At Cross Purposes with the World

1 Corinthians 1:18-27
For the word of the cross is foolishness to the perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. As it has been written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise
and the shrewdness of the shrewd I will thwart.”
Where is the wise one? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn’t God shown the wisdom of the world to be foolish? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through its wisdom, God was well pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save the ones believing. Since the Jews ask for a sign and the Greeks seek wisdom, we preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. But to those called, Jews and also Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of humanity and the weakness of God is stronger than the strength of humanity.
Take note of your calling, brothers and sisters. Not many of you are wise according to the flesh. Not many are powerful. Not many are well born. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world in order to shame the wise and God has chosen the weak things of the world in order to shame the strong things. God has chosen the low things of the world and the despised things, the things that do not exist, in order that the things that do exist might be made ineffective, so that all flesh should not boast before God. But from God you are in Christ Jesus who became for us wisdom from God and righteousness and holiness and redeemer in order that, just as it has been written:
“Let the one boasting boast in the Lord.”

This is the third week of my Lenten series of sermons on the meaning of the cross for us today. Did I tell you why I was led to do this series? In part it’s because of the season. Lent is a good time to focus our attention on the cross. But partly it’s because I always trip over the cross. I like to think I’ve got a handle on what it means that Jesus came and died on the cross. I like to think I know and can explain why it is so important. But at its heart, the cross is a mystery, a stumbling block that is never content to rest easily within a well-constructed theology. So I need to keep coming back to it. I need to keep reflecting on why it is so crucial to my faith and to our salvation. And I figured you must be wondering the same thing, otherwise why would God lead me to talk about such a terrible thing for six weeks?

Actually this week the C.S. Lewis class was talking about the cross and atonement – God’s action in Christ to reconcile the world to God’s own self. Lewis says in Mere Christianity that he was never satisfied with the atonement image he had as a child and he wasn’t sure that anyone had a way to express exactly how this whole process works – how God uses the cross to open a way for us to repent and return to God. Finally he says, “We believe that the death of Christ is just that point in history at which something absolutely unimaginable from outside shows through into our own world.” And the unimaginable thing is that God is paying the price for our forgiveness and redemption.

Unimaginable. Some might even say foolish. What sort of God is it that acts like this? What do we do with this cross when it scandalizes us? That’s the question I want to explore today. And what I have to say is this: Jack Nicholson was right: We can’t handle the truth. But the truth can handle us. We can’t handle the truth, but the truth can handle us.

So four rabbis are out playing golf and as they play they are having a very vigorous theological debate over some very important point. Three of the rabbis agree on the issue, but the fourth disagrees. The three in agreement are adamant that the one dissenting rabbi has no idea what he is talking about. Obviously he hasn’t studied the scriptures well enough and hasn’t prayed hard enough to understand why he is so wrong. Finally in exasperation the rabbis look up into the heavens and say, “O Holy One, we are certain that this man is wrong but if he is right, please send us a sign.”

At that moment a lightning bolt strikes a tree near them, a huge gust of wind blows in, the earth shakes with an earthquake, the fourth rabbi’s face begins to glow and a voice from heaven says, “Heeee’s riiight.”

The three rabbis look at one another and say, “O.K., so now it’s three to two.”

We can’t handle the truth. That’s where I want to start today. We can’t handle it. When it comes to the truth of the cross we just can’t get our minds around it and we just can’t comprehend how much it turns our world upside down.

Now if you are a visitor today, you’ve probably been into a church before and seen how prominent the cross is for Christians. But suppose you had no familiarity with the cross and you walked in to a church like ours. Especially if you knew what it was, an instrument of torture and death, you might think it was a pretty shocking thing to put in front of a congregation. You might think, “My goodness, what sort of thing goes on here? What sort of place is this that puts so much emphasis on a symbol of death? There is something really unusual going on here.”

When you think of it from the perspective of the world, it is a really unusual thing going on here. This is a culture that glorifies success and denies death. This is a culture that can’t abide weakness and that loves cleverness. This is a culture that likes comfort food and comforting images. There’s nothing cuddly about the cross.

