No Earthly Sense
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1
Corinthians 2:1-12
When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not
come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. 2For
I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 3And
I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. 4My
speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a
demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5so that your faith might
rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
6Yet among the mature we do speak
wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who
are doomed to perish. 7But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden,
which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8None of the rulers
of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the
Lord of glory. 9But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor
ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who
love him”— 10these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit;
for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11For
what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is
within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of
God. 12Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the
Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by
God.
There once was a preacher
named Clarence Jordan, who was invited to participate in a revival service at a
Baptist church in segregated South Carolina in the 1950’s. And Clarence couldn’t believe what he
saw when he walked into the Baptist church one sultry summer evening. What he saw were black people. And white people. And they were not in separate sections,
but were sitting right together, next to each other, all around the sanctuary. In the 1950’s! In South Carolina! Well, Clarence was astonished and when
the revival service was over, he couldn’t wait to have a conversation with the
old redneck, hillbilly preacher who was the pastor of this congregation.
Clarence said to the old
pastor, “You’ve got an unusual situation here. Black and white people worshiping together at your
church. That is unusual down here
in South Carolina. It’s unusual
anywhere. Tell me how you got that
way.”
Well, the old hillbilly
pastor smiled and said, “Well this church was down to a handful when the last
preacher died. It was such a small
congregation; they couldn’t get a new preacher no how. They went on for a couple of months
without anybody to give any sermons, so one Sunday I said to the head of the
deacons that if they couldn’t get a preacher, I’d be willing to preach. So he let me! When I got in the pulpit, I just opened the Bible and put my
finger down. It landed on that
verse where Paul tells us that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond
nor free, male nor female. And so
I preached about how Jesus makes us one and how once we’re in Christ, there
should be no racial divisions between us.
When the service was over, the deacons took me in the backroom and they
told me that they didn’t want to hear that kind of preaching no more.”
Clarence looked at the
preacher and asked, “What did you do then?”
The old preacher answered,
“I FIRED them deacons.”
“How come they didn’t fire
you?” asked Clarence.
“Well, they couldn’t fire
me since they never hired me,” the old preacher responded.
Good point.
He went on to say, “Once I
found out what bothered them people, I just preached the same message every
Sunday. It didn’t take much time
before I had that church preached down to four!” The hillbilly preacher said this in a way that suggested he
was happy, maybe even proud of this negative church growth.
But the church survived
and even began to grow, with the same hillbilly preacher in the pulpit. The church was filled with
exactly what Clarence saw that night – black and white people worshiping together.
Later that night, Clarence
talked to a member of the church -- a young English professor from the
University of South Carolina – and he was astonished to discover that the
professor drove 70 miles to attend the old hillbilly preacher’s church every
single Sunday. Clarence asked him,
“Why do you go to that church?
You’re a student of the English language, and that old preacher can’t
utter a sentence without making a grammatical error. Why would you travel all this distance just to hear him?”
The English professor
stood up straight and said, sternly, “Sir! I go to that church because that man preaches the gospel!”[1]
I thought of that story while I was thinking about this text today from 1Corinthians. Because the apostle Paul was not a very polished preacher. In fact, we know from Acts that Paul sort of stunk when it came to debating philosophers or other educated people. By the time he got to Corinth, Paul had given up on engaging in philosophical debates because he knew he couldn’t win. In fact, Paul tells us he wasn’t trying to impress anyone with his wisdom or polished sermons. Paul decided to just preach the gospel without worrying about appearing foolish or not sufficiently intellectual.
What Paul preached was as
simple and as complicated as this:
“… Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” Jesus Christ and him crucified. Paul recognized that “Jesus Christ and him crucified” IS the
heart of the gospel story. Jesus
Christ and him crucified is THE story of God’s intervention into this age
through the fully human Jesus Christ to bring the kingdom of God near. “Jesus Christ and him crucified” is THE
story of God’s incredible love made real to us by Jesus throughout his
ministry, a love which culminated in Christ taking on the worst the world could
do to him to free everyone from fear and death. Jesus suffered not only for the virtuous, or even
philosophical white people. Christ
went to the cross for everyone.
Even for the rulers of the age who put him there, not knowing what they
were doing.
That kind of preaching
made Paul as popular as that old hillbilly preacher. Which is to say, not very
popular at all. Don’t get me
wrong. Paul was a good
apostle. Paul was a great
pastor. In reading his letters,
you can feel how deeply Paul loved the communities he gathered in cities like
Corinth. Paul advised them and
prayed for them but the truth of the matter is that Paul BOTHERED a lot of
people. Paul made people
mad. Paul’s insistence on
preaching a crucified Messiah alienated many, many people because it just
didn’t make sense. Not to the
Jewish members of the community who wanted a powerful Messiah. It made no sense to the Greek mind, who
expected the Messiah to be reasonable.
Nothing about Jesus Christ and him crucified made sense at all to many
Corinthians. Nothing about a
crucified Christ fit into the ususal categories of power, success and
intelligence.
You look at the cross and
what do you see if you are a rational, reasonable person? You see a loser. You see a man hanging naked in the hot
sun, executed by a superior imperial force. Everything about Christ crucified challenged the
conventional wisdom of Paul time and the gospel continues to challenge our
notions of what winning and losing looks like.
I thought about Paul
when I watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics on Friday night. During the parade of nations, I was
struck by how many times the commentators said, “Well, that athlete from Malta
or Napal isn’t going to win a medal, but look how happy they are to just be here!” As if the athletes from places
like Zimbabwe and Tonga were to be pitied because they did not have the longest
shot at winning anything.
