Most of us, especially in our younger years, spend an awful lot of effort in trying not to look foolish. Most of us, particularly when we are young and growing and think our bodies are all out of proportion anyway, will go to great lengths to hide our deficiencies and keep from looking foolish.
Some youngsters, for example, are just not athletic. Some just cannot get that coordination in place, and they know that when they get on the basketball court or on the athletic field they are just going to look stupid and foolish, and so they just don’t even want to try. If you are a complete klutz, and you know you are a complete klutz, then why get out there and let the world come to the same conclusion. You will only look foolish, or so you think.
If there ever was a kid who was a worse athlete than I, I cannot imagine who it would be. When the second grade kids chose up sides for dodge-ball, one super-awkward gangly girl and I were always the last ones chosen. And then they did it only because the teachers made them. Super-klutz, looking foolish.
When the church put together a softball team for its teenagers, since it was church, of course I was there. But since it was softball, I wished I wasn’t. And so did everybody, including the pastor, who managed to mention every spring that he had considered a career in baseball until the Lord changed his mind. Well, they had to take me on the team, because it’s church, and church, you know, is about accepting everybody, just as they are. In the dugout, I think we actually sang, "Just as I am, without one hit …” Church is about accepting everybody, so they had to take me, but they didn’t have to use me, and they didn’t unless we were about ten runs ahead.
And you know what? I was happier that way. I really was. I may have been a klutz, but I was not stupid, and I knew how the others laughed and snickered, and I didn’t need that. So I was perfectly happy to sit on the bench and pretend I was on the team and cheer for the others and not play, because by not playing I managed to avoid looking foolish.
Oh, occasionally it was kind of nice to actually get in the game; they would put me in right field, where the ball seldom came, and of course my fervent prayers that it not come out there were frequently answered. Sometimes they were answered by the second baseman, who would come charging way, way back into right field, waving me off and chasing down the ball rather than let me have it. And again, I was perfectly happy with that arrangement. Who wants to look foolish with a crowd of parents and friends and pastor and God and the angels and everybody looking on?
Of course I could also tell you about the night I knew the ball had been hit in my direction and I just blindly stuck out the glove, and, lo and behold, the ball entered my glove by accident! They almost carried me off the field on their shoulders that night! But it was just a fluke; usually I preferred to stay in the background, sit on the bench, pretend to play the game, and avoid looking foolish. Above all, avoid looking foolish.
Most of us do, you know. Most of us avoid putting ourselves into situations where we are going to mess up and look stupid and klutzy and foolish. Most of us will not put ourselves in some spot where whatever it is we are supposed to do will make us seem awkward.
For every one of us who is a Michael Sampson, all grace and beauty on the basketball court, ten of us are falling all over our feet, and we don’t want to look foolish, so we quit competing.
For every one of us who is a practiced and eloquent speaker, able to spout knowledge and facts and figures persuasively and beautifully, fifty of us, whenever we stand on our feet to say anything end up getting our "tangs toungled up" and sputter out some silly stuff and look foolish.
Last Monday I went downtown to the National Gallery of Art to see a couple of special exhibits I’d been wanting to see. And I couldn’t help but think that for every one of us who is a Frederick Church, able to paint Niagara Falls so that you can experience everything except the roar and the spray, a thousand of us are unable to draw a straight line with the help of a yardstick. And so, when asked to do something artistic, we refuse, because we don’t like looking foolish.
And at the deepest level of all, for every one of us who is able instinctively to know the will of God; for every one of us who is able to perceive readily what God intends and then to turn our hands and our hearts to do it, for every one of us who may somehow be a natural saint, there are a million of us … no, ten million of us … who struggle to discern the will of God, who despair of living beyond sin, who doubt our ability to be what God wants us to be.
And so what do we do? What is our response? We avoid participation, because we don’t want to look foolish. We shy away from involvement in the mission to which God calls us, because we are afraid we would look foolish. "I could never be a missionary; I don’t think I could handle living in another culture. I’d probably mess up." "I could never share my faith with my unsaved neighbor; I don’t know enough, I’m not wise enough. What if he asked a question I couldn’t answer? I would end up looking … what? Foolish!
