The sermon for Sunday, March 7, was preached in response to 1 Corinthians 1.8-25. The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews, vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick, preached.
Disicpling,
not disciplining.
God’s foolishness
is wiser than human wisdom, and
God’s weakness
is stronger than human strength.
As Paul writes his first letter
to the church at Corinth,
he’s got some pretty big concerns.
He’s responding
to some other reports
that he’s gotten
from followers of the Way.
Before we get to today’s verses,
Paul has already asked them
why they’re saying who they belong to
as if anyone belongs
to anyone other than Jesus.
Do some of you belong to Cynthia?
And others to Sabeth?
While others to Mark,
and others to Joseph?
Then we get to today’s passage,
where Paul raises
just how weird and silly
the message of the cross is
by human standards.
Like Jesus predicting his death last week
and calling for his disciples to take up their crosses,
we as humans have a hard time grasping
that our salvation comes
from God choosing weakness.
Paul reminds the Corinthians and us
that that’s exactly what happened.
James Cone writes,
“It made no rational or even spiritual sense
to say that hope came
out of ‘a place called Golgotha . . .
a place of the skull.’
For the Jews of Jesus’ time
the punishment of crucifixion
held special opprobrium,
given their belief that ‘anyone hung on a tree
is under God’s curse’ (Deut 21:23).
Thus, St. Paul said
that the “word of the cross is foolishness”
to the intellect
and a stumbling block to established religion.”
During the season of Lent,
when the church calls us to reflect on our mortality
and renew our commitment to following Jesus,
we need all the reminders we can get
that Jesus’ Way of Love
is not the way of power.
Paul is not inviting us
to engage in anti-intellectualism,
but the church is reminding us
that followers of Jesus
are required to have humility,
patience,
and love.
I have seen and experienced
a lack of love and humility
as leaders have done a terrible job
managing the pandemic.
Voices I once respected
as they were the loud opposition
have become just as hateful and spiteful
as those they oppose.
It feels good.
It makes sense to be critical!
There is being critical of policy, however,
and a failure to respect the dignity of every human being —
even, especially!, when perpetrators
are doing exactly that themselves
Jesus warns us about what we call other people
in Matthew 5.
James warns us
about the trouble our tongues
can get us in to.
We can long for justice
without writing of vitriol and vengeance.
This season of discipling,
not disciplining
pushes us to remember
that in Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the cross
God’s foolishness
is wiser than human wisdom, and
God’s weakness
is stronger than human strength.
Pot shots and hot takes feel good,
but they’re not the grace and love
of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
Cone continues about the Cross,
“The cross is a paradoxical religious symbol
because it inverts the world’s value system
with the news
that hope comes by way of defeat,
that suffering and death do not have the last word,
that the last shall be first and the first last…
…Believing this paradox,
this absurd claim of faith,
was only possible
through God’s ‘amazing grace’
and the gift of faith,
grounded
in humility and repentance.
There was no place for the proud and the mighty,
for people who think that God called them to rule over others.
The cross was God’s critique of power—white power—
with powerless love,
snatching victory out of defeat.”
Disicpling,
not disciplining.
God’s foolishness
is wiser than human wisdom, and
God’s weakness
is stronger than human strength.
Pot shots and hot takes feel good,
but they’re not the grace and love
of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
Taking up our crosses —
being prepared to die —
is what Jesus asks of us
as we trust Jesus’ grace
and the eschatalogical hope
of the cross and resurrection.
We fail to do it every day,
and we’ll keep failing to do it.
That’s kind of the point of Lent.
Not that we don’t try,
but like a gospel song says,
“We fall down, but we get up.
For a saint is just a sinner
who fell down
and got up.”
When we’re confronted
with all the cares and occupations
of this world
it’s easy to trust in our wisdom.
Within the last few months,
I’ve been just short
of demanding a sign.
What seems so apparently logical to me
is not what’s been happening all around us!
Yet God’s foolishness
is wiser than human wisdom, and
God’s weakness
is stronger than human strength.
It’s in humility and repentance,
which bring us back to faith
that we see God’s victory.
In our discipling this Lent,
not disciplining ourselves,
let’s get ready to celebrate that victory.
Amen.