Sermons for the Month
Being Bold Fools in a "Wise" World
DATE: January 30th, 2005
SERVICE: Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
TEXT: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
Imagine this … it is 55 AD; we live in Corinth, one of the largest centers of commerce in the Roman Empire. A letter has just been delivered by a fellow Christian named Timothy. This is exciting! It's from Paul, who spent nearly two years in our city telling people about the ministry, death and resurrection of a man named Jesus Christ and establishing communities of those who became his followers.
Finally, a letter has arrived from him, your spiritual father. It starts out well, "Grace to you and peace…," he writes, and then goes on to say that he gives thanks for the believers in Corinth. This sounds good; he says that Jesus will strengthen his followers so that they may be found blameless when the Lord returns.
Oh no, evidently someone told him about the quarreling that has been going on, dividing people into factions. He warns about getting attached to anyone or anything so that it becomes more important than Jesus.
Let's see, what's next? It's difficult to follow; he's writing about foolishness and wisdom and weakness and strength and how what is true in the world is not so for Christians. Hey wait a minute! What's this? "…not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong…." Should we be insulted? "God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God."
What does that mean? I believe I'll set this aside for awhile and go pick some olives.
Well … perhaps I'm imposing our 21st century point-of-view on this text and it was easier to grasp when read from the original Greek, but I cannot help but wonder if the early readers were as confused by Paul's words as were are. What he is saying, in essence, according to William Willimon, is that by the world's standards of what works, and who is the greatest, and what is practical, the Christian faith can look foolish indeed.
Let's start with who is the greatest. In "the world" greatness is measured by the amount of power or possessions one has acquired, or how well known a person is - as is the case with an athlete or a movie star - or by the impact one has made on the course of human history. To be great is to stand out, to be admired, envied and perhaps even feared.
But Jesus says that, "…the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves…." (Luke 22:26) And in the familiar words of the Beatitudes which we read today from Matthew 5 those who are great in God's eyes are those who are poor in spirit, or are mourning, or are meek, or seek righteousness, or are merciful, or have good intentions, or are peacemakers or are persecuted because of their faith. Indeed, they are blessed. Now, that sounds absurd, doesn't it? It's foolish.
What about what's practical? By the world's standards it's practical to expect that those who do extreme things, like murder, will be judged. But Jesus says that even those who are angry, or who insult another person, are liable for judgment and must seek reconciliation (Matthew 5:21-26). By the world's standards it's practical that the punishment equals the crime, "an eye for an eye", but Jesus says if anyone one strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. By the world's standards it's practical to love your neighbor, your friends and your family and hate your enemy. But Jesus says that's too easy, instead we should love our enemies and pray for them. (Matthew 5:33-44) It's foolish!
And then there is what works. By the standards of the world it works to seek security, stability first. It just makes sense to care for ourselves and our loved ones. But Jesus says to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and everything else will fall into place (Matthew 6:33).
It works in our world to value wisdom and knowledge. That was true for the people of Corinth too, which is why Paul brings up the subject. Wisdom for them was what was reasonable and logical. A wise person was one who had a great deal of knowledge, could think things through, and had the ability to apply that information to solve a problem. Those are all things that we continue to value.
The problem, Paul says, is that that description of wisdom does not fit God's wisdom. In fact, God's wisdom is foolish by human standards. Why? Well, because there's nothing reasonable about the cross. No logical explanation can be offered to explain why God would send his son to suffer a punishment which was set aside for criminals. It's difficult to understand how, through that awful event, we are saved. (If you think it is not, just try to explain it to 7th and 8th graders.) It does not make sense that someone would endure the consequence of our sin. All this is foolishness.
Then, the situation becomes even more absurd when we note that we do not influence God's love for us. We all come to the cross with empty hands. Jesus Christ was crucified, he was raised from the dead and offers forgiveness and eternal life NOT because someone can give a logical, reasonable explanation of these events, NOT because someone has gained extensive knowledge, NOT as a reward for doing impressive things. Instead, forgiveness and eternal life are gifts offered to those who are open to receiving God' love. It's foolishness!
As a result, God ended up with people like those to whom Paul wrote in Corinth - not the wise people or the powerful or the ones from important families, but the uneducated poor, the slaves and former slaves and the Gentiles who had no religious background. And God used them to create the very church of which we are now a part.
Did you every wonder how such an ordinary group of people could do what they did? It's because they had to trust in God; they had no claims to self-sufficiency. Even Paul, who was a well-educated man, came to the cross with nothing in his hands because he had once been a hater of Christians and a persecutor of the church. He had announced that the message about Jesus was foolishness and that must be stopped until he was transformed by the Lord and became the greatest proclaimer of such foolishness.
What about us? God has chosen us too, and the fact is that nothing we have or do or fail influences God's love for us. Like the Corinthians and Paul our hands are empty before the cross, which makes us people God can use.
The trouble is that it's sometimes difficult to remember that. Either we are thrown off track by our abilities, our intelligence, our achievements, our possessions and our striving to be in control and become too self-centered OR we feel too stupid or too untalented or too much of a failure or too powerless and to too self-defeating. Either way, we must get our focus off ourselves.
In order to be used by God in amazing ways one thing is required, that we trust God above all else and make serving God our priority. We must set aside what we want or what we feel is important and put our focus on the Lord. Or as Paul puts it, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord." Then, God will use us foolish people to take the world's standards of what works, and who is the greatest and what is practical and turn them upside down.
Will we look like fools to some people? Sure? Perhaps they will say, "Just look at those people at Faith Lutheran Church, did you notice how they love sacrificially, and how they accept people unconditionally and how they make serving God their priority? Did you ever see such a bunch of fools?!? But I think I'd rather appear wise in God's eyes and foolish in the eyes of the world than the other way around.
Think about that, and then ponder this statement from Bishop Willimon in the week to come, if how we Christians live and what we have to say ever seems reasonable in the eyes of the world, then it's time for us to worry! AMEN