Lent 4
I Corinthians 1:18-25
When I was in 4th or 5th grade, one thing that my Dad and I would do every morning during the summers was get up at about 5:30 a.m. and go bike riding. Our first stop during that ride was about half a mile away from our house, at a drive-in movie theatre. There, as the sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon, we would clean up cans that people had left there just a few hours before, when the late-night movie had ended. You see, dad had a box on his bike where the child-seat used to be, and at this first stop, we would spend 15-20 minutes crushing cans and throwing them in the box. Then we would bike to the city park, and look for cans by the 8 softball diamonds that had been used the previous evening. All we really were doing at these places were picking up other people’s trash, which we would turn in at the end of the summer to the recycling place and make some money. This experience taught me a few things: how to get up early (a lesson I’ve since forgotten), the value of bonding time with my father, it kept me active and fit, and it taught me one other lesson: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
If you’ve ever bought a used car, you have illustrated this truth. Someone got rid of that car for whatever reason: they got a new one, they wanted something bigger, or they simply just got tired of it. But that old car that they wanted to get rid of was just what you were looking for. It was trash to them, it was treasure to you.
Or you’ve been on the other side of it if you ever had a garage sale. As you’re going through the stuff in your house that you are preparing to sell, you run into dozens of things where you say to yourself, "well, I’ll try to sell this, and if no one wants it, I’ll just throw it out." That item is trash to you, but you are hoping that it will be treasure to someone else.
That’s exactly how the cross of Jesus is treated. To some, it is trash. To others, it is treasure. Sometimes we treat the cross as if it is the greatest treasure. But sadly, too often we act as if the cross is trash, compared to other things. So that’s what we will do this morning, we will compare the cross to a couple of things and see how it stands up. Let’s compare the cross to intelligence, and let’s compare it to power, and see where the trash is and where the treasure is.
Part I
Our text begins, "for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God." The Greek word for "foolishness" is "MOROS." It’s the same root where we get our English word "moron" from. When you were growing up, your mom probably told you that it wasn’t nice to call someone a moron, because a moron is someone who is stupid, they lack intelligence.
The ancient Greeks were no morons. Even today, in our modern, enlightened universities, Greek thinkers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are taught in philosophy classes as some of the greatest minds the world has ever known. During the time of Jesus, the Greeks weren’t much of a military power, having been replaced by the mighty Romans, but even then, Greece, and especially Athens, was considered the capital of intellectual thought. One time, St. Paul tried to do some mission work in Athens. He had had some success in other Greek cities, but not in this university town. The atheinans were way too smart for the Gospel. They thought that Paul was a moron when he preached about a God who died on a cross so that people’s dead bodies would be raised to life. No wonder our text says, "Greeks look for wisdom." They wanted something logical, not supernatural.
Paul could have very well been writing about our day when he said that people placed the highest value on intelligence and technology. Watch a movie from about 15 years ago, when cell phones were just beginning to catch on. Back then, cell phones were so expensive that only the rich could use them, and they were so huge that you almost needed a briefcase to carry them. We laugh at how far we’ve come, when just about anyone who wants one can get one, and slip in into their purse or pocket without anyone even noticing the tiny little machine. We’ve come so far, that things from 10-15 years ago seem so out of date. We’re just smarter than that.
Yeah, mankind is smart. It’s ironic that many of our "advances" have come because we have been so busy trying to figure out quicker ways of killing each other. WWII gave us advances like the jet engine, the rocket, and the nuclear bomb. We people are pretty smart, aren’t we? We figured out how to build jumbo jets that can carry hundreds of people halfway around the world. We learned how to build 110-story skyscrapers. And mankind, in his great intelligence, figured out how to crash that jumbo jet into that skyscraper, killing thousands, and affecting millions. What an intelligent race human beings are!
We can’t repent of all the atrocities that humans have done to each other throughout our history. But we can repent for the times when we personally have ignored the message of the cross and instead have succumbed to the wisdom of the world. The world tells us to take care of ourselves, look out for #1 first, and so often that wisdom sounds good to us. And so we do take care of ourselves, and hurt others in the process. Back during your school years (and maybe this is the case at your work or in your neighborhood), if you wanted to fit in with the "right" group of people, you had to look down your nose at someone who wasn’t one the same level as you, say mean things about them, maybe even to them. But the world tells us that it’s ok to cut someone down if that means you are going to be elevated. Let’s repent of those selfish actions. The world’s wisdom tells you to be more assertive. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Because getting things done is more important than people’s feelings. But patience? Forebearance? Far too often we act as though the love and forgiveness that the cross teaches us is like that 15-year-old cell phone: something that once had a good purpose, but is outdated today. Let’s repent of the times that we’ve fallen for the wisdom of the world.
