Just Foolishness

Just Foolishness (March 23, 2003)

In the 18th century people in England said the followers of John Wesley were so committed to planning every day out so as not to leave out anything that they were really "Methodists". The word was said in derision. Wesley accepted it gladly. The Quakers were also called that in derision. They accepted it, though the preferred name is Society of Friends.

Something like that is happening here. The Greeks called the message of the gospel "foolishness". Paul accepts the word proudly. He calls it "the foolishness of the cross". God has made "foolish" the wisdom of the world, for the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

Where so many people think the important thing is "not to get mad, but to get even", the cross still speaks of the "foolishness" of turning the other cheek and praying for our enemies, as did Christ himself when they spat on him and mocked him and then crucified him.

In a world anxious to make war, the cross speaks of the death of one who never led an army into battle, who told his followers to put up their sword, and who was known as the Prince of Peace.

At the start of the period we know as Lent we were reminded of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. One of those temptations was the one to be a military conqueror. All these kingdoms will I give you, said Satan, if you will but fall down and worship me. Jesus spurned this popular view of what the Messiah would be, and the end of this choice was the cross. He said he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Peter himself thought that was foolishness. But it was the way of Christ.

At the start of Holy Week, which we call Palm Sunday, Jesus rides into Jerusalem not as a conqueror with a sword but instead "in lowly pomp" on the back of a donkey as the people wave palm branches. This was the last straw for Judas, who promptly sought out a means to betray him. Judas thought this was foolishness for sure.

Where so many want war to be the means of settling differences quickly and convincingly, the cross has spoken to thoughtful Christians down through the ages for the undeniable "foolishness" of holding out for peace at almost any cost and for war only as a last resort and under very strict conditions.

In the current situation before us in Iraq we all must hope for a quick end to this conflict, now that it has started, and we pray for a minimum of casualties on both sides, for it is Christ who teaches us the humanity of "the other", even our enemy, and has taught us to pray for our enemies. I am heartened that unlike the war 12 years ago, this time journalists and reporters are given maximum liberty, within basic constraints, to report. This came, I believe, because our government knows only maximum openness and transparency could defuse some of the opposition to the war.

I am also grateful that the Churches, with only a few exceptions, have been among the leaders calling for every possible avenue to be explored before war. The pope has been exemplary in his unequivocal call for restraint.

In the opening scene of the movie "Gandhi", the young Gandhi fresh from Oxford is traveling on a train in South Africa reading the New Testament. He is shortly thrown off the train for riding in a first class carriage. There is a statue of him now on the spot where he was thrown off the train. Gandhi wrote later that his doctrine of ahimsa, or non-violence, was strongly influenced by his readings of the New Testament. Because of the cross, it was clear to Gandhi that Jesus practiced what he preached. But Gandhi never became a Christian because he couldn't understand why when it came to violence the Christian Churches also didn't do the same.

I am glad that now has changed.

Why was the cross "foolishness" to the Greeks?

To the ancient Greeks the very first characteristic of God was apatheia, that is, the inability to feel anything. To the Greeks if God could feel joy, or sorrow, or anger, it means that for the moment someone has influenced God and is therefore, at least for a moment, greater than God. So they went on to argue that God must be incapable of feeling. A God who in fact suffered was a contradiction in terms. Some Greeks went further and said it was insult to God to involve him in human affairs. The idea of the incarnation - the Word became flesh and dwelt among us - was revolting to the Greek mind. If God somehow descends to humans then it is a form of debasement for God, not worthy of God. In contrast, the Greeks emphasized the importance of wisdom, sophia.

It looked like the message of the gospel would have tough sledding in that environment. But the amazing is that wherever Paul he found ready audiences. Well, almost everywhere. He didn't get very far in Athens. In Athens he had tried a reasonable approach, and he omitted the cross. When he got to Corinth he went back to his basic message, of which he was unashamed, the message that God indeed cared so much that he became man and died on the cross for our sins and our salvation. What looks like God's weakness is in fact strength, what looks like foolishness is in fact wisdom.

The Church is always tempted, as Paul himself was in Athens, to downplay this "foolish" message in favor of something more palatable: perhaps a message of self-help, rather than God's help. Or a message of stern moralisms, because it is what people have come to expect from churches, instead of the free grace of God in Christ. Or it is tempted to skip the cross and jump right to the crown - Easter, without Good Friday - because people don't want to be told God had to go to such lengths for them and that all God really expects is for us to just get better and better each day.

But there is no Easter without Good Friday, and no crown without the cross, and no redemption with the suffering of Christ on the cross for us. And there is no real repentance unless we see what forgiveness cost God.

The cross is the only answer we have to the problem of evil and pain in our world. The ancient Greeks would have had God simply standing outside and toying with us but not entering into our problem. "As flies to wanton boys so are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport." But in the cross God fully enters into and absorbs in his own self our suffering and pain and alienation.

At Christmas we sing of the birth of Jesus and we call him Emmanuel, God with us. In Lent and through Good Friday we see that means God with us not just in good times when the sun is shining and babies are being born, but in bad times, when the clouds are gray and people are hurting or dying.

Yesterday, at the Confirmation Retreat the students spent time thinking of the suffering and evil in the world. Then they were asked to use their artistic endeavors and create a symbol of hope. There were four different groups and three of them drew something which had a cross, or perhaps a cross with the rainbow, the symbol from Genesis of God's pledge after the flood, and then they placed paper flowers on a bare wooden cross. Life is filled with evil and pain and the cross shows how much God is willing to enter into that evil and pain for us and with us.

Do you remember the dramatic rescue of the miners caught in a flooded mine shaft a year ago in Pennsylvania. For days the country was transfixed as rescuers painstakingly built a parallel shaft, then dug sidewise, and finally found the miners in a pocket of air, with only hours to spare, how the trapped miners themselves had tied themselves together, so that they would all either perish together or be saved together, how they had written notes to their families.

There was no way those trapped miners could be saved unless people were willing to take a chance and possibly be trapped with them in order to bring them out. Just standing on top and yelling down to them to "do your best", or "pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps", or "try self-help" - none of that would do it. Someone had to go in and take all the risk, "foolish" as it seemed.

Like those miners, we are trapped in our own hatreds, our own alienation from one another, our tendency to greed and warfare and oppression. The "wise" God of the Greeks would stay away, but the "foolish" God of Christian faith fully enters into, digs a parallel shaft, fully experiences our sense of hopelessness, in order that we might have hope. He comes to our rescue in the only way which counts, by fully coming to us.

Foolish? Perhaps. But it is the foolishness of the cross.