David
Letterman’s Top Ten List proved to be a late night entertainment staple. Compile
a top ten list of athletes, inventors, musicians or presidents, and everyone
will claim you snubbed someone. The Top
Tens website conducted a vote of history’s wisest people.[i] Finishing first to tenth: Nikola
Tesla, Einstein, Da Vinci and Jesus. Adolf Hitler finished ahead of Isaac
Newton, Stephen Hawking, Galileo, Darwin and Ben Franklin. Entertaining indeed.
The
world deems the wise as intelligent:[ii] Chess master Garry
Kasparov or Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking; successful:
Microsoft Co-founder Paul Allen or Oprah; or wealthy: Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. … Discussing lists of who is
wise in the world’s terms can be entertaining and enlightening conversation at
coffee shops or around water coolers. I
entertain we look at our reading, turn to Martin Luther, and then apply our
reading to life.
When Paul wrote, “We
preach Christ crucified” – emphasizing crucified – he meant Jesus –
true God and true man – died for your sins and saved you from your sins.
Wondrous signs cannot save you from your sins. Wisdom from wise people cannot
save you from your sins. Reason cannot save you from your sins. Only Jesus
Christ put to death on a cross can save you from your sins.
As Christians, we readily accept
Paul’s theology of the cross; but the cross has been a centerpiece in our churches
for so long that we forget the shame and offensiveness it represented in the ancient
world. The ancients crucified criminals and disobedient slaves.
A reminder: Paul wrote to new
Christians in Corinth, former Jews or Greeks, that is, non-Jews or Gentiles who
spoke Greek; and Paul freely interchanged Greeks and Gentiles. These new
Christians lived as a minority in Corinth. Jews and Greeks, two groups of
nonbelievers in Christ, easily influenced them. Hence, Paul sought to
strengthen Christians’ faith.
What Jews and Greeks shared was a
quest for impressive signs of outward success. For Jews, it was a wondrous display
of power: plagues against Egypt, parting the Red Sea, bread from heaven. In
Jesus’ day, scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees tested him and asked for signs
from heaven.[iii] Others
clamored, “What sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you
perform? Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave
them bread from heaven to eat.’”[iv]
After Jesus cleansed Jerusalem’s
Temple near Passover, many believed in him when they saw his signs.[v]
Even Herod longed to see Jesus because he wanted to see him perform a sign.[vi]
… Sign, belief. No sign, no belief.
For 1st-century Jews, a
crucified messiah was not a sign, but an obstacle to belief. They held diverse
expectations regarding a messiah, but consistently shared an expectation for a
powerful figure. Anyone crucified was repugnant and cursed by God for the cross
was the most shameful death imaginable.[vii]
In debating with Jews, Paul and
other Christian apologists devoted considerable attention to why Israel’s
Messiah had to be crucified.[viii]
We find arguments in Corinthians, Galatians, and our Gradual from Hebrews: “Let
us fix our eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy
that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated
at the right hand of the throne of God.”[ix]
Jews sought signs. Greeks sought
wisdom and Romans sought power. For these latter groups, enmeshed in a culture
of success and power, a crucified criminal held up as Savior of the world was
ridiculous.
Paul argued that the crucified
Christ was a sign that displayed God’s power and wisdom. By the cross, God
outsmarted and overpowered human power and wisdom. God did not consult human
beings when He proclaimed forgiveness of your sins and the efficacy of his Word
through Isaiah:
“Seek
the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near; let the wicked
forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the
Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will
abundantly pardon. … As rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return
there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the
sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose, and
shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”[x]
The sadness of the Gospel’s
rejection gave way to joy. Again, Paul’s words:
“We
preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but
to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the
wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness
of God is stronger than men.”[xi]
God’s mysterious way of bringing
salvation through the foolish and weak word of the cross was infinitely higher
than – and stood in contradiction to – man’s tendency to make much of human
wisdom and power. Again Isaiah: “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”[xii]
My ways are higher than your ways. By
contrasting the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God, Paul developed his
message of Christ crucified in terms of wisdom theology – a gift of the Holy
Spirit to help one understand God’s purposes.[xiii]
God turned the wisdom of this world – pursued by the world’s wise – into folly
because it did not enable them to know God and understand the significance of
the cross. For Jews who pursued wondrous signs and for Greeks who sought philosophy
and mysteries, the proclamation of Christ crucified was a scandal and folly.[xiv]
Those who despised and rejected the word of the cross brought upon themselves the
tragic consequence of eternal death.
