Title: Not the Smartest Bulb in the Room?
Text: Mark 1:14-20 (I Corinthians 1:24-31)
Thesis: The people Jesus chooses may be flawed, but we are living, breathing examples of the grace and scope of God’s power.
Introduction…
This morning we read from Mark 1:16-20 about how Jesus recruited or called or drafted his first disciples. Luke 5 is something of a cross-reference for Mark 1. Then in Luke 6 there is a list of the 12 Jesus chose to be his apostles. Have you ever wondered… why them?
It is fairly clear that Jesus did not network through LinkedIn. It is clear that Jesus did not hire a head-hunter to glean the most impressive individuals from the pool of potential disciples. The Scripture does say that Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed all night. At daybreak he called together all of his disciples (followers) and chose twelve of them to be apostles. Luke 6:12-13
Someone asked, “If you were Jesus and intent on building a cohort of spiritual ninjas, wouldn’t you choose the best of the best, the smartest of the smart?” (Homiletics, Volume 27. Number 1, page 41)
I you were Jesus wouldn’t you recruit a cadre of geniuses like the cast of Scorpion, a high octane drama about an eccentric genius with an IQ of 197 named Walter and his team of brilliant misfits who are Homeland Security’s last line of defense against high-tech and complex threats in our country today? Wouldn’t you want Toby, an expert behaviorist; Happy, a mechanical prodigy; Sylvester, a statistics guru and Paige, who is a regular person who helps the misfits relate to normal people, to help save the world?
If you were Jesus wouldn’t you draft Sheldon Cooper, Leonard Hofstadter , Howard Wolowitz and Raj Koothrappali and perhaps even Barry Kripkei (Bawey Kwipkei) to be the brains of your outfit?
Jesus seemed to just go with his gut as the Spirit led choosing people who would be examples of the grace and scope of God’s power?
Last week we spoke of how God displays the light and life of Jesus in common, everyday, earthen vessels. And today we see how God, contrary to all conventional wisdom, it is not necessarily through the brightest bulbs in the room, the most powerful movers and shakers or the notable 1 %ers… that God does his thing.
As we begin to unpack the text we see a messed up church full of people plagued by what we might think of as a “party spirit.”
I. Personalities and Party Spirit, I Corinthians 1:10-19 (I Corinthians 3)
Some of you are saying, “I am a follower of Paul.” Others are saying, “I am a follower of Apollos” or I am a follower of Peter,” or “I am a follower of Christ.” I Corinthians 1:12
The church at Corinth, among many other things, was a church in conflict. Paul is writing to them urging them to live in harmony with each other. The harmony Paul describes is like the work of a physician who knits a broken body together… setting shattered bones and putting dislocated limbs back into their sockets so they were not a broken and divisive body.
The word Paul used to describe their conflict is divisions, dissensions and differences is a word that we would interpret as schisms. In its original meaning the word was used for tearing a piece of clothing. One schism that was dividing this church was what some might call a party-spirit. The schism was over to which party the members belonged.
On Tuesday evening we all had the opportunity to see the party-spirit in action during the State of the Union Address. We watched as President Obama delivered his address… seated on his right was Vice President, Joe Biden and on his left was Speaker of the House, John Boehner. (I don’t know if you noticed both the Vice President’s and the Speaker’s ties were crooked? Don’t they look in the mirror? Doesn’t someone make sure they are ready for prime-time television where the entire nation and much of the world will be watching?)
Setting the actual address aside, the occasion makes for pretty interesting theater. One side stands up and claps while the other remains seated and refrains from clapping. Rarely is there agreement on both sides of the aisle. It isn’t difficult to see partisanship at work in a divided house.
We understand what it means to disagree ideologically. We understand personal preferences differ. We understand deep-seated prejudices. And know well how differences can be detrimental to ourselves and to the well-being of the whole.
Party spirit is not just a national problem. Unfortunately, conflict and party spirit has historically menaced the Christian Church…
A man was stranded on the proverbial desert island in the Pacific for years. One day a boat came sailing into view and the man waved frantically hoping to get the skipper’s attention. The boat landed on the beach and the skipper got out to greet the castaway.
After a while the skipper asked the man, “What are those three huts you’ve built?”
The castaway replied, “The first one is my house.”
“What’s the next hut?” asked the skipper.
“I built that hut as my church.” He replied.
“And what then is the third hut?” asked the skipper.
