O Lord,
The house of my soul is narrow;
enlarge it that you may enter in.
It is ruinous, O repair it!
It displeases Your sight.
I confess it, I know.
But who shall cleanse it,
to whom shall I cry but to you?
Cleanse me from my secret faults, O Lord,
and spare Your servant from strange sins.
In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.*
Our lesson from St. Paul’s First letter to the Corinthians has long been one of my favorites for meditation. Perhaps in some part it’s because of my supervisor at the youth shelter where I used to work, Ms. April. Let me tell you a little bit about her. Ms. April, who was born and raised in south Chicago (just outside the projects, she was always careful to tell me) and who left that great city in order to go into the military. Almost as tall as I am and with a penchant for cutting through taurus excreta, she cut quite the imposing figure. She was formidable in her presence but also in her compassion and sensitivity. One day, as we were trying to break up some drama, she flung open the door and greeted us with:
WHAT IS THIS FOOLISHNESS? YOU ALL ARE BEING MORONS!
We were all so surprised, that after the stun had worn off, we all (including the players in the drama) started laughing hysterically. It was truly foolishness.
So that word tends to stick out for me, and thus it is with Paul’s letter. Why foolishness? Paul points to the fact that the saving Gospel of Christ on the cross is folly, stupid, or perhaps nonsense to the unbeliever; just as most late teenage drama appears similarly inscrutable to all but the most discerning of viewers.
Now how can this be that the central saving act of God in Christ, that is, the cross would be called foolishness? It’s telling that in the original Greek, the word Paul uses is mōrian, whence we get our word moron. The original word has some of the bite that it has now, it means senseless, dumb, even stupid!
Paul is pointing out that our faith, even as truthful, reasonable, and historical as it is, is not merely a faith of pure information and data transmission, as much as it is profoundly a work of God on our hearts and minds. I can imagine that in conversations with his religious contemporaries, he came to this realization very quickly.
On the one hand, Paul must have found that the first century Pharisee and Scribe could not, on the basis of the doctrine of the cross simply stated, have understood what he was talking about. To the pious Jew of the time, the idea of the incarnation, of God becoming man, was probably close enough to blasphemy consider execution, notwithstanding that this God-man would die an unclean death on a cross. Jesus’ death as a political prisoner was, likewise not a truly inspiring sign of his messiahship. So much for a liberator from the House of David.
On the other hand, the Greek philosophers at the time would be scandalized by the doctrine of the cross as presented by the Early Church. The God of philosophy was perfect in being, perfectly transcendent, the first mover, uninterested in the petty lives of mere creatures. Again, the earthiness of a gruesome death on the cross is not something that fits neatly into the Greek framework of how God works. Plato’s God was pure form and idea, not an executed preacher.
To Paul’s contemporaries, his Gospel is…well, foolishness. Stupid even to consider you might say. For morons, I guess.
And yet, Paul doubles down with one of the most encouraging verses in the New Testament:
“For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
His point is, is that we can count on God to fulfill His purposes, and that Jesus saving power is His to enact in history, and his to defend in the realm of ideas. This is great news, by the way, to those of us who are concerned about having a good defense of the faith, or an apology. It means that we should already have a bit of humility in our presentation because we know that without God’s grace our message of a crucified savior is nonsense to someone with a deadened heart. But empowered by God’s grace, it is a message of life itself, the Good News of Christ’s ministry of reconciliation, the transforming work of God in drawing all people and all things back to himself.
Because we know the Gospel and the doctrines that follow are God-propelled, that should free up our thoughts from defense of the faith to offense. In the case of the Church, offense actually means acting out the life of God’s love in Christ. It means doing dumb, silly, moronic things like loving our neighbor and praying for our enemies for a start. But I’ve thought a lot about what other “foolishness” I see around me:
How strange it must seem nowadays to give up a perfectly good Sunday morning to go into a big stone house to pray, sing and give valuable time to something besides our stomachs or wallets! Wouldn’t that time be better spent on ourselves?
Or perhaps another example: How curious it is for a fifteen year old to decide to read the Bible cover to cover. Don’t they know they can’t understand half of it?
Or how bizarre that someone might go to one of Sarasota’s outreach agencies a few times a week to help serve those that some would call derelict. As if those people deserved to be loved despite their choices?
But of course, for us to call doing these things nonsensical is to assume that we do them unaided, alone in the dark if you will. On this third week of Lent, I hope you’ll consider what Christ-like foolishness you can get into guided and empowered by God’s grace. Remember that His grace is indeed before us and by Christ’s cross and passion did he win forgiveness of our sins and did promise us eternal life with Him.
Remember also that in being reconciled to God that we are reconciled to together, and so keep each other in your prayers.
*For the curious, my opening prayer is a penitential prayer attributed to St. Augustine.
Sermon preached by the Rev. David S. Bumsted
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
3rd Sunday in Lent
8 March 2015