"the Foolishness Of The Cross"

“The Foolishness of the Cross”

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

There is a story about a wealthy early colonial man who asked the rector of the church if it was possible to find salvation outside of the Church of England.

The rector wrestled with how to answer the question because he knew it was within the realm of possibility, but he didn’t want his socially elite parishioner to be hanging out with Christian riffraff.

So, after thinking about it deeply, the rector replied, “Sir, the possibility about which you inquire exists. But no gentleman would avail himself of it.”

The reality in this story isn’t unique.

Yes, even Christians can be status conscious.

And this seems to be one of the many problems at the Church of Corinth that Paul was writing to for our Scripture passage for this morning.

The city of Corinth was filled with “upwardly mobile” folk.

There wasn’t much “old money,” but the town was filled with people who were trying to make it big--fighting to climb the ladder.

And this was reflected in the divisions and hostilities in the church, where members would follow one leader or another according to social status and how it might make them look.

And I’d imagine many of us can think of examples of this type of thing today, not only in churches but especially in the world.

The world tends to divide up into cliques.

And these cliques are often based on status.

We are all familiar with the often recited “Who’s sitting at the cool kid’s table in the lunch room?” routine.

And this kind of thing takes place not only in high school and middle school cafeterias, but also in colleges and workplaces as people jockey for positions and leave others behind in their effort to move on up.

We are all susceptible to this.

It’s the way of the world.

It just naturally happens.

You could say it’s sort of like humankind trying to save itself by its own wisdom and scheming.

But it’s hurtful to those left behind.

It’s mean and rough.

It lacks love for God and neighbor.

And it is foolishness to God even if it seems wise in the eyes of the world.

Before our passage for this morning, Paul references the church's social divisions.

Beginning in Chapter 1 verse 12 Paul writes: “One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’, another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; and still another, ‘I follow Christ.’

Is Christ divided?

Was Paul crucified for you?”

And then he goes on, “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.”

Foolishness indeed!

Paul is saying that the foolishness of the Gospel is a crucified Christ.

Crucifixion was more than a state-sponsored execution: it was meant to demean and shame the person being crucified.

It was the most shame-filled thing the Romans could come up with.

Think of what Jesus Christ did for you and me.

Matthew tells us that soldiers stripped Him naked, and then they decided to hold a mock coronation: and they brought Him a robe, probably one of the soldier’s robes.

Then, they decided that their freshly robed king needed a crown, and they twisted a branch from a thorn tree into a rough circle in parody of the royal laurel wreath.

Then they pressed it down onto His head so that the thorns dug into His flesh.

Then they put a stick in his hand to mimic a royal scepter.

“Hail, King of the Jews!” they shouted as they laughed and saluted.

I know it is not pleasant in the least, but it is essential for us to have this picture in our mind, this shamefully cruel and inhumane sport at the expense of Jesus.

We need to get a clear and tragic glimpse of what humanity did when God took on flesh and walked among us.

Jesus could have destroyed them all with a word.

Instead, He took the shame and humiliation.

And instead of throwing all the blame on the religious leaders and Romans of Jesus’ day, let’s—you and I—take a moment to see ourselves in this situation and see ourselves in the Roman soldiers.

This can help remind us that human beings throughout history have been capable of terrible inhumanity toward one another.

It’s easy for us to say, “I would never do that. I would never have been one of the Roman soldiers who took delight in mocking, lashing, and terrorizing Jesus.”

But we need to be careful about such claims.

In 1971, Phillip Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University, did a study for the United States Navy regarding the behavior of people in prisons.

He and his colleagues transformed the basement of the psychology building at Stanford into a prison and hired twenty-four middle-class Stanford students, randomly assigning twelve of them to be guards and the other twelve to be prisoners.