The Old Rugged Cross (1st Corinthians 1:18-25)

The Old Rugged Cross (1^st Corinthians 1:18-25) 

I have a friend who writes songs about sewing machines.

He’s a Singer songwriter… or sew it seams

What's the difference between a puppy and a singer-songwriter?

Eventually the puppy stops whining.

George Bennard
Composer of The Old Rugged Cross

As a songwriter myself, I know that some songs come quickly while others come with difficulty like birthing a baby. The Old Rugged Cross came through a long difficult labor.

George Bennard was born in Youngstown, Ohio in 1873. When he was still a child his family relocated to Albion, Michigan. Then again to Iowa. Bennard was 16 when his father was killed in a coal mining accident. He assumed his father’s responsibilities and worked in the coal mine for 8 hard years, providing for his mother and siblings. In 1897, he began working for the Salvation Army together with his wife, Araminta Statler Beeler, who he married in 1894.

George and Araminta were members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the predecessor to the United Methodists. He became a Methodist evangelist and traveled around the country leading revivals.

In 1912, as George Bennard was preaching Christ, he was heckled and ridiculed by young men in the crowd. The experience really bothered him. He began to ask himself, “What is the meaning of the cross of Christ?”

As he searched the scriptures, a tune and a phrase came to mind. “I’ll cherish the old rugged cross.” The tune and his idea for the song stayed with him. As he went about his evangelistic ministry, he would work on the song when he had a chance, but nothing came to mind. He was blocked.

Then on a trip to New York for an evangelistic meeting, the “floodgates were loosed” and the words poured forth. When he got back home to Albion, Michigan, he finished the beloved hymn, The Old Rugged Cross. He sat with his guitar with his handwritten lyrics spread out upon the kitchen table and sang it for his wife. She was moved to tears and told him it was lovely.

George then performed it for a sponsoring pastor and his wife, Rev Leroy and Ruby Bostwick, at their parsonage in Pokagon, Michigan. They told Bennard, “God has given you a song that will never die. It has moved us as no other song has ever moved us.” They offered to pay the cost for printing plates to be made. Bennard sent new song to a friend, Charles Gabriel, himself a renown gospel songwriter. Gabriel told George Bennard after reviewing his manuscript, “You will certainly hear from this song.”

There are conflicting reports on when George Bennard first performed his new hymn in public. The First Methodist Episcopal Church in Pokagon, Michigan claims he sang it at a revival there in June 1913. A Quaker congregation in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin claims Bennard first sung The Old Rugged Cross there on January 12, 1913. He was joined by Ed E. Mieras in a duet. 

Homer 'Rodey" Rodeheaver
First to record The Old Rugged Cross

Rodeheaver's home on Winona Lake, Indiana

Bennard sold the rights to the song to the Rodeheaver Company for $500 in 1915. Rodeheaver was among the first to publish The Old Rugged Cross in 1913, shortly after its composition. He is the first to record The Old Rugged Cross in a duet with Virginia Asher. (Play 1921 clip) Homer Rodeheaver was a trombone playing evangelistic music leader for the famous evangelist Billy Sunday. The Old Rugged Cross was featured in Billy Sunday’s radio show reaching the entire nation.

 

Rodeheaver, known as Rodey by friends, had a home on the shore of Lake Winona in Winona, Indiana. He established a school of music there. His work with Billy Sunday brought him to the likes of John D. Rockefeller and Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican nominee for the presidency.

To date The Old Rugged Cross has sold over 20 million copies of sheet music. It has appeared in 456 hymnals since 1913. It has been recorded by countless artists including, Johnny Cash, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Ernest Tubb, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Dolly Parton with Chris Stapleton, Alan Jackson, Carrie Underwood, Vince Gill, The Gaither Vocal Band, and even Elvis Presely.

National Broadcasting chain reports that The Old Rugged Cross was requested 4 times more often than over any other song. In 1938, The Old Rugged Cross was ranked the 5^th most popular among the Southern Baptists.

The Old Rugged Cross Church in Pokagon, Michigan—where the song was first performed—is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and functions as a museum. There’s an Old Rugged Cross memorial at the cemetery in Youngstown, Ohio. There an official marker in Albion, Michigan commemorating the place where George Bennard wrote The Old Rugged Cross.

Not everyone was a fan of The Old Rugged Cross. Some felt that Bennard placed love for the cross over Christ. In 1924, Frank C. Huston wrote a hymn entitled The Christ of the Cross in which he bashes George Bennard’s The Old Rugged Cross.

