Trinity 5
1
Cor 1:18-25
7/20/14
Our education system takes up
different subjects that it seeks to teach to our children and young
people. Thus from Kindergarten on they
learn about math and reading. As they get
older we add subjects while continuing build on those that have already been
introduced. So, math and reading are a
focus throughout school. But we add in
writing, and the different sciences, and history and social studies.
This approach to education,
naturally, assumes that all of these areas of study are important. They are all needed so that a person can be well
rounded. And at the same time, as
students advance in school the diversity of topics in our education system
begins to help direct young people into different areas of study and vocations. The system begins to separate out those who
excel in different subjects. It also
helps students to identify the subjects they find interesting and enjoy. In
high school students begin to have more choices about what they are going to
focus upon as they schedule classes. And of course, this process only advances
for those who go on to college.
This is the only education we have
ever known. And so it will probably
surprise you to learn that education in the ancient Greco-Roman world of the
New Testament had only one subject: rhetoric. All of Greco-Roman education was about
teaching people how to speak in public.
All the education they received about reading, history and any other
topic took place because they were in texts that were studied for the sake of
rhetoric.
Students learned models for speaking
and the way of generating arguments that would be persuasive – what the
ancients called “invention.” They
learned figures of speech and the way to ornament their language to make it
interesting and pleasing.
And as a result of this, people were
judged on the basis of how they spoke. I
don’t mean grammar – this was way beyond that.
Instead, people were judged on the basis of the way they were able to
use these rhetorical strategies. They
were judged on the nature and character of their language, the way they were
able to sow it with clever allusions to well known ancient texts and stories.
In our epistle lesson this morning,
Paul has just admitted that judged by those standards, he really doesn’t
measure up. In the verse just before our
text he says that Christ sent him to preach the Gospel “and not with words of
eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”
Now from the world’s perspective
this was a problem. There were those to whom Paul ministered – especially at
Corinth – who thought this was a problem and that it called his ministry
and message into question. But in our text today, Paul says that the way he
preaches the Gospel matches the character of the Gospel. And rather than being
a sign that it is suspect, this character reveals the mystery of God at work in
the world.
Paul begins by saying, “For the word
of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved
it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the
wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’” The apostle freely
admits that those who reject the Gospel – those who are perishing - think it is
folly and foolishness. However, this is
the understanding of the person who is perishing. In fact, it is the power of God for those who
are being saved. And the character of the Gospel is also God’s judgment upon
the world and its own arrogance. It is
God destroying the wisdom of the wise, and nullifying the understanding of
those who think they understand.
Paul tells us that the Gospel is
God’s way of doing things as he deals with fallen humanity that is busy all the
time making itself into a god. He
writes, “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the
debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For
since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it
pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.”
Curved in on itself, the fallen
world refused to know God. In its wisdom it would not submit to God. The
creature refused to acknowledge the Creator.
And so, Paul tells us, in his wisdom God gave the world a message that
was utterly foolish. At least it seems foolish. But in fact
it is God’s saving wisdom. Paul
explains, “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but 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.”
Paul wrote in the first century
A.D. The irony is that here in the
twenty first century A.D. we live in a world that is more like Paul’s than
anything that has been seen in eighteen hundred years. The corrosive effects of
rationalism which began during the Enlightenment of the 1700’s have largely
destroyed for many people any sense of the authority of God’s Word. With it has
gone any sense that God is the almighty, holy and just Creator.
Rather than God’s will, it is each
person who decides for him or herself what is true and right. There is no right
and wrong, and so people are free to do whatever they want. Complete anarchy reigns in the use of
sexuality, and the family – the basic unity of society - is destroyed. In fact things are so unhinged that two
people of the same sex can be joined in marriage, or no matter what biology
says about your sex – the “birds and the bees” stuff of your body parts – you
can decide that you are any gender you want to be.
Of course, in a world where the idea
of authoritative divine revelation is rejected and there is no right and wrong,
the message of God’s Word about the Son of God who died on the cross for our
sins and rose from the dead sounds pretty foolish. Take the further step in a world that is
becoming more and more pluralistic, and assert that Jesus Christ is the unique
and only saving revelation of God, and you have a definite scandal.
And that is the challenge and
temptation for you. For you see the scandal
and foolishness of the “word of the cross” is not simply the fact that Jesus
died on the cross. It includes all of
the things we have just been talking about because apart from them the cross is
meaningless.
The temptation is longer to see
God’s will as authoritative and instead to go with the flow. It is to begin to imitate the world and to
adopt its values and manner of life. It
is to begin to despise preaching and the word by simply ignoring the things in
it you don’t like or which may cause you inconvenience. It is to be silent about Jesus around others
because the world now says that religion is only a private affair – that polite
people and acceptable citizens don’t make Christ and the Christian faith part
of their public life.
The word of the cross is folly to
the world today. But for all those who
see their own failings – for all those who know that they often put God second,
and that they harm others by what they do and say – it is the power of God for
salvation.
The Gospel – the gracious gift of
God – is the power of salvation because not only is the historical fact of
Jesus Christ’s crucifixion true, but so also is the good news of Jesus’
resurrection from the dead. The One
crucified in weakness on Good Friday, rose in glory and power on Easter. And now he has been exalted to God’s right
hand in the ascension with all things subject to him.
This he has done. And in order to deliver the forgiveness he
won for you and to sustain you in the faith he has given you gifts – Gospel
gifts. Now to many, these too look as foolish
as the Gospel itself. For example he
gives you … me. Well, not me as a person
but he gives you the Office of the Holy Ministry and a pastor in that office to
preach the Gospel to you each Sunday. There is a foolishness to this. After all, you are going to come to the same
place and you are going to hear your pastor say the same thing every Sunday.
But those words of Gospel are life giving words – they are Spirit filled words.
In our text, Paul has been
describing why his words were not words of eloquent wisdom. But in the next chapter Paul returns to this
subject. And there he says, “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although
it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to
pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed
before the ages for our glory.”
And then a little later Paul adds, “these
things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.” These are things that you are able to believe
and understand because of the Spirit.
These are things that the Spirit continues to address to you. For as
Paul says, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit
who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.
And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the
Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.” The natural man does not understand these things. Paul says they are foolishness to him.
But to you who have been born again
through the work of the Spirit in baptism, they are saving words of
wisdom. You have been born from God, and
as Paul says at the end of chapter one now “you are in Christ Jesus, who became
to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” We rejoice in this Gospel and the peace it
provides because to those who are called Christ is the power of God and the
wisdom of God. We rejoice in the face of
the world’s derision, because we know what Paul says at the end of our text: “For
the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger
than men.”
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