"Look What God Chose"
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
There's an old story about a woman named Ruby Turpin.
Ruby was obsessed with status and class.
In the story, Ruby was in a doctor's waiting room, sizing up everyone there in the room according to their class.
In fact, at night Ruby would spend her time naming the classes of people and putting certain persons into different categories.
On the bottom of her list were poor black people and those she termed "white trash."
Above these folks were homeowners such as Ruby and her husband Claude.
And on the top of the class list were people with lots of money and much bigger homes.
Ruby used to get frustrated by her rankings because she was aware that, in her mind, some of the people she knew who had lots of money were actually "very common and ought to be below she and Claude."
So, Ruby Turpin was meditating--out loud-- about these things in that doctor's waiting room.
And there happened to be a college student sitting in the waiting room reading a book entitled "human development."
And this college student had gotten to the point where she had all she could stand of Ruby Turpin's judgments about people.
So she hurled the book across the room, hitting Ruby Turpin just above her left eye, and then she began to strangle her, saying, "Go back to hell where you came from, you old warthog!"
It's been suggested that the Apostle Paul's words to the people of Corinth are no less jolting than being hit between the eyes by a book on human development!!!
And this is because Paul reminds us about the foolishness of the Gospel, which has, at its heart--A Crucified Savior!!!
And crucifixion was more than just a state-sponsored style of execution.
Crucifixion was the most shameful and demeaning way to die.
There you were, naked, nailed to wooden planks for the entire world to see and scoff at with birds picking at your flesh and dogs waiting at the bottom to eat your dead body.
It may very well have been embarrassing to some of the early Christians to know and realize that the "Lord" they worshipped had been killed by being crucified.
That was a death reserved for the lowest of the low.
It was horrible...
...disgusting...
...humiliating!!!
It was done to the lowliest of criminals, the hated, the despised...
...the losers in life.
And it was done to Jesus Christ!!!
And so Paul writes, "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are being destroyed.
But it is the power of God for those of us who are being saved."
Why would Paul feel the need to write these words to the Church in Corinth?
Shouldn't they already know this?
Did they need to be reminded?
What was going on?
Well, we need to back up a little bit in order to get our clue.
In 1 Corinthians 1:10 Paul writes: "brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: Agree with each other and don't be divided into rival groups.
Instead, be restored with the same mind and the same purpose."
He goes on to say that he has heard from some of the Christians there that the Church is "fighting with each other."
And what are they fighting about?
Well, there seems to be some kind of "class warfare" going on.
He says, "don't be divided into rival groups."
I've gotten word that "you're fighting with each other.
What I mean is this: that each one of you says, 'I belong to Paul,' 'I belong to Apollos,' 'I belong to Cephas,'...
...Has Christ been divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?"
Last week I was sitting with several colleagues, and we got talking about different Christian denominations.
And it was pretty much agreed that we all seem to think we are right.
The Baptists think they are right, the Pentecostals think they are right, and so on.
Then, one of us piped up and said, "I'm glad that we are United Methodists. Because as United Methodist's we allow for differences of opinion about certain things."
Then I, jokingly said, "And that makes us right and everyone else wrong."
In any event, as we can see in 1 Corinthians divisions in the Church are nothing new.
Although it is a sad fact.
There is a story about a wealthy early colonial Virginian who asked his Anglican priest if it was possible to find salvation outside of the Church of England.
The priest wrestled with this question, because he knew it was within the realm of possibility that people who were not Anglican could go to heaven, but he didn't want his socially elite church member to be socializing with what he considered "Christian riffraff" of all sorts.
So after thinking about the question deeply, the priest replied: "Sir, the possibility about which you inquire exists.
But no gentleman would avail himself of it."
It's been said that "status consciousness" may have been one of the problems at the Church in Corinth, where members might decide to follow one leader over another if it would give them a better social status.
So Paul lays it on the line.
He reminds this Church that the Lord they follow was executed in the most humiliating and shameful manners possible.
And that the Way He was executed is "the message."
And that this "message of the cross is foolishness to those who are being destroyed.
But it is the power of God for those of us who are being saved."
Yes.
It was through the bloody, degrading, disgusting death of Jesus Christ on an ugly piece of wood that the God of the Universe decided to show forth His power and His wisdom!!!
"which is a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles."
God's unlikely means of salvation, where God comes down, becomes a human being and dies a humiliating death for the redemption of humankind, is not something that makes sense to conventional spiritual wisdom or philosophical reflection.
And as a result, the religious "experts" who were staking their claims on human wisdom have completely missed the boat.
They have failed to recognize God's Son.
