The Word of the Cross is Foolish
I Corinthians 1:18-31
January 22, 2006
A pastor colleague of mine received a call from a worried mother some time ago. “Pastor, can you come over to talk to my daughter? She’s been acting strange ever since she went away to college. Now she has joined the Moonies!”
Being the good pastor that he is, he rushed over immediately and set about the task of trying to convince her that she was mistaken in her new religious fervor. “What on earth convinced you to get involved with these folks?” he asked. She told him that she had met a couple one evening who had taken her to see a movie featuring the Rev. Moon. “When I heard him preach that night, I thought that I hadn’t heard such good preaching since the last time I listened to you! That’s why I am a follower today. I owe it all to your preaching!”
At that point, my colleague remembered a conversation he had with an older and much more seasoned pastor. He asked the older colleague what he had learned in over forty years of preaching. “What I have learned in preaching is that the possibilities for being misunderstood are virtually unlimited.”
This preaching is an interesting way to make a living. I stand up here every Sunday morning and my words bounce off the walls and ricochet around for awhile. Sometimes they penetrate. Sometimes they just die here and are never heard again…until the next appointment when I’m rushed and so dig one out of the barrel and try to preach it again.
One important reason for pastor burnout is preaching. It is difficult. It is fragile. Sometimes we don’t know if it does any good. Sometimes we wonder if we ought just as well be out shouting at the trees.
Paul had it right, I think, when he declared that the word of the cross is foolishness. We preach Christ and him crucified, a stumbling block, an offense. How foolish to think that something so significant as the crucified and risen Christ can be interpreted and proclaimed in such a feeble exercise as preaching, in a discipline that is so frequently misunderstood.
Yet, that is what Paul asserts here in his letter. He says that to the unbeliever, to the person who is on his or her way to being lost, to the one for whom all this talk is nonsense – this preaching is just so much foolishness. But, he says, for those of us who are being saved, this preaching is the very power of God. This preaching is more than just mere words. It is the power of God for the salvation of souls.
Think about that for a moment, won’t you? Paul says that preaching makes Christ present in individual lives. In other places, Paul will ground salvation in the resurrection. But here, he says that the WORD of the cross brings with it salvation. This is an amazing claim, isn’t it?
God’s saving power in Christ meets us in the foolish preaching of the cross. That’s even more amazing when I think about all of the truly lousy sermons that I have heard…that I have preached myself. Christ meets us in the foolishness of preaching.
What does he mean when he talks about “the word of the cross” that has the power to save? What do you think of when you think of power? Power to save must mean the power to break the grasp of sin on my life. Power to save must mean the power to bring me back to God when all else in my life has failed.
The gospels speak of that kind of power when they speak of stones rolled away, the earth shaking, the voice of an angel, broken bread, and opened eyes. That is power. That is power to save. But here, Paul says that the “word” has the same power. The “word of the cross” is just as dramatic.
Regardless of what those with a false sense of intelligence will say, real wisdom is found in the cross. Regardless of what those who find power in strength, or position, or the number of degrees on the wall say, real power is found elsewhere.
Real power is found where we least expect to find God…among the poor, with the outcast, standing beside the lonely and forgotten, kneeling with those for whom life has lost meaning, standing with those who struggle with their faith…in the fragility of preaching.
So let me attempt, in my own feeble way, to preach the cross today. Preaching is, for me, without a doubt, the most important and most difficult thing that I do because preaching is the word of the cross. And in the word of the cross is the power of salvation. For a humble preacher to have that sort of power at his or her fingertips is awe-provoking indeed.
When Pontius Pilate looked at the cross of Jesus, he saw Justice. It was justice, he thought, for this rabble rouser from Nazareth. Justice required him to end up on that instrument of execution. He saw that the people were so incensed and aroused by this man that justice demanded that they be given their way with him.
When Caiaphas the chief priest looked at the cross, he saw peace. He saw the cross as the only way to stop Jesus from threatening the nation. He believed that if Jesus were allowed to continue to preach and teach, more and more people would come to believe in him, giving Rome no other option than to move in to destroy the nation and the priesthood. For Caiaphas, the cross was a way to maintain peace with Rome.
But there on the cross, God took the ideals of justice, peace, piety, patriotism, or whatever else might have been on their minds, and made them look foolish. Almost everyone involved thought that it was Jesus who was foolish, but God had other plans. God had other definitions of foolishness.
On the cross, God took all of the Pilates, Herods, and Caiaphas’ in the world that strut around thinking that they are important, and made them nothing. Those who used to be something were now nothing. Those who used to be big stuff, were now the foolish ones.
Think about that for a minute. When you spend some time pondering all of that, you can’t help but think that the cross is an interesting way to communicate with humanity.
At the end of every year comes a time that every United Methodist preacher dreads. It comes when Advent and Christmas are over. The joy of that time has filled us, touched us, and blessed us. But after that comes end-of-the-year reports. They want to know how many we have baptized, how many have come to worship and Sunday School, how much of our apportionments we have paid, and that kind of stuff.
For the last few years, they have also wanted to know how many books we have read during the year and if any would be worth suggesting for the edification of brother and sister clergy.
When I was in seminary, one of my best friends was Tim Bryan who was working on his Ph.D in church history. Tim and Chris lived in the apartment above ours. I remember that he told me that I needed to be reading a book a week. For about the last six or seven years, I have finally been able to keep up that pace of reading. I read a lot of stuff: books on theology and Bible, ethics and contemporary thought, church management, and leadership. I also throw in a few novels and biographies for good measure.
So, like the dutiful and obedient pastor that I am, at the end of the year, I send along my list of books to the District Superintendent. And then it occurred to me that I have been operating out of a performance model of ministry. This model suggests that the more that you do, the closer to the Kingdom you get. This isn’t that great of a realization, but sometimes it takes me awhile to get the message. God isn’t interested in my performance. God is interested more in how I am transformed by the gospel.
God doesn’t care a bit how many books I have read. Of course, God desires that I use my gifts to the best possible service to the kingdom, but God doesn’t care at all how smart I am, if in that intelligence I become arrogant and full of contempt for the cross. While I am thinking about how smart I am, God is amazed that I can be so foolish. All the while I am assuming that intelligence and being well-read corresponds with faithfulness, God is saying, “Wait a minute. What about the cross?”
I remember leading a men’s Bible study a couple of years back. We were discussing the qualifications and qualities of a pastor. The five or six men gathered around the table that morning, looked up over their coffee mugs and told me that they didn’t particularly care how smart I was, if I didn’t know Christ. They were pretty clear that they weren’t all that impressed with my book learning. All of that stuff is secondary, they said, to being firmly grounded in the Word of God. They told me that they wouldn’t be all that impressed with me unless I ground my preaching in the message of the cross.
God promises to destroy the wisdom of the world and grind it into the dust of the ages. Faith is not found in the search for knowledge. Salvation is not found in wisdom. Eternal life is not found in a blind search for power. It is the cross. It is the cross.
My guess is that each one of you has your own story to tell. My guess is that each of you has something that threatens your relationship with Christ. My guess is that every one here today has something in his or her life that, when all is said and done, is pure foolishness in the eyes of God.
But remember, it is the cross. Foolishness it seems, yet the power of God. May we wise up and seek the cross. May we leave behind us all those things that threaten our vision of the cross. Let us set our eyes on the cross and behold the Word of God.
What kind of sermons are we preaching with our lives? Do those sermons point to the cross? To point to anything else is pure foolishness.
