What’s the daftest thing you’ve ever heard, the silliest idea you’ve ever come across? If you’re anything like me you’ve probably had lots of ideas yourself that, when you think about it, make no sense whatsoever.
We all like the world to make sense, it makes us feel good and comfortable. We feel threatened when we don’t understand the world, it is a bit of a blow to the way we see ourselves. Human beings like to feel in control, to feel that we understand and that we’re wise. It has always been the same, human nature has not changed very much over the years.
It was the same in Paul’s day, when he wrote his first letter to the early Christians in Corinth. There were many people who heard the message that he was preaching and rejected it because it seemed to be so silly. They were looking for wisdom, and they didn’t think Paul was preaching wisdom. It all sounded so foolish. That the only God, the creator of the universe, should send his only Son to earth, to live among people who he knew would reject him. To allow himself to be arrested and to die a painful and cruel death and as public spectacle in order to save people who were destroying themselves. It didn’t seem to be the way that a wise God would act. Why would he want to rescue from destruction those who were rebelling against him and rejecting him? Why on earth would he allow his Son to suffer such a degrading death? It sounded foolish, so they rejected it.
There were other people who actually were looking for God to send his Son into the world to save them. They were expecting a Messiah. But they were looking for a Messiah who would appear with a huge army, who would defeat their enemies on the battlefield and bring them a political solution to their problems by establishing a powerful kingdom for them. A crucified Messiah was not what they were looking for. The whole idea seemed to them to be scandalous. That’s why they rejected the gospel when they heard it.
Two groups of people repelled and put off by the idea of the cross, of a crucified saviour. It all sounded so daft and foolish, so contrary to their expectations.
That’s why there weren’t many of the leaders of society, very few of the social influencers of the day in the Church. What those silly Christians believed seemed to them to be ridiculous.
But the cross that seemed to be so foolish, the cross that was such a scandal to many, to those who were perishing, even if they didn’t know they were perishing, was to those who were being saved, who were receiving eternal life, was not foolishness, but the power of God. The power of God to transform, the power of God to save, the power of God to sanctify, the power of God to show the world’s so called wisdom and being, in reality, foolishness. The imagined wisdom that sneered at the cross and the idea of a crucified saviour was in reality foolishness.
Those who were looking for wisdom were missing the wisest thing the universe has ever known staring them right in the face. Those who were looking for a sign and display of power from a saviour king, were dismissing that display of power and glory as a scandal.
But to those who were desperate enough, to those who were able to put aside their own pride in their own imagined wisdom, that which seemed to the world to be foolishness and powerlessness was in reality the wisdom and the power of God. The power of God to save those who were perishing. Saved only through the crucified saviour, only through his suffering on the cross.
That which the world thought was the foolishness of God, was actually wiser than any human could possibly imagine.
We still live in a world that looks for wisdom, that likes to think it is clever. A world that still rejects a gospel of a crucified saviour because it doesn’t seem to make sense or because it looks like powerlessness. A world that likes to thing that it has all the answers and all the know-how. But a world that is still perishing in its rejection of the foolishness of a crucified saviour.
But still today the foolish, powerless looking cross is the power of God for salvation. The power of God to save, transform and sanctify. Still today those who want to appear to be wise in the eyes of the world reject it. But to those who are being saved it is the power and wisdom of God.
We can’t do it ourselves, no self-help manual is going to bring us salvation, which is why the glory goes only to him.
Because God’s foolishness is wiser than humanity’s wisdom.
That is why, as Paul said, we don’t want to know anything except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Let’s stay near the cross.
