in whatever world the book of the day opened to me, and safe for the moment from confrontation with other human beings. I was so insecure that, as a senior in high school, I bargained with my teacher to commit to memory twice as much memory work as required if she would only let me recite it to her in private, after school, rather than having to stand trembling in class before the other students. What a muddled mass of jello-like insecurity I was (and still am) when God called me (imagine, me!) to preach his Word. So, unremarkable and ordinary as I am as a preacher, it is still nothing short of a miracle that I manage to do it at all! God does use quite ordinary people to do his great work!
God Uses Ordinary Situations and Things to Effect His Mighty Acts
Whoever heard of waters parting by the simple act of a rod being held over them in the hand of an ordinary human being? Whoever heard of using so ordinary a thing as wind to do the extraordinary feat of blowing in two opposite directions at once to part the waters? Wind always blows just one way! When I was learning to fly, my instructor taught me to always keep my eyes open as to which direction the wind was blowing, in the event of a forced landing. We were to observe smoke blowing, trees bending, and waves on the waters of ponds and lakes for wind direction. The wind might, at any time, change its course, but it still blew only one direction at a time! This wind in the text did some mighty unusual things. And who ever heard of a cloud that was, at the same time, both light and darkness? God used this ordinary cloud to be a light to guide the Jews and a darkness to confuse the enemy.
God used unremarkable things; Moses' rod, the wind, the cloud, as physical agents to aid the feeble, fragile faith of his people, but in the end it was, as it always is, God, all God! ("the waters saw thee, O God")
God is still doing things like that. God used the dream of a butler to effect Joseph's release from prison. He used the crowing of a rooster to bring Peter to his knees. He used a little old rock from the sling of a shepherd boy to kill Goliath.
God can touch and heal (and he chooses to do it that way sometimes) in a sudden, miraculous act. More often than not, however, he chooses to use one of his more ordinary gifts to restore us - a skilled surgeon, an understanding counselor, a Tylenol or a Rolaid, or maybe just a good night's sleep or a solid meal to bring us back to health. It is no less a miracle, no matter the method, ordinary, or otherwise.
Jesus took the parables, simple stories of ordinary, every-day life and objects, and made of them deep, profound, and eternal truths.
Our Lord takes ordinary bread and wine and makes it, properly administered, by faith, a spectacular means of giving forgiveness and new life to us.
Christ can take your life of faith, lived out in the commonplace, and make it a means of redemption for those about you. Or, he can take a witnessing word of yours, spoken in love to someone in business, school, home, or on the street, and use it to bring salvation to the one who hears it. God, willing to condescend his greatness and power to our littleness and weakness, takes our simple trust and makes it a tool marvelously useful to perform exceptional things for him.
I visited a sick man in the hospital, reminded him God would certainly hear his prayers as he looked to him in faith from his sick bed. His immediate response was, "No, preacher, you pray for me!" When I asked him why it was important I be the one who prayed, he said, "Because you are a minister, you are good, you are better than the rest of us, and God will hear you before he will hear me." That man was wrong, wrong, wrong! God does use the mighty prayer power of an Oral Roberts, a Billy Graham, my John, your pastor, and others; but, just as surely does he also hear and answer the cries to heaven of humble, average, ordinary persons like you and me. It's God, all God, that does it anyway!
God Uses Ordinary Conversion to Make His Saints
There are many people who doubt their conversion experience because they have heard some great, powerful, and outstanding witness given by others. We hear of someone who was dying; God gave him another chance, and gloriously saved him. Or, we know of someone on death row - for murder, robbery, or rape - and God reached down and rescued him and gave him a fantastic conversion. We read of St. Paul who was stopped on the Damascus road at noon, thrown from his horse, saw a light and heard a Voice, and became one of the greatest Christians the world has ever known. What hope is there for everyday persons like you and me? We can't witness to hearing voices, or bells, or having visions, or being dramatically saved. Remember, for every person with an authentic, spectacular conversion, there are thousands of others, just as authentic, who have had no striking experiences, but are no less Christians than those who have had unique transformations.