And so let me this morning tell you about a beautiful savior whose way it is to take the foolishness of this world and turn it into wisdom.
Let me tell you about a beautiful savior whose style it is to take the klutziness, the foolishness, the ineptness, the insecurity, and all the rest of it, and turn it into a thing of grace and beauty.
The great apostle Paul describes folks like us. Writing to the Corinthian church, he reminds them that not many of them were wise, not many were powerful, not many of noble birth, in other words, most of them were klutzes and common folk and sitting on the sidelines too, not many of what the world calls the "beautiful people." But, says Paul, "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 what is low and despised in the world, even things that are nothing, … so that no human being might boast in the presence of God."
Let me tell you about our beautiful savior, who had no form nor comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him; despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And yet in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, so that in Him all men and women find their home. In Him all who are unsure of themselves find an elder brother, a companion and friend.
Let me tell you about a gloriously beautiful savior, born in a stable, looking, I suspect, slightly ridiculous among the castoff straw and the borrowed swaddling cloths; a beautiful savior, who grew to manhood and strode across the landscape of his homeland like a colossus; looking foolish to the folks who knew so much, who had such good educations, who were so well-connected; a beautiful savior. And one day they scarred that beautiful face with their slaps, they battered that lovely body with their whips, and they took him to the place of ultimate foolishness: a cross outside the city wall.
Now I ask you, doesn’t that feel foolish? Doesn’t that look awkward? Isn’t that a place to sit on the sidelines instead of being out there for all the world to see? Doesn’t that look foolish?
But hear the words of the apostle, "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 … Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom …”. And you and I might add that modem Americans look for success symbols. “But we preach Christ crucified.” We preach Christ crucified, “for the foolishness of God is wiser than men."
And God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is low and despised, yes, what seems ugly in the world, to bring beauty, authentic beauty, deep and wonderful beauty.
This morning I want to point you to that choosing God. I want to urge you to bring him your awkwardness, your klutziness, your foolishness, your out-of-placeness. I want to urge you to bring Him all of that and to let Him transform it all into a thing of beauty.
This world needs signs of authentic grace and profound personal beauty. And wherever Christ is, there is wisdom and beauty amid the foolishness and the ugliness we have created.
Watch the television screen the next time they report on the sorry conditions that abound in the city’s housing projects. They will show you some poor tenant who is having to endure rats and leaks and cold and all that sordid ugliness, and over his head on the wall you will likely see a picture of Christ. Why? Because we need a sign of the transforming beauty of Christ in such a place, lest we look foolish and feel hopeless.
Look at pictures of squalid little South American towns, the favellas housing people by the hundreds in tar paper and scrap iron shacks, with sewage and drinking water and laundry all mingled together. And then look up above the squalor and you will see some magnificent cathedral, adorned with gold and silver, filled with mystery and majesty. You say, why doesn’t the church use all that for the people? And you may be right. But may it not also be that somehow, somewhere the beautiful savior needs to be presented, so that when you can do nothing about your daily life, still there is a sign of the beauty and the wisdom of the cross?
So come in faith, then, this morning, to the one whose beauty is seen in all creation, to the one who is able to transform our foolishness into wisdom and our gracelessness into power. Come in faith to the one who is able to transform the ordinariness of my life and yours into something well beyond the ordinary.
Come in faith and in hope to the one who took an ordinary squalling baby and made Him into the man who was as men should be, a beautiful savior.
Come in faith and in hope to the one who clothed this one in simplicity and in humility, so that He would taste life just as we do, but who would then place on his lips sublime teachings and in put in his hands power to heal and to give life. 0 what a beautiful savior!
Come in faith and in hope and in expectation to that one whose life and whose death on that worldly-foolish cross are remembered through ordinary, awkward-looking broken up bread and ordinary, garden-grown grape wine … but which he transforms in our hearts to beauty and majesty, grace and power.
God has chosen what is foolish in the world: even me, even you.
