Crossed

 

Crossed 

1 Corinthians 1:18-24

The cross is the power of God 

 

1:18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

 

1:19 For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."

 

1:20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

 

1:21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe.

 

1:22 For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom,

 

1:23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles,

 

1:24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

 

One of the great questions of theology is: does the cross tell us more about Jesus? Or does it say more about us? How you took the “us” in the last statement may be a clue about how you might answer the question. If you tend to substitute “me” for “us,” seeing “us” as nothing but a collective “me,” then you probably focus on the cross being mostly about Jesus (he died for MY sins) and the cross experience as purely an act of atonement. If, on the other hand, your “us” means “humanity,” you might tend to think of the cross as a sign of the on-going failure of the human “race” to understand even the basics of forgiveness, love, and respect. Since the current administration has plunged us into a state of ‘getting even” and “winning over our enemies,” it would seem that the latter understanding of the cross is germane to this discussion of what “the cross” is all about.

 

This week’s text is Pauline reasoning and theology, so we must tread lightly. First, because most of our contemporary practice of “Christianity” comes directly from Paul. As a pastor, I long ago lost my fascination with how many passionate church Christians freely moved between quoting Paul and Jesus, often giving Pauline theology greater weight, especially when defining doctrine. Think about it: not many of the church’s doctrines come from things Jesus said or did. Certainly, our morals might, but doctrines are mostly defined from what Paul and the early church wrote and did. Few of the most hurtful doctrines of Christian history were derived from “love your neighbor as yourself” or “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Paul gets a bad rap, though, over his schizophrenic temperament, and most especially the things he writes about women, most of which are misconstrued. 

 

(I’ve addressed this in many other sermons, namely that Paul actually sought to liberate women and justify them as leaders in the early church. However, his “cautions” result from how early church leaders were being persecuted, and his wanting to spare women from the violence and retribution until things settle down a bit, as well as a dictum we read in I Corinthians 14, urging women to “keep silent” in the church, due to their total lack of participation in any religious body, up to this point. The “wait until you get home and ask your husbands” is not necessarily a chauvinist remark, but possibly a way to keep order in the assembly, until women get up to snuff on preaching, theology, and church polity, instead of just being expected to cook for the elders. If one reads the entire corpus of Pauline literature, it becomes clear that Paul not only encouraged women to take their place as preachers and leaders in the church, but in both Romans and Acts, we read of him answering to women as his superiors.)

 

My point is that how we see the cross is more from Paul’s angle of it being about blood being shed and sins being forgiven, than it is about it being an indictment of human failing and a NEED for forgiveness. Christianity has been victimized by the kind of polarization our current society faces, when it comes to the cross. The more theologically conservative among us tend to focus on Jesus’ death on the cross—including the requisite “shedding of blood”—as a necessary act performed by God to “atone” for the sins of humanity, often citing the Pauline theology in the Book of Hebrews, where the cross is paralleled with the ancient “meat sacrifices” of the Jewish temple. (Even late scholar Marcus Barth, son of Karl Barth, wrote extensively about the “Word becoming flesh” in Christ, asserting that the Greek word used for “flesh” in the prologue to the Gospel of John, is sarx, which Barth says means “meat.”) Trouble is, when it comes to our conservative siblings, this understanding of Jesus being a “meat sacrifice” for sin on the cross has become a dogma—believe it, or else you’re a heretic. On the other hand, for more liberal-thinking folk, there is a tendency to recast Christ’s death on the cross as nothing BUT a metaphor for the sinful failings of humans to accept new ideas, particularly when those new ideas run afoul of personal wealth or aggrandizement, or rebukes and refutes strong political authority. Jesus died because his message of “loving neighbor,” “blessing the poor,” and paying allegiance to God alone rankled what makes “humanity great again.” 

 

The truth? Both “sides” harbor part of it. Christ DID go to the cross willingly, in his “mission” of absolving humanity of its sin, and humanity DID fail—yet again—to hear a message meant to reconcile and revive humans into a sustainable, peaceful world community that would be inclusive of the “haves” and the “have nots,” and in this failure, decided to kill the messenger. As we have learned from the realm of science, two postulates may be true at the same time, and in many cases, the synergy of them is what actually FORMS the truth. Jesus DID die for the sins of humanity, and humanity’s continuing flirtation with selfishness and power DID result in the death of Jesus Christ. So, what is the ultimate truth?

 

Sacrificial love. Jesus willingly went the cross when he could have easily vanquished his accusers and walked free, emboldened by the power he would have gained—in an earthly sense—by doing so. But God SO LOVED the world that God GAVE the “only Son,” and therein we find the freeing truth of the cross. In choosing the cross, Jesus gives himself, and tells the world that what he stated in John 3:16 is absolutely true. In Christ, in his sacrificial death and resurrection, humanity is forgiven of what put Christ on the cross in the first place. It is my belief that this forgiveness is universal; the only persons who will not be received as a child of God by this universal atonement are those who CHOOSE to not believe and not receive this free gift of God’s grace. There have been, will be, and certainly are persons who reject this gift, or just don’t believe they need anything apart from their own acquired power to receive all of the benefits of this life, and the life to come, if there is such a thing. For those of us who willingly and gratefully receive the gift of redemption and reconciliation, the humility of knowing that God’s sacrificial and willful love was necessary for us to be bound together as children of God, is the proof and commitment of having received it.

 

Now do you see why in this text Paul says that the “cross is foolishness” to those who are perishing? And yet, anytime a person realizes that by living a selfish, “me first” life they ARE “perishing” and losing out on discovering the true love and acceptance they may receive via the always-available gift of God’s redeeming grace That this grace has been made available to ALL, friends, is the Good News! It is only foolishness to those who have not yet discovered it, or, God forbid, who have consciously decided they are not interested.

 

How wonderful it would be if God’s grace had also terminated the human tendency to “kill the messenger” when their message messes with our gig, but it hasn’t. We will always have to make a choice as to what we believe and where our allegiances will be. Even better, it would make things much easier for the church if dogmas and doctrines did not have to define us, supplanted instead by mutual, sacrificial love and cooperation. But we will always need God’s wisdom to incorporate the “love” morals into our behavior. But at least, let us not become “crossed” by the cross, distorting what God did for our mutual benefit into something to fight over and even “disaffiliate” from one another because we can’t agree on some single, polarizing “truth” about what happened at Calvary over 2,000 years ago. May the Spirit of God mend our tears and draw together the growing remnant of God’s people from every walk of life, every nation, and every tongue, to God’s glory, and the rebuilding of “Eden,” or God’s intended joy of life in community with one another. 

 

There is a funny story told about a young student who is flunking out of his math classes by not taking them seriously. After all other manners of getting him to buckle down failed, his parents decide to send him to a local Catholic school. Pretty soon, his math scores begin to improve, and he winds up acing his math class. When his parents ask what motivated him, he said: “When I first walked into the lobby of my new school, I saw that huge stature of the guy nailed to that big PLUS sign, and I knew THESE people meant business! This humorous anecdote does harbor a great truth, though—the cross IS meant to be a “big plus sign,” bringing together the Divine with the object of God’s redeeming love, and then neighbor with neighbor in a harmonious, synergistic community. Dogmas and doctrines inadvertently may turn the cross into a “minus” sign, erecting fences between the “haves” and “have nots.” Let’s not propagate this error any further and subtract and divide, where God in Christ seeks to add and multiply! That would be foolishness. Amen.