Because of the folly of human
thinking about how to attain true knowledge of God, it was God’s gracious and
sovereign decision to lead people to the right knowledge of Him by that most
unimpressive means, “the silliness of
preaching.” By preaching, Paul did
not mean merely the act of speaking but its content, the cross of Christ. As he
said, “We preach Christ crucified.”[xv]
We preach Christ crucified. To
preach Christ crucified did not depend on public speaking skills, for in itself
that could rob the cross of Christ of its power.[xvi]
Corinthians were fascinated with public speaking – those who sounded attractive
and successful.[xvii]
Paul intended to cure them of that fascination, because no matter how one dressed
up the word of the cross, Corinthians found it unpalatable. But for called Jews
and Gentiles, Christ, God’s power and wisdom, superseded the power and wisdom
of their age.
Although God’s call attracted people
who did not belong to well-educated, powerful and noble social classes, whether
one became a Christian or not did not depend on his sociological status, but on
realizing that everything of which he liked to boast – education, prestige,
noble birth, moral standing – was worthless rubbish in comparison with knowing
Jesus Christ.[xviii]
Whatever those Paul baptized – Crispus, Gaius or Stephanus – had or were, they
needed to realize that in God’s sight they were wretched, pitiable, poor, blind
and naked.[xix]
When they realized this, only then would they learn to boast in the Lord.[xx]
The early Christian community identified
Christ crucified with divine wisdom, and understood itself as God’s new
creation.[xxi] Its
members were nobodies who could boast before God.[xxii]
However, if Christians boasted, they could boast only in Christ, their wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification and redemption.[xxiii]
Fifteen centuries later, Martin
Luther wrote, “It does [one] no good to
recognize God in his glory and majesty, unless he recognizes him in the
humility and shame of the cross. Thus God destroys the wisdom of the wise. … for
this reason true theology and recognition of God are in the crucified Christ.”[xxiv]
Continuing, Luther wrote, “God can be found only in suffering and the
cross. … It is impossible for a person not to be puffed up by his good works
unless he has first been deflated and destroyed by suffering and evil until he
knows that he is worthless and that his works are not his but God’s.” Unquote.
The reason some pastor pounded into
your memory Luther’s words from the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed is because
by reason or strength I cannot “believe
in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by
the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified me and kept me in the
true faith.”[xxv]…
We cannot grasp the mysteries of our faith through human reason. Again, from Luther:
“When God proposes articles of
faith, He… proposes matters that are… impossible and absurd if you follow the
judgment of reason. That the body and blood of Christ are offered to us in the
Lord’s Supper; that Baptism is the washing of regeneration and renewing of the
Holy Ghost; that the dead will rise on the Last Day; that Christ, the Son of
God, was conceived and carried in the body of a virgin, was born, suffered the
very shameful death of the cross, was raised again, now sits at the right hand
of the Father and holds the power in heaven and on earth – all this certainly seems
ridiculous and absurd to reason. That is why Paul calls the Gospel of Christ
Crucified the Word of the cross and the foolishness of preaching, which Jews
judge to be an offensive doctrine and Gentiles a foolish one. That is why
reason does not understand that hearing and believing the Word of God is the
highest form of worship but feels that what it itself chooses and does with a
good intention and special devotion … pleases God well. Therefore, when God speaks,
reason judges His Word to be heresy and the word of the devil; for it appears
to be absurd.… But faith dispatches reason and kills the beast which the… world
and [its] creatures cannot kill.”[xxvi]
Faith in God’s revelation is greater
than faith in human reason. God’s infinite wisdom always trumps human wisdom.
Therefore, I believe.