“Oh,” the castaway answered, “that’s where I used to go to church.”
When we can’t manage to even get along with ourselves it is even more difficult to get along with others.
In our text today we see that there were four distinct parties in the church at Corinth.
A. The Paul Party: Paul was a favorite among the Gentiles because he often preached the Gospel of freedom in Christ, defending them against having to conform to Jewish legalism. They liked Paul because he understood them and thought like they thought and maybe even opened the door for the abuse of personal freedom.
B. The Apollos Party: Apollos was a Jew, apparently very eloquent as an orator and a profound preacher of the Word of God. They liked Apollos because he was a great speaker. He was the Billy Graham or the Chuck Swindoll or the Charles Stanley or Joyce Meyer of their day.
C. The Cephas Party: Cephas or Peter was a favorite among the Jews who wished for a Christianity that observed Jewish law. They liked him because he played to their legalistic ways.
D. The Jesus Party: These folks may well have appreciated the ministries of Paul and Apollos and Cephas but they were not people-followers… they followed Jesus. It is generally understood that they were a little self-righteous and considered themselves more spiritual because they followed Jesus.
Paul confronts this unfortunate and unchristian situation and asks, “Has Christ been divided into factions?”
What does this mean to us?
Church… the Christian community is about living in harmony despite differences. It is about walking hand in hand when we do not see eye to eye. But specifically, in this text we are reminded that God’s intent in and through the church is that the Good News be proclaimed in ways that enhance its power rather than diminish its power. And the power of the Gospel is diminished when personalities and performances and preferences and self-righteousness get in the way of making Jesus known.
Our text moves from the ways personal likes and dislikes can diminish the Gospel message to the way the perspectives we bring to the table detract from the truth and power of Christ.
II. Perspectives, I Corinthians 1:20-25
It is foolish to the Jews who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek wisdom… so we preach Christ crucified, the Jews are offended and the Greeks say it’s nonsense. I Corinthians 1:22-23
When it comes to truth and matters of faith the text leading into verses 20-25 states there are two kinds of people:
1. Those who are headed for destruction…
Verse 18 speaks of those who think of the cross of Christ as nothing less than shear foolishness. Those who blow off the essence of the Gospel, that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and then rose from the dead on the third day as witnessed by a large number, ascended into heaven and will one day, come again for those who trust him for their hope of eternal life, are headed for destruction.
2. Those who are being saved.
But those who are being saved, this message of the cross of Christ, know it is the very power of God unto salvation.
So this part of our text underscores the differences in perspective we bring to spiritual things.
A Pew Survey found that among the wealthiest nations of the world there is a huge difference in the way people value religion. 59% - United States; 33 % Great Britain; 30% Canada; 27% Italy; 21% Germany; 12% Japan. (The Pew Global Attitudes Project Survey, July – October, 2002)
No advanced nation in the world places much stock in the importance of religion, much less biblical truth.
After Einstein was given a book, Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt, he wrote a letter to Eric Gutkind, who had given him the book. In the letter he stated, “The word (g)od is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can change this for me.” (PreachingToday..com)
Some of the most brilliant minds ever, place zero stock in talk of (small case) god.
The Church at Corinth was marked not only by a party-spirit, it was marked by differing perspectives on what was important and necessary and was true.
A. The Jewish Perspective; The Jews were not convinced that the cross of Christ was a convincing argument for the case of Christ. They saw the death of Jesus as a sign of God’s disapproval. Plus the thing that the Jews wanted to see were signs and wonders. They saw a Jesus who was meek and lowly not the proud and powerful Messiah they expected.
B. The Greek Perspective: First of all the Greeks described the main character of God as apatheia or apathetic. God, of necessity, had to be unfeeling because a God who can feel can be manipulated by man. Plus the idea that God could become a human was absurd.
The Greeks were not into signs and wonders either. They were into wisdom. They loved a clever mind and rhetoric and persuasive debates. They despised anything that smacked of ignorance.
Our text saw not only the issue of party-spirits and personality cults as a problem, they also were worlds away from God with perspectives that could not or would not allow them to see how God was reaching out to us in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. The idea of a simple act of faith, based on the sacrificial work of Christ on the cross, sans signs and wonders and human wisdom was not convincing to them.
