1 Corinthians 1:10-18
10 Now I appeal to you, brothers
and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in
agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in
the same mind and the same purpose. 11 For it has been reported to me by
Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. 12
What I mean is that each of you says, "I belong to Paul," or "I
belong to Apollos," or "I belong to Cephas," or "I belong
to Christ." 13 Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or
were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God that I baptized none of
you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so that no one can say that you were baptized
in my name. 16 (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I
do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) 17 For Christ did not send me to
baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the
cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. 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.
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.
·
A small note before we begin. Even with all that has been reported this week, there is one bit of news that captured my attention for a while. Did you
hear that Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey’s Circus will close after
146 years? Just hold onto that thought; we'll be coming back to that.
·
As Christians, we live lives of
contradiction. We say we are saved and yet we seek salvation. We live by faith
and yet we have to do things. We believe in God’s presence and yet we cannot
demonstrate it to the satisfaction of a person who questions it.
·
One of the most serious
contradictions we know is the one that says “God is good.” In the sum of all
things, this is the problem of evil and the problem of suffering. God is good
and yet there is evil active in the world. God is good and yet the innocent
suffer while those we might consider guilty suffer very little if at all.
·
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. This morning’s reading from Paul’s first
letter to the Corinthian Church brings this into focus. Paul is relating how
many people he baptized while in Corinth. Actually, he’s telling them how few
people he baptized in Corinth. His ministry was not to baptize but to preach
the Good News, but not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be
emptied of its power.
·
Paul says he refused to preach with
eloquence or wisdom for fear that his preaching might be seen as the centre of
things. People might come to hear him and miss his message.
·
His message then could be as simple
as this: For the message about the cross… is the power of God.
Plain and simple, yet hard to see at times.
·
Follow this line of thinking for a
bit. Nobody likes to suffer – at least, nobody I know. Yet we all do suffer,
undergoing everything and anything from hangnails or a stubbed toe to
life-threatening diseases, accidents, or situations.
·
Paul puts the idea of the cross and
the idea of grace together. Jesus’ cross reduces all pretensions of goodness or
holiness or success to nothing so that grace and the goodness of God can
be held supreme.
·
This is hard stuff; we all know this.
We’d like instant justice along with the knowledge that people deserve what
happens to them, whether that be good or bad. We’d like good things to happen
to good people and bad things to happen to bad people and we’d like it all to
make sense. We’d like to see and perceive God in the sunrise or the sunset, in
the beauty of nature or the wisdom of the wise. (And we can!)
·
We also know that all of life is not
sunshine, lollipops, and roses. Real life is harsh at times. The hard thing for
Christians, then, is to know the presence of God in our suffering. This is the
folly of the cross and the power of the cross.
·
This does not mean that our suffering
is somehow made holy by our endurance. There is holiness present because God
suffers with us. The message of the cross – whether seen as foolishness or as
the power of God – is that of the suffering God who empties himself to suffer.
Not to attain to some mystic wisdom or enlightenment; not to gain the trust of
those who are or will be disciples, but to show love to those who have been
created and live in a world where suffering is often the norm.
·
As a pastor, I am privileged to see
people and be with them at times of uncertainty and suffering. It is a painful
privilege since I can rarely do anything to ease their suffering and pain. In
that, we are all in the same boat, as it were.
·
The message of the cross is not “we
can do better” or “we deserve the love of God.” Nor is it “God wants us to
suffer.” The message of the cross is “God suffers with us” and “God loves us
before we ever knew God loves us.” The message of the cross is powerful because
it lays low all other powers that pretend to the ability to save – politics,
morality, behavior, ideology, or wealth. Only God has the power to save and
that power is demonstrated in the strange figure of the Crucified Savior.
·
It is the cross that shows us that
all salvation comes from God as a gift. We may not be worthy, but that gift is
ours none-the-less.
·
So then if the cross is foolishness,
let’s all be clowns.
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.
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