The message of the cross is much different, and much better. Some see it as trash, a worthless way to live, but in fact it is your treasure. Even man, on his greatest and kindest intellectual days, has been unable to figure out solutions to man’s greatest problems: sickness, death, and the afterlife. We’ve made some impressive advances in medicine, nutrition, and science. We can get rid of some sicknesses, at least for a while, but we can’t really stop that pesky death problem. And cryogenics (freezing a dead body) is about the closest we have come to an afterlife, and yet it probably going to be a while until we see Ted Williams in the batting cage again, that is, if they can ever figure out a way to reattach his head to his body.
Where man’s wisdom fails, the cross has answers. Sicknesses, death, the afterlife, these things were all solved at the cross. The cross is treasure: where else do you find comfort and answers when you are sick and dying? The cross is treasure: where else can you go after a loved one passes out of this life?
Part II
If the Greeks liked to compare the cross to wisdom, the Jews preferred comparing it to power. So let’s do the same.
The Jews had a history chock-full of miracles. It’s not like one was happening every other day, but the chronicles of their nation was not lacking in miracles. We could start with the 10 Plagues that scared Pharaoh into letting the Israelites go. Recount the Red Sea opening up and allowing a 2-million person nation to cross through it, while drowning the most powerful army in the world. The manna. Water from the rock. The collapse of the walls of Jericho. The Israelites liked to hear about miracles. They respected the power of God...too much. Often, they would only obey when they saw a spectacular act from the Lord. So our text says, "Jews demand miraculous signs."
Many today want a spectacular God. Have you ever been asked, "Does your church speak in tongues? Does your church have miracles? Healings?" And the impression is that if we don’t, well, we aren’t quite a spiritual as they. Like the Jews, they demand miraculous signs. And do they have a point? Where are the SPECTACULAR acts today???
I’m sorry for doing this, but I just have to talk about my daughter. I love her so much. What an odd thing this love is! I mean, Alethia is 14 months old. She has never done anything for me: never made my bed, cooked a meal, given me a birthday present, and yet she along with my wife are the dearest people in the world to me. But do you know what is even more amazing? Not the love that I have for her, but the love that I know she has for me. Again, here is someone who can’t talk, bathe herself, get herself up onto the couch...but every day without fail, she is able to express love to her parents.
If this love between a parent and child is amazing, how much more spectacular and stunning is the love that the Heavenly Father has for us, sinful wayward children, totally undeserving of that love! Yes, there is power in the cross: the power of God’s love.
But the world doesn’t have a clue about this power. I haven’t gone to see the movie yet; Val and I will see it tomorrow. But I almost feel as if I have seen it, based on all the things I’ve read about it. And it stuns me (I guess it shouldn’t) what those who are perishing write about The Passion. One Newsweek article that I saw this past week was written by a self-proclaimed non-Christian. And the article is entitled, "So What’s the Good News?" The author can’t find any good news in the story of a man who was kangaroo-courted into being beaten, whipped, and crucified to death. "SO WHAT’S THE GOOD NEWS?" the world asks. But they forget that the cross wasn’t good news for Jesus. All this wasn’t supposed to be good news for Christ! He was the one who got the raw deal. The cross was bad news to him. The good news...is for human beings, who realize that it should have been you and me up there, being forsaken by God, being assaulted by Satan again and again for all eternity. The good news - The Power of the Cross - is that we sinners are spared that, because God in his spectacular love punished his Son instead, and Jesus in his stunning love willingly carried out his Father’s plan.
He looks so weak: hanging on the cross, not even able to move his arms. But that’s only a mirage. The cross isn’t weakness: it’s power. The cross isn’t trash, it’s treasure. We’ve been schmucks...but through the redeeming power of the cross, God is able to call us his perfectly obedient children.
Conclusion
Let’s say that you went to a garage sale next weekend. And you saw someone selling a collection of 100 genuine gold coins, and there was a 25-cent price tag on that box of priceless gold coins. What would you do? You’d probably want to snap that up before someone else did, and give the seller their quarter before they realize what they’re giving up. But of course, that wouldn’t be totally honest, right? The proper thing to do would be to tell the seller, "do you REALLY realize what you have here? Do you understand what you are throwing away?"
How refreshing it is that our dear Lord forgives us, even though we may daily fail to treat the cross as the treasure it is!
This week, you are going to run across someone who is treating the cross this way. They are making trash out of treasure. You don’t have to be a watchman, standing high on Zion’s wall. All you really need to do is tell that person what a treasure the cross is to you. You see, when we Christians tell the real story of the Passion, we are proving to others that the cross is treasure to us. May God the Holy Spirit help you to always treat the cross as your most treasured possession, something to be cherished, and something to be shared. Amen.
sdg