I believe Christ crucified met me
and conferred his holiness on me through Word and Sacrament – Confession,
Absolution, Preaching, Baptism, Lord’s Supper and so on. And He called me to
live as a saint. … How do I live as a saint in the midst of the world’s
sinners? How do I live as a saint in the midst of the church’s sinners?
For direction, we turn to God’s Word,
specifically, to Micah, where we read that the Lord requires us “to
do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God.”[xxvii]
… Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God. Are those words seared
into my soul, branded into my brain, molded into my memory like a confirmation
verse? Often times, not. Out of sight, out of mind.
To close, let me offer the Cliff
Notes version of a classic story I read in Freshman English, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. It concerned a boy
named Pip, from a poor, lower-class family. One day Pip is kind to a stranger,
whom everyone else rejects.
Months later, a lawyer shows up at
Pip’s house, saying that Pip is to receive a large sum of money, annually, from
an anonymous donor. There is one stipulation. Pip is to be sent to London, educated
at the best schools, and brought up as a gentleman. Pip’s life changed beyond
his wildest dreams.
Years later a crude, lower-class man
shows up at Pip’s beautiful London home. Pip is rude to him and tries to run
him off.
Then comes the surprise. The man
turns out to be the stranger Pip befriended years before. He is also the
anonymous donor of the money. He dedicated his life to hard work to give Pip a
new life.
When the man takes Pip’s clean,
smooth hands into his dirty, rough hands and kisses them, Pip is repentant and
too stunned to speak.
Dickens’ story is a parable of Jesus
and me. If someone gave me an annual sum of money, would I be grateful? Jesus
did so much more for me. What am I willing to do for him? How quickly, my
friends, I forget that what Christ gave me is infinitely greater than a sum of
money! How often I treat Him as Pip treated a poor man in beggar’s clothes! In
Pip’s eyes and in ours, our Benefactor is not Einstein or Oprah. Rather, he is
a weak fool.
“God chose what is foolish
in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame
the strong.” … As
a saint called by God to preach Christ crucified, would I rather be a poor
boy’s benefactor or a Bill Gates, a Paul of Tarsus or a Paul Allen? … I quickly forget my call because I am
distracted by guys at work who throw me under the bus, mothers at the game who
gossip about my past, girls in school who post nasty trash on Facebook, boys
who bully me. In my head, they rent space. In my heart, I seek revenge. Like
Pip and his benefactor, the memory of Christ crucified and God’s requirement of
justice, kindness and humility melt away like last week’s snow.
Friends, Lent is an opportune time to consider what
Christ crucified did for me. Speak to the Holy Spirit about how you live the
Gospel of Christ crucified. Ask for the grace to be a fool in the eyes of the
world and wise in the eyes of God. And when you do, may the peace of God that
surpasses all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.[xxviii] Amen.
[i] http://www.thetoptens.com/smartest-people-history/
[ii] http://superscholar.org/smartest-people-alive/
[iii]
Matthew 12:38; 16:1
[iv]
John 6:30-31
[v]
John 2:23
[vi]
Luke 23:8
[vii]
Deuteronomy 21:22-23
[viii]
Gregory J. Lockwood, 1 Corinthians. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House
(2000), 70
[ix]
Hebrews 12;2
[x]
Isaiah 55:6-7, 10-11
[xi] 1
Corinthians 1:23-25
[xii]
Isaiah 55:9
[xiii]
Richard P. McBrien, The Encyclopedia of
Catholicism. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. (1995), 1328.
[xiv]
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, 1st
Corinthians in Harper’s Bible
Commentary. Edited by James L. Mays et al. San Francisco: Harper & Row
(1988), 1172.
[xv] Lockwood,
68f
[xvi] Ibid.,
75
[xvii]
Ibid., 64
[xviii]
Philippians 3;4-10
[xix]
Revelation 3:17
[xx] Lockwood,
76
[xxi]
1 Corinthians 1:26-29
[xxii]
1 Corinthians 1:30-31
[xxiii]
1172
[xxiv]
Lockwood, 64
[xxv] Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanation.
St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House (1986), 17.
[xxvi]
What Luther Says, 251
[xxvii]
Micah 6:8
[xxviii]
Philippians 4:7
No comments:
Post a Comment