I Cor. 1:18-31 -- homily on the cross

1 Corinthians 1:18-31: “The Wisdom of God”

By Loy Mershimer

One of the toughest things about the walk of faith is the lack of easy guidance.

For those who believe, almost every week finds us praying for signs, praying for special intervention…a kind of universal language for those who reference God in any way.

Along these lines, Train released a song that was a finalist for a 2003 Grammy:

I need a sign to let me know you're here
All of these lines are being crossed over the atmosphere
I need to know that things are gonna look up
Cause I feel us drowning in a sea spilled from a cup…
And I'm calling all angels
And I'm calling all you angels...[1]

The universal cry of those who have [some] faith is for signs.
The search of the world is for cultured ‘wisdom’ or proof…certain knowledge.

In today’s text, the Apostle Paul writes to a fragmented Corinthian church:

“You Jews, or natural church people, seek signs…

“You Greeks, or cultured secular people, seek wisdom…

“But there is something that trumps both signs and human wisdom…

“I’m talking about the cross!”

In an intersection of rough, splintered wood, riven with iron nails, the cross of Christ is both the sign and wisdom of God.

But it sure doesn’t make sense in human terms! The cross – the Roman electric chair!

This answer must have confounded those Corinthians who sought signs and wisdom.

To conceive their reaction, imagine driving to the closest penitentiary that still has an electric chair…and taking a picture, framing it and hanging it on your mantle…as a sign of hope.
Or, worse yet, imagine passing around pictures of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq…as a sign of redemption!

Here Paul offers cross – the first century instrument of public humiliation, death, and torture – as the wisdom of God! It is this that the Apostle lifts up, to a broken church, as their sign of cure.

Verses 24-25: “…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 man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.”

Verse 23 says that Christ crucified is a ‘stumbling block’ to Jews and ‘foolishness’ to Greeks.

A stumbling block for Jews: It was written in Jewish law: “cursed is the one who hangs on a tree.”
And foolishness for Greeks: literally, “scandalon” [σκανδαλον]…word from which we get scandal!

How can this stumbling block, this curse, this scandal, be…a sign of God’s wisdom?
Verse 25: “…the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”

What we could not do in strength, self-help, worldly power…God did in weakness.
Or, what we cannot do through Dr. Phil, Oprah and Christian TV…God does in the cross.

As the early church hymn put it [Philippians 2:6ff]:

Jesus, very nature God, did not grasp equality with Him

But made himself nothing, and took on Him human nature…

And being found in likeness as a man,

He humbled himself to death…even the death of the cross!

That at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow

And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord…!

God, in weakness, in the cross of the incarnate Christ, destroyed the strength of sin.

Notice the method of God in breaking the stronghold of sin. God chooses

‘Weak things to confound the strong…and

“Calls forth that which is nothing…as if it were…to trump that which is!”

Thus the cross rips away the temporal things in which we trust…so foolish and counter-intuitive that it exposes our motives.

In what do you trust?

If we were honest this morning, our trust is in many things: pensions, perks, solid positions, power plays, control, security, benefits, desired relationships…the wisdom of the world.

Our trust is in school, prestige…physical health and beauty…being ‘desirable.’

Even as a pastor, the seductive temptation is to begin trusting in strength, in human effort, in business as usual, words of accolade…

But the cross strips that away. This is why adversity is a blessing…it opens us to the way of the cross, all over again.

In my Pennsylvania hometown, I often visited an elderly member of our church – someone much further along in this wisdom of the cross than I. We affectionately called her ‘Sister Williams,’ a saintly, gentle soul, rich in prayer. [And, truth be told, perhaps one person most responsible for that little church staying open…] I would stop to check on her…often in a day of rushing here, rushing there, doing ‘church work’ yet feeling somewhat empty and harried. But as soon as I walked into her door, there was a calmness, a gentle presence of God…to all the world it looked as if just another helpless widow lived there, in a modest house…but when you entered her home, you entered the power of the cross: something sacrificial and gentle that confounded the power structures of the world.

She’s gone on to her heavenly reward now, but she didn’t leave until that little church grew in health, and spread Christ’s light across that Pennsylvania valley…I owe her a lot.

William Willimon, dean of Duke Chapel, tells of visiting a lady in the hospital…someone a lot wiser in faith than he was…

He pulled up a chair close to her bed. She was in great pain, flung down by a serious illness which had kept her in hospital for weeks.
She spoke to him and said, “I keep asking myself, ‘Is this God’s will? Is God trying to tell me something?’”
Dr. Willimon, in his haste to be compassionate and ‘pastoral,’ quickly said, “No, God didn’t will this; this isn’t some message from God. It’s a virus!”
She quietly answered, “Can you be sure, preacher?”
“I’m an awfully proud person: Takes a lot to get my attention. And then, well after the cross, who can be sure what God might be trying to tell us?" [2]

Here is wisdom: to see the cross in our own weakness, to see the redemptive power of God in that one thing that seems most devastating at the moment. To look up, with eyes of faith, even through tears, and say, ‘Here is God!’ And to confess -- in an utter act of faith in Jesus’ cross -- that this weakness, this hurt, this struggle, this pain, is the very thing through which His glorious power can be made known…

The cross signs out that the titanic strength of sin is conquered in the incarnate weakness of God.

Verse 18: For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Verse 28: He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are

There is a word here for our personal lives: our worst failure, our greatest sin, our most hopeless dream…is the exact avenue through which God’s power can bring forth redemption.

There is a word here for our collective lives: that which we have been through, Parkview, God can redeem to the future, so that we can become a sign…of the power of the cross: unity, wholeness, reconciliation!

Our wisdom is no longer the wisdom of the world: size, spreadsheets and prestige.

Verse 30: …Christ Jesus…has become for us wisdom from God -- that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let [every one] who boasts boast in the Lord.”

If we can get our minds [hearts] around the cross, we will not lack for signs, we will not lack for wisdom…

And we will take spiritual light and power into our world.

Amen.

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[1] Train, “Calling All Angels” from the CD Alive at Last, 2003.
[2] William H. Willimon, “The Word of the Cross,” at http://www.chapel.duke.edu/chapel/worship/sunday/viewsermon.aspx?id=45

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