Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Believe in Christ Crucified

God’s grace, peace and mercy be with you. … My focus is first Corinthians, where we read, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”[1] Now that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.

For many years, 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.[2] 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:[3] Chess master Garry Kasparov or Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking; successful: Oprah or Tom Brady; or wealthy: Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. 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.[4] 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.’”[5]

After Jesus cleansed Jerusalem’s Temple near Passover, many believed in him when they saw his signs.[6] Even Herod longed to see Jesus because he wanted to see him perform a sign.[7] … 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.[8]

In debating with Jews, Paul and other Christian apologists devoted considerable attention to why Israel’s Messiah had to be crucified.[9] 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.”[10]

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.”[11]

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.”[12]

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.”[13]

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.[14] 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.[15] 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.”[16]

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.[17] Corinthians were fascinated with public speaking – those who sounded attractive and successful.[18] 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.[19] 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.[20] When they realized this, only then would they learn to boast in the Lord.[21]

The early Christian community identified Christ crucified with divine wisdom, and understood itself as God’s new creation.[22] Its members were nobodies who could boast before God.[23] However, if Christians boasted, they could boast only in Christ, their wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.[24]

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.”[25]

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.”[26]… 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.”[27]

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.”[28] … 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.[29] Amen.



[1] Psalm 122

[2] http://www.thetoptens.com/smartest-people-history/

[3] http://superscholar.org/smartest-people-alive/

[4] Matthew 12:38; 16:1

[5] John 6:30-31

[6] John 2:23

[7] Luke 23:8

[8] Deuteronomy 21:22-23

[9] Gregory J. Lockwood, 1 Corinthians. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House (2000), 70

[10] Hebrews 12;2

[11] Isaiah 55:6-7, 10-11

[12] 1 Corinthians 1:23-25

[13] Isaiah 55:9

[14] Richard P. McBrien, The Encyclopedia of Catholicism. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. (1995), 1328.

[15] Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, 1st Corinthians in Harper’s Bible Commentary. Edited by James L. Mays et al. San Francisco: Harper & Row (1988),  1172.

[16] Lockwood, 68f

[17] Ibid., 75

[18] Ibid., 64

[19] Philippians 3;4-10

[20] Revelation 3:17

[21] Lockwood, 76

[22] 1 Corinthians 1:26-29

[23] 1 Corinthians 1:30-31

[24] 1172

[25] Lockwood, 64

[26] Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanation. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House (1986), 17.

[27] What Luther Says, 251

[28] Micah 6:8

[29] Philippians 4:7

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