PERFECT NONSENSE
Wisdom is the proper use of knowledge. It is not enough to know something; we have to be able to put knowledge into action. Some wisdom seems like nonsense to us, painfully obvious but somehow elusive. Things that we take for granted and forget, children will remind us of and we say, “of course.” We adults think we are so wise but then out of the mouth of babes comes a wisdom that sounds foolish, but it isn’t. For example:
Patrick, age 10, said, “Never trust a dog to watch your food.”
Michael, 14, said, “When your dad is mad and asks you, ‘Do I look stupid?’ don’t answer him.” And Michael added, “Never tell your mom her diet’s not working.”
Randy, aged 9, said, “Stay away from prunes.” One wonders how he got that bit of wisdom.
Kyoyo, age 9, said, “Never hold a dust buster and a cat at the same time.” And Eileen, 8, said, “Never try to baptize a cat.”
My favorite bit of wisdom comes from a North Dakota Indian tribe: If you discover you are riding a dead horse, dismount.
How wise humankind is today what with our many degrees and the fountain of knowledge spewing from our computers; humankind’s potential to solve any problem seems limitless. Pretend that you consider the Bible to be a book of fables and answer this:
How would you save the world?
Using our worldly wisdom or putting our collective brains together, I believe these issues would make the top 5 on what it would take to save our world:
1) Clean up the environment; end pollution now.
2) Feed the hungry; end world poverty.
3) World peace; end armed conflicts throughout the world.
4) Develop the 3rd World and promote economic growth.
5) Cure Aids and other potential pandemics threatening our world today.
These are very real and serious issues plaguing the existence and survival of humankind. Now let me ask you in light of these problems, how would God save the world?
He would send his Son to die on a cross. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? Sounds like nonsense.
That’s what the Christians in Corinth were beginning to think too. They were common folk who had been privileged to hear the gospel message and believed it. But somewhere along the line they started thinking about this cross thing and it seemed ridiculous. Forgiveness is great, but the cross? How does that save the world?
Corinthians were Greeks, very intellectual people and fond of philosophy or thinking through things. They were much like us. And the more we think about the cross ourselves, I think we could very easily come to the same conclusion: the cross as a means of rescue is puzzling.
This was no surprise to Paul, who wrote them saying, “The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God.”
This is confounding; it makes no sense at all. And they were tempted, these Corinthians, to take the cross out of their message. They were tempted to follow the guys with the best Christian-sounding ideas minus the cross. There were many good philosophers or thinkers to chase after. But they were divided on who they should follow.
Paul calls them back to the cross of Jesus as God’s only answer to the world’s problem. And despite all the great thinkers the world has ever known, Socrates, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Einstein and all the rest, not one, not any, can know God or save the world through human wisdom.
So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe. It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom.
According to Paul there are two kinds of seekers of wisdom in the world. There are some like the Jews who are looking for signs, some visible proof of authenticity. If Jesus is the savior, the One we expected all these centuries, then prove it. But even after Jesus fed the 5000 with two loaves and five fish, the crowd turned and asked for a sign. They were obsessed with signs. Show me, they said, so Jesus showed them the cross.
There are some who seek knowledge and wisdom. They are like the Greeks who want everything lined up neatly, logically, and without any anomalies. They want wisdom, which is next to godliness in their minds, and again God showed them the cross of Jesus.
To the seekers of signs and wisdom Paul presents the ultimate divine contradiction: “We preach Christ crucified.” Instead of signs and wisdom they get weakness and folly. “Christ crucified” is like saying to them “fried ice.” Christ to the Jew meant splendor, power, majesty, not weakness, humiliation and defeat. Christ to the Greek sounded like superstition, total folly. To both, Christ crucified was a scandal. God cannot be killed on a Roman gibbet. And how in the name of Zeus is that supposed to save us?
People, this is how the world thinks today. And if the world is seeping into the church, I dare say we are thinking this way too. The wisdom of the world has clouded our minds so that we too cannot understand how Jesus dying on a cross can save us. As a result, the church is tempted to play down the meaning of the cross because it is too scandalous for our generation. Too gruesome, too gory, too bloody and too illogical. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.
With what would you save the world?
Let’s return to one or two of our five issues that plague the world. If the cross is powerless to solve these issues, what would you do to save the world?
If we could cure all the diseases in the world, would we have a better life? If Aids were eradicated and bird flu a thing of the past, would our world be saved? Can humankind actually attain immortality? In its own wisdom it thinks it can.
In a magazine I was reading I was forced to do a double-take on an ad I glanced at. The ad featured a birthday card which read, “Happy 100th Birthday” followed by the haunting script, “love Mum and Dad.” Looking closer I discovered it was a pharmaceutical ad with a promise to improve our quality of life in the near future.
If we could eliminate war and bring world peace, would we have a better life? If we could disarm the belligerent nations like Iran and North Korea, could we save our future? Some intelligent UN people have a vision of what that would look like.
They say (they being faceless “experts”) that the one obstacle standing in the way of world peace is religion. If every people and tribe would harmonize their faiths there would less hostility in the world. So we are talking about peace without the cross. The Cross of Jesus is a sword that divides and so long as there is sin in the world, the cross will divide believer and unbeliever.