The story of Naaman the leper illustrates this. Naaman was sent, for a cure for his leprosy, to the prophet Elisha. (2 Kings 5) As Naaman drove up to the house of the man of God, with horses, chariots, and servants, he fully expected the treatment usually given to an important person like himself. But Elisha did not even bother to come out of his house to greet him; instead, he sent his servant with orders for Naaman to go dip seven times in the river Jordan. Naaman knew that river was muddy, dirty, and insignificant, and he flew into a rage. The Syrian captain stormed, "I thought he would at least come out to see me! I thought he would pray over me! I don't like the prescribed treatment either - there are better, cleaner, nicer rivers than the Jordan in my own country!" Naaman wanted special treatment, wanted to be asked to do some great thing. Instead, he was told to follow such easy directions it was an insult to a man of his position and intelligence. But ordinary obedience brought extraordinary results and his healing rebounded to his diseased, rotting flesh becoming as firm and healthy as that of a little child.
It isn't much God asks of us in order to be saved, "Repent, believe the Gospel, and be baptized." But out of that ordinary action is wrought the grandest miracle of all time - salvation and redemption for you and me!
Even though some claim wildly-wonderful, other-worldly experiences when they are converted, even though they grandly affirm, "I really had a born-again experience!" (and I have no reason to doubt for a moment they did have a great conversion), that is not the usual way it happens for the majority of folks.
I've been preaching a long time, and I've seen a lot of people as they have come to accept Christ as Savior. Some come running and crying down a church aisle to a place of prayer to ask God's forgiveness and to repent of their sins. I've seen others come smiling, seeming to almost stroll, to a chancel rail to receive God's grace. Others come solemnly, quietly, subdued, and resolute. Conversion may be an intensely emotional experience, but if it is not, it is no less genuine and real. You see, how we feel, or act, or re-act, is unimportant. It is still God, all God! Conversion is, after all, the grace of God which is constantly being offered to us, and on the basis of our repentance and faith, we receive it unto ourselves.
It is said that when Martin Luther was uncertain of his salvation, doubts would come to plague him, the devil would tell him he was no Christian, he then would crawl back, by faith, to the baptismal font to remind himself that there God adopted him, received him, and made him his own dear child. Feelings became unimportant, what God did became all-important.
Have you ever noticed how people react when they are given a gift? One will carefully, slowly, and methodically open the package, deliberately examine the gift, and then gratefully smile at the giver and express sincere gratitude. Another will take the package, rip the ribbon from it, tear the paper off, exclaim and shout over the present, and then run and grab the giver to hug and kiss their appreciation. The gift, in each case, was the same, only the human response was very different, but the gratitude was real in both cases. So, in conversion, it may be very routine and unremarkable, but it does not minimize the truth that the Gift of God is sensational and as genuine for one as for another.
God of the Ordinary
When Jesus died on a cross, it was not an unusual happening in the Roman world. Thousands of criminals were crucified on those bloody gibbets every year. The cross of Jesus was, in itself, perhaps no better or no worse than those where common criminals were daily tortured to death. In Christian symbolism we often see three crosses placed together, but the middle cross, the Jesus-cross, is always larger than the others. To us it is a wondrous cross, larger than life because it gives life, a bigger and better than any other, and in the knowledge of what the atonement means, this is all true. But in reality, it was likely a very ordinary cross, made of a very ordinary tree, and, to the Roman soldiers carrying out their duty, it was just another ordinary criminal they were ushering to his death. But to those of us who know the saving power of the One hanging there in agony and blood, it is wondrous, extraordinary, and unique. It is the sensation of the ages, and superlatives fail us when we try to describe it.
Yes, God used ordinary, natural means to deliver his people long ago - a rod in a human hand, a cloud, wind; so God uses an ordinary cross-tree to bring about his most stupendous act of all time. God, in Christ, can always use the ordinary, for he is so ext raordinary himself!
Look at the setting of this story: the enemies of God never seem to learn, and they haven't learned yet, that God will have his way!
For a little while, the death of all the first-born in Egypt, when the death-angel came through, persuaded the Egyptians they had better let God's people go. They hurried them out of the land, saying, "Go, and go now. We'll all be dead if you don't leave!" They even gave them clothing and silver and gold to speed them on their way.
