WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
March 19th 2006
Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“What is Wisdom?”
I Corinthians 1:10-31
There was a fight in the church. That was nothing new for Paul as each of his writings deal with the many struggles in early Christian communities. So the Corinthian church was not that unusual. This time, the community has broken into factions which claim loyalty to different leaders. Some claim to follow Apollos, some follow Cephas, and others even claim Paul. It was such a serious issue that Paul begins his letter by addressing that struggle.
This ancient struggle is amazingly relevant. We live in an age where charismatic leaders often lead the largest churches. In fact, the effectiveness of many pastors is often judged on the number of members in the congregation. Many of the largest churches in our denomination and our country are often known by who is the pastor. And in the early church, if anyone had bragging rights about church growth and church development it is Paul. However, when given the opportunity to brag about his accomplishments, he does something rather amazing.
In his letter, Paul says nothing about the other leaders or the arguments which have caused these divisions. Paul does not even take the opportunity to make himself look good. Instead he reminds us that there is no room for pride and arrogance in Christian community. Paul makes it clear that the effectiveness of a community has nothing to do with the strength, wisdom, or even the charisma of its leaders. Instead, the effectiveness of the community has everything to do with the cross of Christ.
This week I heard that a church in Town and Country is struggling with the city council. The issue is centered on the church’s wish to build a hundred and twenty foot cross in their front yard. Eventually the church offered to make a concession and reduced the height of the cross to only ninety-nine feet. I do not pretend to know all the details or reasons for this ongoing conflict. However, I am puzzled as to why the church has decided that now is the time to place a cross outside their church. I am equally puzzled as to why city council continues to change the rules for the church. In fact, I am not really all that interested in the details of the case at all. What drew my attention was something that a representative of the church said in a recent interview.
During the interview the representative said something that I found contained a great deal of wisdom. He said something to the effect of: The real problem is that those people are offended by the cross and they just will not admit it. The wisdom contained in this comment has little to do with the actual intent of his comment. That is because it become clear in the interview that the ‘they’ being referring to was: Jewish people, secular humanists, and liberals. Instead, where I heard the wisdom - the unintended wisdom of this statement - had to do with the offensiveness of the cross. If we can even begin to grasp the reality of the cross we all ought to be offended. I am not referring to a ninety-foot cross. I am talking about the reality embodied in the execution of Jesus upon the cross.
For Paul, for the followers of Jesus Christ, the center of our faith is built on the foundation of the cross. Unfortunately, many have misinterpreted this event. The result of that misinterpretation is that we limit the event to personal guilt and piety or we simply believe it has no place in our faith at all. For far too long the cross has been used to teach that God is angry and ‘out to get us.’ As a result God’s blood thirst can only be quenched through the execution of Jesus. In this interpretation we, who are guilty, are made innocent through the execution of one who was innocent. This unfortunate and enduring misinterpretation misses the core of the story.
Some interpretations of the cross have reduced the event to be one of personal and individual significance. However, when the cross becomes just a ‘get out of hell free card,’ it obscures the larger significance. If, we believe that Jesus is Lord then it means that there is no area of life which is excluded. Which means, simply put, that the cross is bigger than ‘me and Jesus.’ While this may seem like an exaggeration today, the early Christians clearly understood the implications that Jesus, the embodiment of God, had been executed by the world’s most powerful empire. Charles Campbell captures the essence of this when he says: “On the cross Jesus deals decisively with the large and powerful social realties- institutions, corporations, bureaucracies, ideologies, states, governments – that actively and aggressively shape our world and lives.”
The reality of the cross highlights how foolish the ways of God can seem to human beings. After all, we would prefer that God would act more like a superhero instead of submitting to public execution. It can seem quite foolish that God would risk becoming human. It simply makes no sense that Jesus was born at the margins of society and not into positions of power and privilege. However, this is exactly how God works. God deliberately identifies with the powerless.
Throughout his life, Jesus called people to live a new way. Jesus proclaimed the arrival of a new life-giving empire built on community and inclusion. He showed his followers in all ages how to resist the ways of the death-dealing empires in remarkable life-giving ways. Jesus was a revolutionary who rejected the ways of violence and warmly welcomed all people, including those in collusion with the empire. In the cross, Jesus shows, in no uncertain terms, that the purposes of God cannot be fulfilled through violent means. Jesus offered life, but chose death on a cross, rather than participate in the ways of empire.
The foolishness of the cross is the ridiculous notion that Jesus, the embodiment of God’s wisdom and love, would be crucified. On my weaker days, it would seem to be a lot more satisfying for Jesus to jump down off the cross and rain down fire on all the people who had abused him. Just imagine his reputation if he got even with each and every person who was responsible for his death? Or imagine the sort of hero he would have become if he proved his strength by destroying the Roman Empire. Now that is a story that would generate some box office appeal. However, God’s wisdom, God’s love, does not work that way.
Jesus invitation to follow is a summons to join in a life of resistance to the powers of sin and death. Henri Nouwen gives an important reminder about anyone attempting to live a life of resistance. He says: “Real resistance requires the humble confession that we are partners in the evil that we seek to resist.” Resistance, for Jesus, is not about labeling good and evil and simply trading violence for violence. Instead, it is a call to live humanely.
The reality of the cross is not that Jesus had to be punished for our personal sins. Instead, Jesus was executed because his invitation to this new way of life was so radically different, foolish, and even threatening to the existing order that capital punishment was the best we had to offer. Despite living two-thousand years after this event, our world continues its addiction to violence and death. The cross is offensive because it reminds us that we are complicit in the violence of our world.
We live in an age which has seen some amazing technological advances. However, we continue to use the best of our technology to devise more sophisticated ways to kill people. Today we are able to cure so many more diseases than ever before. Despite all the medical advances in our world there are many people who will die from basic curable diseases. We now have the ability to end extreme poverty in our world. (See Columbia University Economist Jeffery Sachs book The End of Poverty) Yet we simply do not have the will to do it. If the cross has nothing to say about these things then Jesus died for nothing.
I do not know about you, but I find much of this really overwhelming. The truth is that if we choose to stand up and follow Jesus, if we seek to live humanely in a world drunk on death and violence, there is a really good chance people will dismiss us as foolish. When we speak up for the way of the cross, we must expect opposition. It will not be uncommon to hear things like: ‘You are not living in the real world,’ or ‘things are never going to change.’ This may seem like the reality of our world however, it is not the reality of the cross.
It is true that despite our best efforts, we will run into walls. One cannot expect to resist our death dealing culture and not face challenges. But remember this: When we resist, when we seek to live humanely, there are times we will actually make changes in the world. However, more often than not, we will not see any tangible results from our actions. The reason we continue is not for the hope of results but instead we live this way because of our faith in Jesus Christ and our desire not to succumb to the ways of this world. What is wisdom? All I know is about the wisdom of the cross. It is a wisdom which ultimately is foolish in our world. It is my prayer that God will grant us the wisdom to be foolish in our resistance to the ways of violence and death. Amen.