The truth of the scandalous cross is that the world cannot understand what Jesus did but they despise it anyways. It reminds us of our failure; it reveals our sinfulness in killing the world’s only known innocent man; it shows us how filthy we are as a race. It is an offense to us all.
But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.
This foolish plan of God’s is amazing. It is perfect that the scandalous cross should be His choice of tools to save the world. What did Jesus come to do? To feed the hungry; to heal the sick; to open the door to immortality; to care for his Father’s world; and to give humankind hope (hope is the beginning of development). And all of this is validated in the cross where Jesus died, and in his resurrection, the crowning of Jesus by God as the One, the only One who can save the world.
Who would you save?
The real test of human wisdom comes when we are faced with a question like this. Who would you save from a world that was doomed to destruction? If you had to fill a rocket ship with a select few people to evacuate the earth and settle on some mythically habitable planet, who would you send? Our emotional attachment to family and friends would cause us to pick them. But if the human race depended on your decision you would pick the best, the brightest, the beautiful perhaps – no actors please – and the bravest.
The irony of this question is that this is the criteria by which the Corinthians are judging Paul and the gospel of the cross. Foolishness has no place in their new society so they are rejecting the cross and Paul’s preaching. So Paul turns this logic on them and says that by these criteria you would not be saved either. He says:
Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.
What the cross does right before our eyes is overthrow the false standards of our world. The so-called best, brightest, beautiful and brave have no more status before the cross than anyone else. The cross of Jesus cuts our standards of greatness to pieces; it destroys social classes, and rips our medals off of our chests. When God calls the poor, the despised, and the oppressed into his kingdom, he gives us an object lesson of grace. To be saved is a gift from Christ whose death on the cross was a display of divine wisdom.
Some of you here today would think that you are not worthy of such wisdom and grace. In other words, you don’t feel good enough to be saved. You would be left off of the rocket ship, you think. In a twisted way that is a form of pride. You are too proud to accept a free gift from God.
Others of you are too intelligent to be saved. This cross business is foolishness. Why couldn’t God find a more logical way to save us? You too are proud of your own wisdom. If you think you are worthy to be saved, the cross disagrees. If you think you are worthless, the cross disagrees with that too. The cross requires us to come with faith and humility to receive what we cannot do for ourselves…so none of us can boast.
What does the world need to be saved from?
Every day we watch the news and we see terrorist attacks and new diseases germinating somewhere in the world. We are inundated with images of 3rd World poverty and propaganda for the Kyoto accord. Are these really the biggest threats to our world? Your unchurched neighbors think so.
World peace without the cross is impossible. At the same time we cannot expect to bring peace to the nations with the cross. The cross is a sword that divides and as long as there is sin in the world, the cross divides families and nations. The peace Jesus brings must begin in the heart, not in the White House.
We could cure all the diseases in the world but without the cross we would still be miserable wretches. Isn’t it true that AIDS entered society through some sort of immorality? Cure every disease and there would still be immorality.
What does the world need to be saved from? That which is the root of all humanity’s ills and troubles: SIN.
Paul tells us, “God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.” Sin is what’s wrong with the world; sin is what we need to be saved from. And in a most peculiar and foolish way, so as to confound us and bewilder us with the incredible mind of God, he saved us through the hideous Roman gibbet, the cross. That which embarrasses us, that which grosses us out, the most shameful way to die – has become our salvation through Jesus Christ. And we are freed from the bondage of our sin.
Max Lucado is simple writer but there is wisdom in the unusual places we have just learned. Max wrote: “If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent an educator. If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist. If our greatest need had been money, god would have sent us an economist. But since our greatest need was forgiveness, God sent us a Savior.”
O the wonderful cross…we sing. It is mystifying how something so strange could be so beautiful, so unifying to our church, and so effective for our salvation.
Concluding Challenge
Paul was not in his own estimation an eloquent speaker. He was not a philosopher, though he knew the OT quite well. But he rightly guessed that he could not compete with Greek thinkers. So he decided that he would be an expert on nothing except for the cross of Christ. He wrote:
When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God’s secret plan. For I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified. I came to you in weakness—timid and trembling. And my message and my preaching were very plain. Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit. I did this so you would trust not in human wisdom but in the power of God.
I want you to forget everything you know, or think you know, and meditate and pray about the cross of Jesus. Resolve to know nothing but the cross of Christ. Charles Spurgeon said, “The power that is in the Gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the preacher, otherwise men would be the converters of souls, nor does it lie in the preacher’s learning, otherwise it would consist in the wisdom of men. We might preach till our tongues rotted, till we would exhaust our lungs and die, but never a soul would be converted unless the Holy Spirit be with the Word of God to give it power to convert the soul.”
Go and do volunteer work; go with MCC; go and feed the hungry; go and mend marriages and relationships – this is all good. But never forget that without the cross, the real enemy is not even dealt with. Take the cross with you.
A certain pastor was having lunch with Billy Graham one day. He was nervous sitting with this renowned evangelist but he asked his burning question of Billy: “Billy, if you knew as a younger preacher what you know today, would you emphasize anything more as a younger preacher that you find yourself emphasizing today?” Without missing a beat, Billy Graham responded, “I would preach more on the cross and on the blood. That is where the power is.”
Some preachers stand behind pulpits, but some drive 18-wheelers, some a desk, and some sell auto parts. You are all proclaimers. Preach the cross of Christ – it is the only thing that saves us.
AMEN