If we think about too much we might even start to apologize to our visitors for putting that right out front. And then we read 1 Corinthians as we just have, and we might get embarrassed about that, too. It’s not the sort of text you want to break out for visitors. Because what it says is that we Christians are foolish, weak and pretty insignificant. That’s not what you want to tell company, now is it? Christians are foolish, weak and insignificant? Please excuse our Bible. It’s a little too honest sometimes. There are other passages that say other things. Really! We have stories about rainbows and sheep and giant prophet-swallowing fish, too. But actually, when you get right down to it, those stories have some pretty rough edges, too. We’re just going to have to face this text and face this cross and not be apologetic. If you are visiting you get to see us for who we really are.

The writer of those words to the Corinthian Christians knew a little bit about power and weakness. Paul had been a very well-respected, powerful leader. He used to persecute the Christians. But he had his world turned upside-down by an encounter with Jesus and suddenly he was leading the Christians, including the ones in Corinth.

But First Christian Church of Corinth was a difficult congregation. They fought about everything. Spiritual gifts, church hierarchy, sexual ethics, idols, speaking in tongues, leaders, what color the new carpet was going to be, who was going to be the hospitality chair, whether or not to install indoor bathrooms…you name it, they were fighting about it. So Paul had to keep writing letters back to them to straighten things out. We benefit from all that writing because Paul talks about what’s really important to him in these letters. And the one thing that is most important to him is the cross.

It’s important to the Corinthians, too, but somehow they had gotten the message all wrong. Somehow they came to think that the power of the cross was something that would lead them to have power over other Christians. Paul hears about this and he says, “You silly Corinthians! Don’t you get it? The cross is a scandal! There’s nothing arrogant about it. Just look at it. Jesus died on that cross. Don’t you realize how goofy that makes us look in the eyes of the world? Here we are worshipping a savior who showed his power by dying on a cross! This cross is foolishness to the world!” And that, Paul says, is a good thing! And it’s still foolishness to the world and it’s still a good thing for us.

Because the cross turns the world upside down. You want powerful signs, you get a crucified savior. You want wisdom, you get foolishness. You want Easy Street, you get a narrow path. It’s not what the world expects from a savior at all. But this, Paul says, is exactly how God operates. God shows weakness, but somehow even God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest strength the world has to offer. God shows foolishness, but somehow even God’s foolishness is wiser than the greatest wisdom the world can muster up. God is saving the world the unexpected way.

But these are Corinthians. They’re a little thick and maybe they haven’t quite gotten the point yet, so Paul talks to them directly and this is the embarrassing part. “Look,” he says, “let’s be honest. You’re not exactly the best-looking group in the world. Not many PhDs in this crowd. Not many titans of industry. Not many folks of presidential timber. Not many rich folks. You Corinthians are pretty ordinary folks, really, for the most part. And you’re not making many waves in the pool.”

But guess what—God came for you. Because that’s what God does. God has a history of doing this. God chooses the foolish things of this world to shame the wise. God chooses the weak things of the world to shame the powerful. God chooses the low and despised things of the world, even things that don’t really exist to overturn what does exist. (By this point you can hear the Corinthians saying, “OK. OK. We get the picture. How bad do you have to make us look in order to make us feel better, Paul?”)

Then Paul throws in the kicker: It has to be this way because God didn’t want us to start thinking that we can be saved by our own efforts. We had to learn to trust what God has done for us. That’s what the cross is about. It reminds us that our salvation is not something we could have expected or earned or merited. Jesus had to show us the way and make the way and be the way for us into the life of God.