In Judaism the cross of Christ is a huge problem. In Islam the story of Jesus’ death is an affront to Allah. To the Buddhist the death of Christ is a painful image… it does not contain joy or peace and does not do justice to Jesus. Most of the world cannot grasp the idea of a person being the immortal, divine Son of God becoming a mere mortal who experienced the complete human experience and then is raised form the dead. Such a faith is unreasonable. (Kenneth Woodward, “The Other Jesus,” Newsweek, 3.27.00, p. 50)
What does this mean to us?
I read this past week about a world-famous geneticist who was convicted of a heinous crime. In a press conference following his attorney said, “Nothing about having a 176 I.Q means you have good judgment.” (“The Buzz,” World, 7.29.06, p. 12)
We are big on the Word of God expressed in Isaiah 55:8-9 where God states; “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts. My ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways and my thoughts are higher than your ways and thoughts.”
When it comes to the ways of God it is good judgment to go with God. God says, “There is no salvation in anyone other than Jesus! For there is no other name under heaven buy which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12 It may seem unlikely or even ridiculous but it’s the way God is doing it.
Ultimately what Paul was trying to say is that despite their messed up, conflicted relationships and their messed up theological perspectives, they were the people God would use to do his work.
III. People, I Corinthians 1:26-28
Few of you were wise or powerful or wealthy. Instead God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame the wise. And things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. And God chose things that are despised by the world and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. I Corinthians 1:27-28
In a culture that places a great deal of weight on beauty and brains we need to be reminded that
Jesus chooses people who are living, breathing examples of the grace and scope of God’s power.
Henri Nouwen was a priest, author, brilliant teacher in places like Harvard and Yale. Sensing the leading of God he left all that and spent the last ten years of his life living in a community of people with severe emotional, mental and physical disabilities. In one of his books he tells a story about Trevor, a man with severe mental and emotional challenges who was sent by Henri’s community to a psychiatric facility for further evaluation. Henri wanted to see him so he called the hospital to arrange a visit. When the powers that be learned that Henri Nouwen was coming to visit they invited Him to a luncheon in the Gold Room… a special meeting room at the facility.
When Henri arrived they took him to the Gold Room where he soon discovered, Trevor was not to be seen. There were doctors and clergy but no Trevor. Henri asked, “Where is Trevor?” They explained that patients were not allowed in the Gold Room. Henri thought, Trevor should be here and though, hardly a confrontational man, he turned to the person in authority and said, “The whole purpose of my coming was to have lunch with Trevor. If Trevor is not allowed to attend the lunch, I will not attend either.” They quickly found Trevor and everyone sat down for lunch.
At one point, as Henri was talking to the man on his right, Trevor stood up and lifted his glass of Coca-Cola. “A toast. I will now offer a toast,” Trevor said. Everyone stopped talking and a nervous tension filled the room as that most challenged man in a room full of PHDs, started to sing, “If you’re happy and you know it, raise you glass. If you’re happy and you know it, raise your glass… “
It was an awkward moment. Here was this man with a level of brokenness they would never understand, beaming. He was thrilled to be there. And they all began to sing, “If you’re happy and you know it, raise you glass.” Softly at first but eventually they sang over and over, louder and louder, “If you’re happy and you know it, raise your glass...”
They say Henri eventually gave a wonderful and inspiring talk to the group but the moment everyone remembered… the moment God spoke most eloquently, was through the least likely person in the room.
In our text Paul reminds us that God does not observe conventional wisdom… he uses:
A. The Foolish as opposed to the Wise
B. The Powerless as opposed to the Powerful.
C. The Nothing at Alls as opposed to the wealthy.
What does this mean to us?
Personally… it means we do not have to be anything other than who we are for God to choose and use us. Certainly, Christendom is blessed with brilliant people and influential people and affluent people. But few of us fall into those slots. We are the people through whom God’s presence and activity is seen.
Conclusion
A group of tourists were visiting one of those picturesque little villages that dot the landscape of the old world. As they walked along they saw and an old man sitting on a chair in front of his cottage. One tourist asked, in a somewhat patronizing way, “Were any great men born in this village?” The old man replied, “Nope, only babies.” (Leonard Ravenhill, The Last Days Newsletter)
We were all just babies! So not the brightest bulb in the room? It’s okay. It’s God who is at work in us to will and to do his good pleasure.
As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God (or anyone else). I Corinthians 1:29
The people Jesus chooses are living, breathing examples of the grace and scope of God’s power in and through people like us.
