The Gospel of Absurdity
I Corinthians 1.26-2.5
Second Sunday in Lent
Rev. Matthew M. Fry

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Gracious God, all wisdom and power and glory are yours. Grant unto us now the ability to see the wisdom of the world and to see the foolishness of God, so that we might wisely choose to follow Christ crucified. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught. But if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, Thou who art our Rock and Redeemer, Amen.

Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians [1:26 – 2:5]. Listen.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

The Grass withers, the Flower falls, but the Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

When Melissa and I were courting (I guess it was in the 1920’s when they used the word courting) we went to the movies and saw a movie with Joe Pesci and Brendan Fraser, called With Honors. Not the best movie ever, but not too bad.

The movie revolves around Brendan Fraser’s character, a senior at Harvard. Fraser is obsessed with his Senior Thesis and making it great so that he can graduate With Honors and get into the best graduate school and then the best job. His major is politics, and it doesn’t take much to imagine his dreams and aspirations. He meets Pesci’s character, a self proclaimed homeless bum. After quite a few ordeals, they become friends and Pesci confides to Fraser that he is dying. On the day that Fraser’s Senior Thesis is due, a deadline he must make if he continues to hope to graduate With Honors, Pesci has the opportunity to meet his estranged son ...

Fraser goes against the wisdom of the world, and uses foolishness to find a different way to live in it.

God uses what is foolish to show that the wisdom of the world is actually ridiculous. The wisdom of the world would say several things. It says that watching out for number one is the most important thing. Got to work hard and get ahead. The world tells you to worry about yourself, and when we’re talking about money, that’s not funny, why it’s worth dying for, or working yourself into the ground for. And the world tells you that power is seductive and worth it. Climb the ladder and step on whomever you have to in an effort to get ahead. Casualties in business is part of the course, and if you have to hurt some good and hard working people who are in your way, but it gets you further forward, then do it. The ends justify the means.

And the political and religious leaders of Jesus’ day were masters of doing this. Fortunately today, all our political and religious leaders have learned this lesson and never ever abuse power, so this is just about back then, in those days. But back then, the people were convinced that a show of power with muscle would keep people in their place, and that strength was the way to get things done. Brute force, if necessary, was something that worked too. So they took people who threatened their power, or who called it into question, and exercised power over them, including persecution and crucifixion.

And God’s weakness is what showed the absurdity of that worldly wisdom. For the world’s understanding of wisdom is backward. Think of yourself first, get ahead no matter the cost, work yourself to an early grave to get money, fame and worldly power. That is utter insanity, and is totally contradictory to the kingdom of God. And God used the weakness of Christ, used the foolishness of being willing to die, to show the shortcomings in the worlds strength and wisdom. For the worlds understanding of wisdom, and of strength, and of anything humans can boast in are nothing, nothing in God’s scope. In fact, our human ways of wisdom, strength, and boasting are actually hindrances to God’s kingdom. Not that it will really bother God. Again, God’s foolishness obliterates human ways of wisdom.

We live in a society that places much value on the individual. And there is a lot of good in that. But Paul does not go that way in this passage. “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” Initially it sounds harsh in a way. Does he mean that he doesn’t care for the people at all, isn’t interested in them at all? I don’t think so. I think he is trying to get across the point that all the human ways of wisdom, that the strength and power and what humanity sees as valuable, aren’t of interest to Paul. Instead, Paul wants to know that the Corinthians use God’s foolishness, the foolishness of the cross which is real power, the power of self-denying which the world thinks of weakness. And notice that Paul does not address Christ resurrected. In other places Paul uses the reasoning that we must die with Christ so that we can be resurrected with him, but not here. Here Paul addresses is not the victory of the resurrection, but the victory of the crucifixion.

And then what Paul wants to know is this; where is Christ crucified among you? Where is Christ crucified in your life, in your personal life, and in our life together? Where do we give up the world’s power, and rely on God’s ways of weakness? Where do we trust? Where do we give up personal power or comfort, and in worldly foolishness show Christ crucified? Where do we deny ourselves, and rely on God? Where are you willing to give up graduating Harvard with Honors, and instead graduate life with honors?

We believe in God who does not work in a normal manner, or in a rational way, or is in any form what we could predict or should be able to understand. What we believe is a Gospel of Absurdity where weakness actually beats strength, because God uses that which is foolish, weakness, to show the foolishness of those who are considered wise.

In other words, the power to deny yourself is actually a power stronger than any human power. And Paul understood that Jesus lived in a time where people relied heavily on human power, and that denying self was not in vogue. I know, it’s hard to imagine such a time, but it was true.

It has always been a difficult thing, to imaging denying self instead of relying on one’s own power and wisdom. But when we do so, we see in ourselves Christ crucified, and we live in the world in new ways, in ways God would have us live, in ways of God’s foolishness. Amen.