Winning and medal counts
are what the Olympics are all about, right? The Olympics are about winners like American athlete Shawn
White who said he only marched in the parade of nations because he had done so
the last two times he won gold medals in snowboarding and he didn’t want to
jinx himself out of another win.
But is winning what we are supposed to be about? When we think of Jesus Christ crucified, the word “winning” just doesn’t fit. In the eyes of the world, in that moment when Jesus was dying on a cross, those around him, even his most ardent followers, would not have called him a winner. Yes, I know Jesus conquered death, but he surely doesn’t fit the model of winning with which our world seems so infatuated. Jesus continually taught that the last will be first and the first will be last, that the meek shall inherit the earth. Doesn’t sound like a gold medal strategy to me.
If we use the Olympic
analogy, Jesus seems more like the Jamaican bobsled team -- a little bit
ridiculous and rather incompetent.
How could the crucified Christ ever be considered a winner?
But that is the
gospel that Paul preaches to the Corinthians. Christ crucified, Christ weak and vulnerable, the very image
of self-emptying love. Preached
without lofty words and wisdom.
And Paul’s preaching makes no earthly sense. The gospel challenges every assumption about power and what
it means to win. It is the kind of
gospel that stands on the side of the Jamaican bobsledders of this world, not
the Shawn Whites with their multi-million dollar clothing line at Target and
American Express commercials.
When people feel
uncomfortable and challenged by the gospel of Christ crucified, what do they
do? Well, sometimes they just get
up and leave like the hillbilly pastor’s congregation in South Carolina. Or, they do what the Corinthians did. They argue among themselves about
what the rules for membership ought to be and who ought to be excluded, with
different groups claiming a higher knowledge or a deeper insight. Which is exactly what Paul is
addressing in these letters to Corinth.
And Paul insists, “Jesus
Christ and him crucified” is the interpretive lens for how he sees –
well – everything. Everything! The
crucified Christ is the lens through which Paul views the Corinthian
community. Everything he knows –
from the meaning of the Jewish scriptures to the wisdom of the community’s best
thinkers to the status of various individuals in the community. Paul views every part of his ministry
through the lens of Jesus Christ crucified.
It’s the kind of lens that
can do strange things to your vision.
Paul says that when you look through the lens of the crucified Christ,
you see things that are not at all apparent to other people. You see the need for reconciliation
that no other eye has seen. You
hear the possibility for forgiveness no ear has heard. You experience the kind of deep love no
heart has conceived. You see the
blessedness of the weak and lost and broken of the world. It is a way of understanding the world
that comes only as a gift of the Holy Spirit – the Spirit upon whom Paul
depends upon to help him slog though his mission and ministry, and all the joy
and misery it brought him.
One of the things I always
have to remind myself when I get impatient with Paul – and I often do get
impatient with Paul – is that be did not ask for this aggravation. He never set out to be an apostle. In fact, you might say that God pretty
much dragged Paul kicking and screaming into the job of starting all these new
churches and traveling all over the Roman Empire at a time when being a
Christian was a really hard and dangerous thing to be.
And I sometimes wonder
what God was thinking because Paul seems like the worst possible choice for the
job. He was tactless and prone to
losing his temper. And he was
constantly arguing or in trouble with somebody. He was thrown in jail on a regular basis. And all of this happened to Paul
because just wouldn’t see both sides of a situation. He couldn’t appreciate multiple points of view. Paul had only one point of view…that of
Jesus Christ and him crucified.
All the other definitions and distinctions – Jew/Greek, strong/weak,
wise/foolish – none of them worked in this new post-resurrection creation. Those historic and reliable
distinctions and traditions and categories no longer existed for Paul. “Everything old has passed away, see
everything has become new.” (2
Corinthians 5:7).
It is also somewhat
comforting for me to realize that Paul himself felt utterly inadequate for the
task God forced upon him. He was
unpolished and impolite, but the message Paul preached got through. And because Paul was so acutely aware
of his own shortcomings, he knew that it had to be God’s Spirit and God’s power
that moved through him. It was
entirely clear to Paul that the life of faith is a response to God’s power --
not the result of some fancy theological or philosophical footwork. Paul could look the lens of Jesus and
see God’s spirit, working below the surface where things get kind of murky
until God finally gets around to giving us a clue about what’s going on
underneath, in the depths of God.
Paul knew all about seeing through a glass darkly, but it didn’t stop
him from peering through the lens of Jesus, and point his congregation in
Corinth toward wisdom deeper than the world’s wisdom and a truth more powerful
than the world’s power.
And I hate that. I do. Because it means I can’t rely on my theological education to
answer the hard questions about what God is up to in my life or in your life or
in the life of this congregation.
Don’t get me wrong. That
education and training is important.
The gospel isn’t irrational or anti-intellectual. It just operates on a different
level. The gospel has its own
wisdom beyond our wisdom. Which means we cannot expect that the Spirit will
give us answers that feel comfortable or reasonable and or even natural. In fact, the Spirit’s poking and
prodding can often keep us up at night or feeling a little sick to our stomach
as we step with fear and trembling into a place that is entirely new and
unexpected.
All we can do is keep
holding up that lens – for ourselves, for each another – so we can see who
Jesus is and what Jesus did and what Jesus is still doing through the power of
the Spirit. And we can trust
that the Spirit will in the fullness of time will drag us – sometimes kicking and screaming like
Paul -- into all truth.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