And God gave guidance to his people in the form of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, right in front of them, to give direction. As great as radar may be, this navigational system directed by God is even more reliable and sophisticated.
This lection begins where the Egyptian army and chariots came charging after the Jews - Pharoah had changed his mind again.
The struggling, straggling, fugitive Hebrews were on the move. Both sides, Egyptians and Hebrews, must have thought it was a suicide march. The Jews were bounded by the desert, the sea, and the enemy. They were "sitting ducks" and the enemy was bearing down upon them at full speed. They were breathing down their necks, so close that the rumble of chariots and the shouts of the soldiers could be heard. Most of them must have already lost heart. Moses was about the only one who didn't lose his head or his faith. Moses held his hand - and rod - out, God sent a strong east wind, and the waters parted, and the nation of the Jews crossed over on dry ground.
We don't know exactly how long the crossing took, how wide or long the path through the waters was, or how many poeple there were. It might have been 600,000; others say two million (counting men, women, and children). The details are not important. What does matter is they ventured by faith (Hebrews 11:29) into the waters, and the watery walls did not collapse upon them.
To arrive safely, they still needed help, because the Egyptian army was closing in upon them. What they desperately needed was a rear-guard to cover their passage. And God provided it for them. The symbol of his Presence - the pillar of fire and the cloud - went from the front of them to the rear! They didn't need the cloud to guide right now, they needed it to hide, at their back, as a defense. With the protection of the cloud in the rear, finally, the Israelites all made it safely to the Arabian shore.
The enemy was mired in the mud (strange and wonderful, isn't it? The Jews just walked over on dry ground). The muck and mire clogged the chariot wheels of the Egyptians. Moses' rod was stretched out again, the sea returned to its strength, the water-highway was closed, and the waters, now calm, seemed to have forgotten their former fury and the fact they had made a watery grave for the enemies of God.
You can never lose the war if you are on God's side, and there is no way to win if you are not. We stand, no matter how our present moment looks, as his triumphant people. Another generation sang the old song:
Some through the water, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great trials, but God gives a song -
In the night-season, and all the day long.
That's the story of the text before us, but it gives us some striking lessons. God usually works with the ordinary, and makes it extraordinary!
We go through the days of our lives, longing for a miracle, the spectacular, some sign God is with us. We forget God, more often than not, uses the commonplace to indicate his Presence, his help, his love, and his care for us. The commonplace sun in the commonplace sky makes up our commonplace day, but how terribly bereft we would be without that "ordinary miracle" that rises in the east each morning!
God Uses, For the Most Part, Ordinary People
Moses was used by God in an extraordinary way, but his beginnings were less than prestigious. He was a little slave baby, rescued out of the waters of the Nile, with many ordinary lessons to learn before he became the leader in a nation's deliverance. He must first be schooled, must run for his life, must tend sheep, must admit hi5 ineptness as a public speaker - all of this, and more, before God could mold him into a man of extraordinary character.
True, God chose a learned Roman named Paul as a mighty spokesman for the new, struggling church he was bringing into existence, but more often than not he put his hand on plodders, like tax collectors, fishermen, and common laborers; unlearned men like Peter, Andrew, James, John, and others.
When God wanted to make a spectacular change in the religious world he took a troubled priest, bothered by his sins and brash in his speech, to make him, ordinary as he seemed, into the bold and fearless reformer that changed the religion of his world. Martin Luther's mother may have rocked a reformation in her cradle, but it would have taken a seer's vision to ever see it in such an ordinary infant.
John Wesley's early ministry would have marked him, had any one bothered to notice, as a less-than-average preacher. He was nervous Christian, a scared-of-the-storm-at-sea traveler, a failure as a missionary to the American Indians in Georgia. He unwillingly attended an ordinary prayer-meeting at Aldersgate in London, heard an almost obscure preface to the Romans read (written earlier by that ordinary priest, Martin Luther), when an extraordinary experience occurred which has since changed the course of church history and birthed the Methodist Church.
Even when God wanted to send the world's greatest and most extraordinary Gift to us, he wrapped it in a human bundle that looked like any average baby and brought him to our dark world in an insignificant little village called Bethlehem.