And this failure to recognize what God has done takes two forms because in those days the world was divided into two groups: Jews and Gentiles.
Paul says that the Jews, being heirs of a tradition that preserves the memory of dramatic divine intervention within history, "ask for signs."
And the Gentiles or Greeks whose religious convictions are based on philosophical reasoning "look for wisdom."
And because of this, they both have a form of blindness caused by human preconceptions of what God has to be like.
Neither group recognizes God's saving work through the Cross of Christ.
"but we preach Christ crucified, which is a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.
But to those who are being called--both Jews and Greeks--Christ is God's power and God's wisdom.
This is because the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength."
And so, in the midst of these 1st Century Christians who are breaking up into different groups and fighting about who is right and who is wrong...
...Paul is saying: "You're all wrong!!!"
"Christianity is not some ladder of spiritual achievement that truly spiritual experts teach us to climb."
"Christian discipleship is not the product of some breakthrough in human insight.
It's not some new philosophy of life, and it's not some time-tested set of principles for living happy, fulfilled lives."
"Rather, at its center, Christianity is a bold claim about what God has done on a hill outside Jerusalem during the reign of Pontius Pilate.
And for that reason, any attempt to divide the Church into different 'sects'" or today we would call them "denominations" based on human wisdom has completely missed the point, and any 'boasting' that goes on among Christians should focus, not on any great human teachers--but on what God has accomplished through the Cross of Christ!!!
Christian brothers and sisters of the 21st Century, are we doing much better than those 1st Century Corinthians on this point?
Or are we guilty of the same thing?
Are we not all called to be Christians?
And are not humility and love the two greatest characteristics through which we are to be known?
We are not Methodist or Baptist or Church of Christ or Church of God or Episcopal or African Methodist Episcopal or Evangelical Lutheran or Missouri Synod Lutheran or whatever!!!
We are Christians!!!
We are followers of Jesus Christ!!!
We are saved by grace through faith and even this faith is a gift of God!!!
And now we see through a glass darkly...
...then we shall see face to face.
Now we know in part, then we shall know fully just as we are now fully known!!!!
The Jews considered it a "curse" to be executed on a Cross.
But that is how God chose to reveal Himself to us.
The same kind of stuff was going on in the Old Testament Lesson that Donna read at the beginning of our service for this morning from Micah Chapter 6.
The people were trying to figure out God's will.
And so Micah asks God:
"With what should I approach the Lord and bow down before God on high?
Should I come before him with entirely burned offerings, with year-old calves?
Will the Lord be please with thousands of rams, with many torrents of oil?
Should I give my oldest child for my crime; the fruit of my body for the sin of my spirit?"
And the answer comes back: "He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God."
Sounds pretty straight forward to me.
There is no talk about the right mode of baptism.
There are no details given about the correct and only way to celebrate the Lord's Supper.
There is no instruction manual other than to "do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God."
And certainly, arguing about who has the superior religious wisdom is the farthest thing from what "the Lord requires of us."
Jostling for position and status is the way of hell and the way of the world--not the way of God!!!
So, Paul says to these status jostling Christians: "Look at your situation when you were called, brothers and sisters!
By ordinary human standards not many were wise, not many were powerful, not many were from the upper class.
But God chose what the world considers foolish...
...God chose what the world considers weak...
...God chose what the world considers low-class and low-life--what is considered to be nothing...
...no human being can brag in God's presence...
...It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus.
He became wisdom from God for us.
This means that he made us righteous and holy, and he delivered us.
This is consistent with what is written: 'The one who brags should brag in the Lord!'"
What does the Lord require of you?
"to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God."
One scholar writes that by enduring a shameful death, Jesus Christ "overcomes our shame by letting us experience the boundless love of God...
...Christ takes the ultimate weight of shame to lift our heaviest and most secret burden, the feeling that no one loves and respects us..."
And thus, through faith in Christ, we, the "captives" are truly "set free" to love and be loved.
We are truly set free to live and enable others to live also.
Now that is POWER; that is WISDOM!!!!!!
Jesus Christ's shameful death on the Cross, and our willingness to face the so-called "foolishness of the Gospel" of a Crucified Savior removes the burden of our shameful feelings about ourselves, and enables us to see just how foolish it is...
...how un-Christ-like it is to go with our sinful inclination to try and shame others!!!
Jesus went all the way for us.
God went as low as anyone can go in order to set us free.
What could be more powerful?
What could be more wise?
The answer?
Absolutely nothing.
For "it is the power of God for those of us who are being saved."
Praise God, praise God--Amen!!!
