The text for this morning’s message comes from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the first chapter:
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,Thus far the text.
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men…
Dear Friends in Christ,
Oxymorons: Jumbo shrimp. Active retirement. Blind eye. Forward lateral. Business ethics. Agree to disagree. Congressional ethics. Civil War. Even odds. Government intelligence. Icy Hot. Liquid smoke. New tradition. Dry ice. Pure evil. Sound of silence. Grateful Dead. My favorite: Microsoft Works.
These are some of the better oxymorons. What’s an oxymoron? An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms. Jumbo shrimp. Microsoft Works, get it? I’m an Apple kind of guy anyway.
In Paul’s letter, we see a similar type of contradiction going on. God chooses what is foolish to the world to be wisdom. God takes what is wise in the world and makes it foolish. Wise foolish. Foolish wise. Ah, yes, this sounds very good to our ears, doesn’t it? This is a good Word from the Lord. Now, let’s move on. Get on to something interesting, Vicar.
But wait! Do you get it? Do you understand it? Do you know what Paul is saying here? Do you see what he’s saying? If you don’t get the whole idea behind Paul’s writing, you’ll miss what he’s saying entirely.
For comparison’s sake, this is like someone going up to Stephen Hawking and telling him there are no stars. This is like someone going up to President Obama and telling him there is no United States of America. This is like telling Tom Cruise there is no such thing as film. This is like telling Kanye West there is no such thing as rap. This is like telling Gordon Gecko there is no such thing as money. This is like telling Mark Twain there is no such thing as literature. This is like telling Thomas Edison there is no such thing as electricity. This is like telling Alexander Graham Bell there is no such thing as sound. This is like telling Henry Ford there is no such thing as a wheel.
It’s ridiculous, I know. Because of course there are stars, and the US, and film, and rap, and money, and literature, and electricity, and sound, and wheels. These things exist. And so, too, exist wisdom and folly. Wisdom and folly. If you attended Pastor’s Bible classes over the last few months, you would have heard much of wisdom and folly. Ecclesiastes deals with both wisdom and folly all over the place. So, too, do the Proverbs and the Psalms. Wisdom and folly are dealt with extensively through the Scriptures. And if you don’t get wisdom and folly, you don’t understand Jesus. You don’t understand sin. You don’t understand salvation and forgiveness and repentance and you most assuredly don’t understand the cross.
You have to understand that Paul was writing at a very specific time and to a very specific people. Paul was writing to the Church at Corinth, to the Corinthian Christians. Corinth was a major port of the Roman Empire. It was a very important city. They had traders running through the city, foreign dignitaries would come and spend time there.
The New Lutheran Study Bible paints this picture of Corinth:
A variety of shops line the walls of the marketplace or macellum. Along with people bartering in Greek, Latin, and other tongues, hogs grunt, sheep and goats bleat, chickens cluck, doves coo, and cattle low. The animals smell and see the fresh produce and baked goods close to their pens. The smell of blood and cooked meat hangs in the air, wafting from the market area and from the dining halls in the nearby temples. Worshipers gather in the temple to make sacrifices, and businessmen recline at tables to discuss the latest issues, while Asclepius, Serapis, and other gods stand in mute approval.It’s a pretty picture, all things told. Today, this may look something like the hipsters gathering in coffee shops around New York City, talking about philosophy and the newest of the New Atheists, telling them that there is no such thing as a god and those who believe in a god are weak and clinging to old-world morals. Or think of people walking around a gallery of modern art, saying snooty things like, “Clearly, the artist is breaking with the Degas-school and demonstrating the bleakness of human existence,” all while you’re looking on at a blank white canvas with a red dot. To the world, these people seem so wise, they seem so intelligent, they seem so high up above us that they are untouched by this world.
And that’s what’s going on in Corinth. It held to the hippest of Greek philosophy, ebbing and flowing with every new discovery. “Ah, there is no reality in this world,” they may say, “There is only the shadow of reality in the physical manifestation of the object we observe.” In other words, there is no pew, only the idea of a pew that exists in the ether that you call down and assign the idea of the pew to what you’re sitting on.
Patronizing, isn’t it? It doesn’t seem too in touch with actual reality. But, to the world, these ideas and these people, they’re somehow valued. To the world, these things are wise. Personally, to me and my observation, you’re sitting on a pew. And when I see a blank white canvas with a red dot, I see a lazy artist. But that’s just me. Yet, in the wisdom of the world, I’d be called a fool. I’m okay with that.
The Corinthian Christians, they thought too highly of themselves, they put too much weight in the Greek philosophies. And Greek philosophy taught one very simple thing that was consuming the church there and confusing it: a cross is a bad thing. To the Greeks, they saw the cross, rightly as a bad thing. But they saw it as offensive because anyone who would die on a cross must have committed such an offense to earn the cross. Therefore, people who die on a cross are criminals and no one who dies on a cross is worthy to be worshipped. They are not gods. The cross is foolish. The cross demonstrates absolute folly and nothing good goes on a cross.
Think about that. If someone came in here today and told you that they had heard and been taught that because no one is willing to worship a criminal, Christ couldn’t have died on a cross, it may seem like it makes logical sense, but I would expect you to cast that person out! They are a heretic! But the Corinthian Christians who held their philosophies in higher esteem than the Word of God, they were confused and ultimately that confusion would overtake the church and begin to run rampant.
