The message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday morning, February 26, 2023. The Bible verses used are 1 Corinthians 1:18-31.
Most of us recognize that wisdom is very important.
We all try to be wise in every aspect of our lives–with our finances, with our
relationships, with the way we spend our time, all of it. No one wants to
be thought of as a fool. We all want to be thought of as wise.
The Bible has lots of verses about the value of wisdom,
too. A lot of them are in the book of Proverbs. We read, “How much
better to get wisdom than gold, to get insight rather than silver.” “The
one who gets wisdom loves life; the one who cherishes understanding will soon
prosper.” In the Psalms, we read, “The mouths of the righteous utter
wisdom, and their tongues speak what is just.” In Paul’s letter to the
Colossians, we read, “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the
most of every opportunity.” Going back to Proverbs again, we read,
“Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding.”
So, with all this stuff about the value of wisdom, what do
we do with our reading for today? Paul quotes God, from the book of
Isaiah, saying “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise.” Paul says, “God
was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who
believe.”
If that seems a little confusing, know that it was
confusing to the people of Jesus’ time, too. This is one of the reasons
the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders had so much trouble with Jesus.
They thought they were wise, and they thought their wisdom came from God.
And then Jesus came along and turned all their supposed wisdom upside
down. Because so many of the things Jesus said seemed odd, strange, and
just plain foolish to them.
And if we’re honest, they sound foolish to us, too.
We would not say so. After all, this is the divine Son of God we’re
talking about here. We’d never say He said something foolish. But
while we’d never say it, we treat some of His statements that way. We
don’t follow them. We ignore them. We come up with all kinds of
reasons to ignore them, but the fact is that we ignore them because we think
they’re foolish. We think Jesus could not possibly have meant them.
And so we just don’t pay attention to them.
“If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and
throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than
for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes
you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to
lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”
Jesus said that, in Matthew Chapter Five, Verses twenty-eight through
thirty. To the Pharisees, that sounded foolish. And it sounds
foolish to us, too. And so we say, well, Jesus was exaggerating to make a
point. Jesus did not really mean that. And so, we ignore it.
We don’t pay attention to it at all.
Luke Chapter Six, Verses Twenty-nine and Thirty.
Jesus says, “If anyone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other
also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from
them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to
you, do not demand it back.” Foolishness, right? Ridiculous.
Stand there and invite someone who’s hit you to hit you again? Let people
steal from you? Give to everyone who asks? That’s a good way to get
beaten up and left with nothing. Jesus cannot possibly have meant
that. And so, we ignore what Jesus said. We don’t pay attention to
it at all.
Matthew Twenty, Verses Twenty-six and Twenty-seven.
Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and
whoever wants to be first must be your slave.” We might like that in
theory. We might even think it sounds good. But in practice?
It’s foolishness, right? I’m not going to be anyone’s slave. I’m
might do things for people sometimes. When I have time. When I feel
like it. When it’s someone I like. But to be a servant and a slave
to everybody? No way. And so, again, we ignore what Jesus
said. We don’t pay attention to it at all.
And we could go on and on. We say we believe in Jesus
as the Savior. And we like some of the things He said. “For God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in
Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” We like that one.
“I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” That sounds
good. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and
the door will be opened for you.” We like that. “Do not worry about
tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself. Let today’s troubles be
enough for today.” That one’s a personal favorite of mine. Those
are the things we like. Those are the things that make sense to us.
Those are the things we pay attention to. Those other things?
Foolishness.
I don’t mean to be overly critical of people. And I
especially hope no one thinks I’m exempting myself from any of this, because I
most definitely am not. I’m as guilty of all this as anyone. I
ignore those statements of Jesus that I don’t like, too. Or I explain
them away. Or I make excuses for why I don’t need to follow them or even
think about them too much. Please don’t hear me saying you do this and I
don’t, because I most definitely do. Probably more than at least some of
you do.
But listen again to what Paul writes in our reading for
today. “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and
foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the
foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is
stronger than human strength.”
When you think about it, “Christ crucified” is the most
foolish thing of all. The divine Son of God has come to earth. He
has shown that He has great power. He has shown that He can do
miracles. He can drive out demons and walk on water and cure leprosy and
everything else. He can do, literally, anything He wants to do. And
this Savior, this divine Son of God just lets himself be killed? Without
even putting up a fight? And God, God whom the divine Son calls His
father, just allows it to happen? Does nothing about it? What kind of
foolishness is that?
The kind of foolishness it is, is the foolishness that
allows us to have salvation and eternal life. Jesus did not have to allow
Himself to be killed–He could have avoided it in any number of ways. God
the Father did not have to send the divine Son to earth in the first
place. He could’ve allowed us to continue to live in our sins and to
suffer the consequences for those sins. But God loves us. And so
the Son was sent to earth. He was sent to earth to die, to take the
punishment you and I deserve for our sins. So that, through our faith in
that divine Son, we can be saved from the consequences of our sins and have
eternal life.
It was a foolish thing for God to do, really. There’s
only one way to make sense of that kind of foolishness. That’s to realize
that God loves us. God loves us so much that He did the most foolish
thing He could do. He sent the divine Son of God to earth to die for us.
That kind of love–that kind of foolish love–is what you and
I are called to feel for each other. That’s the explanation for all those
foolish things Jesus told us to do. All those stupid, foolish
things. What Jesus was saying, in all those situations and in all those
ways, was that you and I are supposed to feel such a foolish love for each
other that we would do anything for each other. Jesus was saying that
there should be no sacrifice that is too great to make. And there
literally is no sacrifice that’s too great to make, if we make it out of love.
After all, think of the people in your life whom you
love. Maybe it’s your wife or your husband. Maybe it’s your
children or grandchildren. Maybe it’s a brother or sister. Maybe
it’s a parent or grandparent. Maybe it’s just a good friend. For
most of us, there is someone for whom we would do anything. We would make
any sacrifice for them. We would do that out of our love for them.
That’s the kind of love Jesus calls us to have for
everybody. That’s the kind of love Jesus Himself had for everybody.
That’s the kind of love that led Jesus to allow Himself to be killed for
us. That incredible, foolish love that Jesus has for us.
We have entered into the time of Lent. The time when
we take a look at our lives. A time when we confess our sins. A
time when we do more than just ask for forgiveness. A time when we truly
repent of our sins. A time when we resolve to make serious, permanent
changes in our lives.
As we go through this time, let’s think about the
foolishness of God. That foolishness that is wiser than human
wisdom. Let’s be grateful for the incredible, foolish love God has for
us. And let’s ask God to help us both and feel and show that same kind of
incredible, foolish love to everyone we meet.
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