Many of us are bothered by the realization there is nothing special about us; we are average and ordinary folks. Yet, it might be well to keep in mind God has let us come this far, and that is no small miracle!
When I was a child I was so shy I would run and hide in terror, behind my mother's skirts, when neighbors came to call. To recite in school, before a class of my peers, was sheer torture, and almost an impossibility. I hid from facing people by reading books and used to spend long, summer afternoons sitting on a limb in a mulberry tree, safe from the scrutiny of others by the lush leaves that made me invisible - caught up in whatever world the book of the day opened to me, and safe for the moment from confrontation with other human beings. I was so insecure that, as a senior in high school, I bargained with my teacher to commit to memory twice as much memory work as required if she would only let me recite it to her in private, after school, rather than having to stand trembling in class before the other students. What a muddled mass of jello-like insecurity I was (and still am) when God called me (imagine, me!) to preach his Word. So, unremarkable and ordinary as I am as a preacher, it is still nothing short of a miracle that I manage to do it at all! God does use quite ordinary people to do his great work!
God Uses Ordinary Situations and Things to Effect His Mighty Acts
Whoever heard of waters parting by the simple act of a rod being held over them in the hand of an ordinary human being? Whoever heard of using so ordinary a thing as wind to do the extraordinary feat of blowing in two opposite directions at once to part the waters? Wind always blows just one way! When I was learning to fly, my instructor taught me to always keep my eyes open as to which direction the wind was blowing, in the event of a forced landing. We were to observe smoke blowing, trees bending, and waves on the waters of ponds and lakes for wind direction. The wind might, at any time, change its course, but it still blew only one direction at a time! This wind in the text did some mighty unusual things. And who ever heard of a cloud that was, at the same time, both light and darkness? God used this ordinary cloud to be a light to guide the Jews and a darkness to confuse the enemy.
God used unremarkable things; Moses' rod, the wind, the cloud, as physical agents to aid the feeble, fragile faith of his people, but in the end it was, as it always is, God, all God! ("the waters saw thee, O God")
God is still doing things like that. God used the dream of a butler to effect Joseph's release from prison. He used the crowing of a rooster to bring Peter to his knees. He used a little old rock from the sling of a shepherd boy to kill Goliath.
God can touch and heal (and he chooses to do it that way sometimes) in a sudden, miraculous act. More often than not, however, he chooses to use one of his more ordinary gifts to restore us - a skilled surgeon, an understanding counselor, a Tylenol or a Rolaid, or maybe just a good night's sleep or a solid meal to bring us back to health. It is no less a miracle, no matter the method, ordinary, or otherwise.
Jesus took the parables, simple stories of ordinary, every-day life and objects, and made of them deep, profound, and eternal truths.
Our Lord takes ordinary bread and wine and makes it, properly administered, by faith, a spectacular means of giving forgiveness and new life to us.
Christ can take your life of faith, lived out in the commonplace, and make it a means of redemption for those about you. Or, he can take a witnessing word of yours, spoken in love to someone in business, school, home, or on the street, and use it to bring salvation to the one who hears it. God, willing to condescend his greatness and power to our littleness and weakness, takes our simple trust and makes it a tool marvelously useful to perform exceptional things for him.
I visited a sick man in the hospital, reminded him God would certainly hear his prayers as he looked to him in faith from his sick bed. His immediate response was, "No, preacher, you pray for me!" When I asked him why it was important I be the one who prayed, he said, "Because you are a minister, you are good, you are better than the rest of us, and God will hear you before he will hear me." That man was wrong, wrong, wrong! God does use the mighty prayer power of an Oral Roberts, a Billy Graham, my John, your pastor, and others; but, just as surely does he also hear and answer the cries to heaven of humble, average, ordinary persons like you and me. It's God, all God, that does it anyway!
God Uses Ordinary Conversion to Make His Saints
There are many people who doubt their conversion experience because they have heard some great, powerful, and outstanding witness given by others. We hear of someone who was dying; God gave him another chance, and gloriously saved him. Or, we know of someone on death row - for murder, robbery, or rape - and God reached down and rescued him and gave him a fantastic conversion. We read of St. Paul who was stopped on the Damascus road at noon, thrown from his horse, saw a light and heard a Voice, and became one of the greatest Christians the world has ever known. What hope is there for everyday persons like you and me? We can't witness to hearing voices, or bells, or having visions, or being dramatically saved. Remember, for every person with an authentic, spectacular conversion, there are thousands of others, just as authentic, who have had no striking experiences, but are no less Christians than those who have had unique transformations.