Here’s what happened: they knew that Jesus was God, they knew that Jesus died on the cross, so that means that God, who is holy, didn’t care what people thought about the cross, a worldly offense. Therefore, it’s okay for us to do whatever we want and cause whatever offense we want because God did what was offensive! It’s okay! It’s alright to cause offense. God doesn’t care. It’s alright to drink all of the wine out of the communion cup. I can eat all the bread I want. I don’t care if anyone else gets some because I’m getting what I want. It’s okay to sleep with someone’s step-mother. It’s okay to sue our Christian brothers and sisters for any offense they cause us, whether real or imagined. It’s okay to get drunk. It’s okay to gorge ourselves with food. It’s okay to have sex before marriage, outside of marriage, during a marriage, with another person in marriage. It’s okay to talk about people behind their backs. It’s okay to make fun of people. It’s okay to believe that my faith, my relationship with God has nothing at all to do with anyone else. It’s okay to have a me-first attitude, a me-only attitude.
Oh wait, I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget that we sinners, we happy people, we aren’t so different than the Corinthian Church. Sometimes I forget that we are just the same. We think that because we are forgiven by Christ and can receive that forgiveness by confessing our sins, that means that we can just do whatever we want. We don’t care about the cross either, just like the Corinthian Church. We get caught up with our philosophies, whatever new fad is coming by. Oh, you want to substitute Goldfish and Coke for bread and wine, no problem. Oh, you think God created sex just for your own pleasure, no problem. Oh, you think that only God and myself care about me? No problem. Oh, you think it’s okay to go and gossip about whatever someone might have said, and if it’s really offensive to you that you can just tell anyone you want, effectively shunning the person and forgetting that our Lord told us go to our brother and sister to gain them back. No problem!
See, the foolishness of the cross, we take as foolishness for the world. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit with how we want to see the world. It doesn’t fit with what we want the world to be like. So, we ignore the cross.
My friends, we are no different than the Corinthians. We don’t really understand what we see on the cross so we just go about our lives like the cross makes no difference whatsoever. And this true for all of us. I’m not accusing just one person in this congregation, I’m accusing us all, me, Pastor, my family, my friends, each and every one of you. We have been confused by a theology of the world that states that the cross makes no sense. And we want to believe it, so we do.
And the amazing thing is, Paul tells us, yup, this is the case. The cross makes no sense, no sense whatsoever to the world. But God uses this cross to shame the wisdom of the world, to make the wisdom of the world stupid, moronic. But Paul says that the foolishness of the cross is what makes the difference! God is doing a new thing!
Christ must die so we can live. Christ must die to take your sins from you. Christ must die so that you can be forgiven. This doesn’t make sense to us! But it makes perfect sense to God! Christ must be weak to demonstrate the strength He has. We want a sign, so like a stop sign lifted above the traffic, God raises His Son on a cross to tell us to stop and listen to Him, listen to Jesus. Christ must be despised to show God’s love. Christ must be a criminal to make you noble priests and kings of God!
Christ’s death looks stupid to people who see it, not only in the Corinthian world, but also to our world. Yet, Christ’s death on the cross is the only important, the only wise thing in the world. I don’t expect the world, I don’t expect any unbeliever to get this. I don’t expect any unbeliever to understand and accept this. Yet, because we have ears and eyes of faith, we hear and see this Christ and look to Him and we can say that this is the only thing that makes sense. Heaven and earth can pass away and the only thing that will ever matter is that Jesus Christ died on the cross for you, in your place, that you might receive the blessings of eternal life and forgiveness for your sins.
That means, that yes, the drunkenness, the sleeping around, the gossiping, any offense that we, God forbid, do, are forgiven. By faith, we know these things are wrong and by faith we desire to turn from our sins. And we do. We began our service today by hearing God’s Word when we repented. You are forgiven. You repent and seek God’s mercy, by faith, and He sends it down to you, lavishes it upon you. You are forgiven, not just one sin, not just a couple sins, but you are forgiven all your sins!
We must live in this world. That means that we must bear the burdens of all of its false theologies. But that doesn’t mean that we have to accept them. We reject, wholeheartedly, the theologies of this world. We reject anything that takes us away from the cross. We reject anything that tells us that we can do whatever we want, that tells us we can live however we want, that tells us our God is so unpowerful that He can’t even take Himself down off of the cross. We reject it all!
Instead, by faith, we know that to be at the foot of the cross, covered in the flowing blood of Jesus, is the only important place to be. We know that because Jesus has died on that cross, forgiving us all our sins, we strive, by faith, to live lives that are pleasing to God, rejecting willful sin and holding on to the holy Law of God. We see the weakness of a dying and soon dead Jesus Christ and see the strength of God because in that weak death, Jesus Christ has conquered and defeated sin, the world, death, and the devil for all time and we are no longer subject to any of them! We are subjects of Jesus Christ, now and forever, living under the folly of the cross so that we might see the wisdom of God.
And now, we, too, are foolish to the world for we are crossly Christians. We are the Church of Christ and Christ’s Church is here to take care of one another. The faith that is given to you, imparting forgiveness of sins by Christ to you, it’s a faith that belongs to everyone here. We all share this faith together, we’re all bound together. We’re the one body of Christ. This sets us apart from the world. And by this cross, we know the love of Christ, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down all our lives, all our burdens, and take up every burden laid down by our brothers and sisters in the faith. And when we fail, when we sin, both in our personal lives, and as a Church directed to love for one another, we look to the cross. For there is forgiveness… for you, for us.
The love that we share in this church and in our lives will never make sense to the world, just as the cross will never make sense to the world, just as it never made sense to the Corinthian world. We expect that, and that is the burden of the cross. That is the burden of receiving the body and blood of Christ. That is the burden of living forgiven lives. That is wise. The cross is wise, and it is the only thing that matters in this world for the next. You are forgiven, on the cross, in Jesus name, amen.
Now may the peace that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.
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