Now why is this good news? That is what I’m supposed to be offering here is good news. It’s good news because there are a lot of times when we are not feeling powerful and wise and on top of things. There are a lot of times when it feels as though nothing is going right. There are times, aren’t there when the words don’t come out right, when the things you do only seem to make things worse instead of better, when you can’t please your parents no matter how hard you try, when you can’t please your kids no matter how hard you try, when the customers are demanding, when the dinner is burned, when the milk is spilled, when the homework is wrong, when the paycheck is too small, when your experience is too limited, your knowledge too scanty, and your body too feeble. When you blurt out the wrong answer when the teacher calls on you, when you forget your wife’s birthday, when the cat throws up on the carpet – there are days like that, aren’t there? So what can be better news than the knowledge that the kind of person who has days like that is exactly the kind of person Jesus came to save.

And it’s deeper than that. You know it’s deeper than that. Because it’s not just the minor inconveniences of life that demand a savior, it’s the deep-seated sin of our lives and the engrained habits that are leading us away from God. There are the wounds and pains of our long separation from God, the source of our lives. We know that there is something wrong and the truth that God offers us is the cross and we…we can’t handle the truth.

The science fiction movie The Matrix is not a movie I would recommend for family viewing. It’s a little too fascinated with violence. But it is a film that invites a lot of comparisons with the Christian story. In the movie an office worker by the name of Neo is living with this nagging sense that there is more to life than the drab life he is living. He just can’t put his finger on what’s going on.

Then one day he is caught up in an adventure at the invitation of a mysterious visitor named Trinity. She takes Neo to meet a man named Morpheus who helps Neo give words to this feeling he has. Morpheus says to him, “Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there...like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?”

Then Morpheus gives him a choice. He holds out his hands and there are two pills – a blue one and a red one. The blue one will make him forget that he had ever been there and he can go on with his life. But the red one offers him the chance to stay…to follow the “splinter in his mind” and to discover the truth that he has suspected all along but has not been able to get a handle on. Neo decides not to go back. He chooses the red pill and the adventure begins.

It’s not too much of a stretch to say that the cross is like that splinter in the mind that reveals to us the truth. It is a stumbling block and foolishness because it is so at odds with the world and the way it works. It stands at cross purposes with everything the world holds dear. We can ignore it and go on with the nagging sense that we are ignoring some great truth about ourselves and what God intends to do with us…or…we can cling to it and follow Christ wherever he will lead us.

The thing that Christians claim is not that they are so different from the world, but that they are telling the truth about this world in which we find ourselves. The truth is that the world is a messed up place where wars are waged and relationships are broken, where people hurt one another intentionally and unintentionally and where the poor and the hungry and the neglected are devalued as less than human. That’s true. But the deeper truth is that God has created this world and that God refuses to leave it alone. In fact, God has entered this world to transform it, to remake it, and to remind us of who we are. Christians know that they are not any better or worse than the rest of the world – they simply face the world armed with a powerful knowledge – that they are not defined by the fallenness of the world and by their sinfulness. They are not valued for the terrible things they have done. They are known and defined and valued for the way they are viewed by God – as children of God redeemed by Jesus Christ.

The cross is not an easy thing. It’s not a cuddly thing. It’s not something we can easily accept. We can’t handle the truth of the cross. But the truth can handle us. The cross is the mark of our new identity in Christ. It tells us who we are when we forget. It doesn’t let us blink at our failures, but it also doesn’t let us wallow in despair. We are God’s children who have put on Christ. That is a reminder that no matter who we are or where we’ve been…no matter what we’ve done or how we’ve failed…no matter what our gifts may be…no matter what, we are claimed by God and given this new identity. The truth has entered our world and though human wisdom can never comprehend it, it can comprehend us. As Paul says later in his letter to the Corinthians: Now we see in a mirror dimly, then we shall see face to face. Now we know only in part, then we will know fully, even as we are fully known.

Here we are and there is the cross. It presents us with a choice. Do we let our gaze stray from this and refuse to follow where it may lead – do we take the blue pill…or do we take the red one…do we give ourselves to the Christ of the cross and risk what transformation and change he may ask of us? The bad news is…you can’t rely on your wisdom and power and status to take this path. The good news is…you don’t have to rely on your wisdom and power and status to take this path. God has provided all that we will ever need. And what God has provided looks like a cross. Thanks be to God.