Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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"Where's the wise one," Paul asks? "What happened to the scribe? Where are the great debaters of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" For in the cross of Christ, Paul says, we see that "God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength." Paul is marveling here. He is, perhaps, chuckling. "Who would have thunk it," he says, "that God should have saved his people in such a way?"

One Church --All Followers of Jesus

As always, the background is important. Paul's first letter to Corinth is one of the very earliest writings in the New Testament, predating even the gospels. Paul had established the Corinthian church, on his first missionary journey, and now he writes back to friends there. To his dismay, however, he has heard that there are divisions among them. (No wonder! They had no Bible -- at least no New Testament. They had no rule book. No neighboring church where they could go for advice. Some were Jews, some were Gentiles. Some were rich, most were poor. They were different from each other in numerous ways, and they were a tiny island of faith in a sea of paganism.)

The differences, apparently, were serious. We are only in the first chapter of this letter, and Paul already has expressed his agony over their divisions. They had fallen into teams, factions. Some think of themselves as followers of Peter (Cephas), others of himself, Paul, others of Apollo (a strong leader in the Corinthian church.) Paul reminds them that we are all followers of Jesus, in whose name we were baptized, and that God's wisdom in Jesus far exceeds whatever wisdom is represented by our dividedness.

Christ Nailed to a Cross

We so eagerly ally ourselves with this school of thought or that. We are conservatives, liberals, trinitarians, unitarians, creationists, evolutionists, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopals, etc. It makes us feel wise to have prepackaged beliefs, and to have company in them. But it also divides us, and makes us fools. Paul says, "Isn't it amazing that, for all our wisdom, God did not choose any way of ours to save his people, but chose a new way, one totally unexpected: the cross of Christ." The Christian gospel caught the whole world by surprise. "The Jews seek a sign, and the Greeks seek wisdom," Paul says, "but we preach Christ nailed to a cross, to the Jews a scandal, to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jew and Greek, the power of God and the wisdom of God."

Say that again. The Jews seek signs, that is they seek "miracles large and small." That's where they looked for, and found, God's power to save, God's salvation: in a burning bush, in supernatural plagues, in the crossing of the Red Sea, in manna from heaven, in the fall of Jericho and the conquest of the holy land. The Jews looked for God's signs, God's signature, in human history. And that is also how they expected the world finally to end: in a great and catastrophic sign from God. The cross (awkward and embarrassing to the Jews) was the worst kind of sign, a scandal, in fact. That God should show himself (perfectly, as the Christians claimed!) in such a way! Forget it. Such a sign, if it is a sign, is a sign of weakness and cannot be from God.

The Cross --More than Wisdom

O.K., the Jews seek miracles, the Greeks seek wisdom. We know about that: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. All the great Greek mathematicians, and playwrights, and architects, and poets. Wisdom, learning was the Greek thing. And Greece had a lot to be proud of (even if, by Paul's time, they were licking the Roman boot with everyone else). There had been an intellectual craving among the Greeks, in their glory days, that had never been equaled on the earth. But it had gone too far.

The Greeks expected learning to do what learning never can: they expected it to save them. They were seeking an intellectual panacea. When Paul had preached in Athens (the academic center) the professors there had listened politely and then said they would like to hear more about his ideas later, and walked away. He never forgot it. How learning can be such an empty thing, and create such empty people, how it can lead to thinking only for thought's sake and keep men from hearing the Word of God and acting upon it. To the Greeks the cross was blatantly foolish -- the opposite of wisdom. It didn't make sense to them.

 It is the Cross that Saves

Paul says, "That's right. By the lights of the world's great cultures we are talking nonsense. That's because we're talking about something entirely new." In Paul's time (and, indeed, in and through Paul, himself) two great streams of history flowed together for the first time: the Jewish stream, and the Greeco Roman stream. They would form a powerful new river, which would become the western world. We are all Jews and Greeks. We are superstitious and intellectual. And neither one saves us. It is the foolishness of the cross, scandalous to the Jew in us and stupid to the Greek, that saves.

When you read the teachings of Jesus, remembering what Paul says here about foolishness, you suddenly realize that everything Jesus taught was utterly foolish in the eyes of his world, and still is today. Only a fool would turn the other cheek. Only a fool would give his suit jacket to someone who had just stolen his top coat. Only a fool would pray for his enemies. Only a fool would deny himself. And it would take the biggest fool of all to die for others, especially if those others had just betrayed him, denied him, and run away when he most needed them. Only a fool would say that the poor are blessed, or that the meek will inherit the earth. Even today, only a fool would say that. But there is a power in God's foolishness. The old ways of thinking haven't worked. Maybe we should try Jesus' way.

Love

The theme word of the New Testament, for example, is the word "love." We can be schmaltzy about love, but we seldom stop to think how dangerous it is to love someone. Love makes us so vulnerable.

When I was one and twenty, I heard a wise man say,
Give crowns, and pounds and guineas, but not your heart away.
Give pearls away and rubies, but keep your fancy free.
But I was one and twenty -- no use to talk to me. When I was one and twenty, I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom was never given in vain.
'Tis paid with sighs aplenty, and sold for endless rue.

And I am two and twenty, and Oh, 'tis true, 'tis true!

 Love Can Hurt

We can be hurt so badly in love. (That is why ethical discussions so often focus on sexual behavior. It's such an easy way to get hurt, or to hurt someone else.) To love and not be loved in return, nothing is more painful. To give one's heart to another, in friendship or in love. Safer to give "crowns, and pounds and guineas," but not nearly so heroic. It's a foolish thing to put our hearts on the line. But God did it for us, and we must do it for others. And take the chance. A foolish, foolish thing to love, the wise world says. "Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?"

Repentance

To repent is foolish in the world's eyes. We have to keep up appearances. We cannot be seen to cry, or to be ashamed, or (perish the thought) to acknowledge our own weaknesses. People might take advantage of us! Let us, instead, blame our problems on someone else. Let us be whiners. But, in the foolishness of God, we all must ask forgiveness, we are all thieves crucified beside Jesus -- the only difference among us is that some recognize their sin and repent, and others die in their pride. In the foolishness of God, repentance makes us stronger, not weaker. The world will never understand that.

Remember, Paul comes to this point because he wants us not to be proud in our differences, thinking ourselves better than each other, but humble and loving in Jesus. "It will look like foolishness," he says, but (in truth) it is the power of God and the wisdom of God." If you want to boast, he says, boast about Jesus. "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong." God chose the "no ones" to shame the "someones." If we want to sit at the head of the table, we must go immediately to the foot. If we want to be first we have to be last. That's the foolishness of God. May we come to it sooner rather than later.