 

Let others who will praise the cross of the Christ,
The Christ of the cross is my theme;
For though we must cherish the old rugged cross,
’Tis only the Christ can redeem.

Hymnologist Erik Routley wrote, “I think that The Old Rugged Cross is a monstrous blasphemy… an unspeakable vulgarity. I believe it is wrong, misleading, and spiritually wicked to treat the cross as affectionately as that lyric does.”

 

As you can see, The Old Rugged Cross has quite the journey. George Bennard was ridiculed and mocked by youths at a revival. He searched for the meaning of the cross. He traveled from city to city evangelizing and working on the song. It hit the national stage through the work of Homer “Rodey” Rodeheaver and his work with evangelist Billie Sunday. Rodie was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1973 because of The Old Rugged Cross.

Geroge Bennard continued working as a Methodist evangelist for another 40 years. He composed around 350 gospel songs in his career. None had the power and popularity of The Old Rugged Cross. George Bennard died in 1958 in Reed City, Michigan. He is buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery in California with a simple flat grave stone with his name, the year of his birth and year of this death and the notation “Author of The Old Rugged Cross.”

Those who analyze hymns point out the contradistinctions in the lyrics.

In stanza one, though the cross is an “emblem of suffering and shame,” the singer still “loves that old cross.” In stanza two, though the cross is “despised by the world,” it still “has a wondrous attraction.”

In stanza three, though the cross is “stained with blood,” for the singer, it still has a “wondrous beauty.” (Robert Cottrill)

Each stanza includes a distinctive name for the Saviour: in stanza one, Christ is “the dearest and best,” in stanza two, “the dear Lamb of God,” in stanza three he is named more clearly, “Jesus,” and in stanza four, he is simply identified by pronouns (“He’ll,” “His”).

Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 21:23, “the one who is left exposed on a tree is cursed by God.”

The lyrics mention the shame of the cross.

For the joy set before Jesus he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

In our reading today, the apostle Paul confronts the Corinthian church for their divisions. They had little clicks with those who liked Paul best, those who followed Peter, and those who followed another popular evangelist, Apollos. Paul is calling the body of Christ to unity in Christ alone. Paul said,

Is Christ divided? Paul wasn’t crucified for you, was he? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—and not with clever speech, so that the cross of Christ would not become useless. (1^st Corinthians 1:13, 17)

The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. I think of the young men who mocked and ridiculed George Bennard at a 1912 revival in Michigan. They thought George a fool for his faith in Jesus. In truth, they were the fools.

 

 

The cross is foolishness. It makes no sense. I can hear the mockery of critics. You believe in a dead god? You worship a crucified messiah? How ridiculous! You actually believe the story that he rose from the grave! You worship a zombie!

If you are ever mocked for your faith in Christ know this: You are blessed. Peter wrote to the Church,

Rejoice that you have shared in the sufferings of Christ, so that when his glory is revealed you may also rejoice and be glad. ¹⁴ If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory, who is the Spirit of God, rests on you. (1^st Peter 4:13-14)

 

Paul insists that the wisdom of God is greater than the wisdom of the world. In worldly wisdom, the world rejected Jesus. Christ came to His own people, and they did not welcome Him.

None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1^st Corinthians 2:8)

Paul says the Jews demand miraculous signs to prove the proclamation that Jesus is the Son of David, the Christ, the Son of the living God.

The cross is a miraculous sign. When Jesus breathed his last, there was an earthquake. The Roman centurion, who witnessed Jesus’ death, stood in awe and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (Mark 15:39)

But for the Jews, Jesus was weak and died. Paul contests that God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. God foolishness is greater than human wisdom. (1^st Corinthians 1:25)

Yes, the cross is foolish, not wise to worldly eyes. The cross of Jesus is powerless to those who are perishing. But for those believe the message of the gospel, the cross of Christ is the power of God.

For George Benner, the cross was beautiful, for on its bloodstained beams hung the love of God incarnate. Jesus suffered a bloody lashing, a brutal beating, mockery and the piercing pain of 9 inch nails. He hung there fighting to breathe as spectators taunted him. “If you are the Son of God, save yourself and come down off the cross.”

Jesus looked upon them and said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

He died for you and me. He died so that we might live.

And so I will cherish the old rugged cross. Though the world may despise the message of the cross, it has a wonderous attraction or those who are being saved.