The story of Naaman the leper illustrates this. Naaman was sent, for a cure for his leprosy, to the prophet Elisha. (2 Kings 5) As Naaman drove up to the house of the man of God, with horses, chariots, and servants, he fully expected the treatment usually given to an important person like himself. But Elisha did not even bother to come out of his house to greet him; instead, he sent his servant with orders for Naaman to go dip seven times in the river Jordan. Naaman knew that river was muddy, dirty, and insignificant, and he flew into a rage. The Syrian captain stormed, "I thought he would at least come out to see me! I thought he would pray over me! I don't like the prescribed treatment either - there are better, cleaner, nicer rivers than the Jordan in my own country!" Naaman wanted special treatment, wanted to be asked to do some great thing. Instead, he was told to follow such easy directions it was an insult to a man of his position and intelligence. But ordinary obedience brought extraordinary results and his healing rebounded to his diseased, rotting flesh becoming as firm and healthy as that of a little child.
It isn't much God asks of us in order to be saved, "Repent, believe the Gospel, and be baptized." But out of that ordinary action is wrought the grandest miracle of all time - salvation and redemption for you and me!
Even though some claim wildly-wonderful, other-worldly experiences when they are converted, even though they grandly affirm, "I really had a born-again experience!" (and I have no reason to doubt for a moment they did have a great conversion), that is not the usual way it happens for the majority of folks.
I've been preaching a long time, and I've seen a lot of people as they have come to accept Christ as Savior. Some come running and crying down a church aisle to a place of prayer to ask God's forgiveness and to repent of their sins. I've seen others come smiling, seeming to almost stroll, to a chancel rail to receive God's grace. Others come solemnly, quietly, subdued, and resolute. Conversion may be an intensely emotional experience, but if it is not, it is no less genuine and real. You see, how we feel, or act, or re-act, is unimportant. It is still God, all God! Conversion is, after all, the grace of God which is constantly being offered to us, and on the basis of our repentance and faith, we receive it unto ourselves.
It is said that when Martin Luther was uncertain of his salvation, doubts would come to plague him, the devil would tell him he was no Christian, he then would crawl back, by faith, to the baptismal font to remind himself that there God adopted him, received him, and made him his own dear child. Feelings became unimportant, what God did became all-important.
Have you ever noticed how people react when they are given a gift? One will carefully, slowly, and methodically open the package, deliberately examine the gift, and then gratefully smile at the giver and express sincere gratitude. Another will take the package, rip the ribbon from it, tear the paper off, exclaim and shout over the present, and then run and grab the giver to hug and kiss their appreciation. The gift, in each case, was the same, only the human response was very different, but the gratitude was real in both cases. So, in conversion, it may be very routine and unremarkable, but it does not minimize the truth that the Gift of God is sensational and as genuine for one as for another.
God of the Ordinary
When Jesus died on a cross, it was not an unusual happening in the Roman world. Thousands of criminals were crucified on those bloody gibbets every year. The cross of Jesus was, in itself, perhaps no better or no worse than those where common criminals were daily tortured to death. In Christian symbolism we often see three crosses placed together, but the middle cross, the Jesus-cross, is always larger than the others. To us it is a wondrous cross, larger than life because it gives life, a bigger and better than any other, and in the knowledge of what the atonement means, this is all true. But in reality, it was likely a very ordinary cross, made of a very ordinary tree, and, to the Roman soldiers carrying out their duty, it was just another ordinary criminal they were ushering to his death. But to those of us who know the saving power of the One hanging there in agony and blood, it is wondrous, extraordinary, and unique. It is the sensation of the ages, and superlatives fail us when we try to describe it.
Yes, God used ordinary, natural means to deliver his people long ago - a rod in a human hand, a cloud, wind; so God uses an ordinary cross-tree to bring about his most stupendous act of all time. God, in Christ, can always use the ordinary, for he is so ext raordinary himself!
