The Cross,
the Power of God
“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.”
I Corinthians 1:10-18
A
Sermon
by
The Rev. Dr. Don Thompson
January 23, 2011
Third Sunday after the Epiphany
Saint Luke’s Parish
Darien, Connecticut
In this Epiphany season, we focus on what is being “shown forth” or “given the spotlight”, as it were…
And what goes with that way of thinking, is that we can’t help but think of what would be the most impressive presentation possible.
We all like winners!
Now when it was Christmas, we made a big presentation of the child lying in a manger.
Today we would want to have made it a great “photo op”, send in Brian Williams or Katie Couric for on-the-spot coverage!
Actually, the year was 1223, and a deacon, with all sorts of new and bright ideas, by the name of Francis (of Assisi), came up with the idea of actually representing Christmas in a Manger Scene. It was in Italy where Francis came up with the idea, which he implemented in some of the caves hollowed out of the hills above the village of Greccio on Christmas Eve, 1223. Most of those who saw it were deeply moved. Of course there were others that did not see it, but were scandalized by the account. How could you possibly represent the Messiah, the Son of God, coming into the world in a simple cowshed! Think of the sight. Think of the smell! Never! For the Son of God Incarnate?! But Francis was right. The Christ of God did enter this world in the midst of abject filth and poverty.
Now our Epistle reading this morning tells of a similar scandal.
It is Paul who is writing, in about the year 56, from Ephesus (now in Turkey) to the Christian community at Corinth, just west of Athens, in Greece. This was about twenty years after the event of the Crucifixion of Jesus, and Paul had joined the surviving disciples and witnesses of Jesus, to help proclaim the understanding and message of what this all was about.
In the field of public opinion amongst both Jews and Greeks, you could rightly say that they found the idea of a “Crucified Messiah” as absolutely ridiculous and unthinkable. A Messiah is one thing - a Divine Messenger. But for the Messiah figure to be publicly executed in the most base and vicious death possible? Unthinkable!
And for over a hundred years, various Christian thinkers in the early church would struggle with how to get rid of such an obvious blotch on the otherwise sublime presentation of the saving work of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God.
I am sure you have read some of the recent mysteries which explore so-called hidden and “secret” accounts of the actual life and death of Jesus Christ. There is the account that he fathered several children, and that Mary and the children struggled to maintain their ongoing life, but the Christian Gospel of the absolute death of Jesus obliterated all of that. And there is the story that the crucifixion was a hoax developed in retrospective, and that Jesus simply died as everyone else.
All of these accounts, of course, nullify the significance of both the crucifixion and resurrection. By popular and conventional standards, the official version of the events does not really satisfy.
There has to be another truer account?
But the account with which we are all familiar, is that it was the role of the cross, which was absolutely central to the Gospel of Christ, and couldn’t be hushed up, or changed, or made in some way more acceptable.
It happened.
And Paul, in this passage we heard this morning, says that to do otherwise would be to empty the cross of its power.
What did he mean? What “power”?
As you know, much of the reference point for how we deal with things is from our own experience.
With experience, that means that as a younger people we have a little of it, as older people we often have more than we would wish. But experience tells us what is going on with things when they happen as they do.
The sun rises, light and warmth spread over our bodies. What is happening?
This morning the glorious Sun God is visiting us again! We must appease and gratify that Sun God so she will return again tomorrow! (I say “she”, because it is always she who must be obeyed…)
Many centuries later we will say that the earth has turned, as it always does, giving us a clear morning view of the sun. And we should approach our Environment with care and attentiveness so that we can harness all the wonderful benefits of this warm exposure to the sun, and keep our access to the sun available for all future generations. (Its called “Sustainability”)
Notice that the emergence of the sun every morning doesn’t change, but our understanding of it does change.
At the heart of Christian faith is the insight that the reality of all the suffering, hurt, loss, and even death that we experience - has another side - apart from that which we immediately observe.
Just as it is predictable that the Sun always rises, so also it is predictable that hurt and harm always happen. But the key understanding at the heart of Christianity is that these events of seeming hurt and hardship, are also actually transformative events. They have a history beyond their actual happening.
By something mysterious [which we Christians call the mysterious power of God…], many of the seemingly devastating events of our lives turn out later and in retrospect to be amazing instruments of good, grace, and healing. If we look at them in the long term, we can say that somehow they get their rough and hurtful beginnings often transformed into events of life, hope, and courage.
Using the language of medicine, we say that these events get healed and are “healed”. Somehow life and new possibility emerges out of destructive situations.
And that is what Paul is talking of as the “power of the Cross”. Not that bad things happen. They do. We all know that.
But that healing happens.
Hope happens.
New life happens.
The whole experience of the incarnation, “God with us”, is that God comes into the toughest and worst situations of being human.
And even into such a treacherous and brutal death as a Roman executioner’s cross, life and hope still prevail.
Yes, that official version of the event was really a scandal at the time, and probably remains a scandal. Mel Gibson put it on celluloid for all to see, but so many did not know what to do with it. Perhaps it was unnecessarily graphic, or just exposed the gruesomeness of it without revealing why God’s presence in such awful suffering ultimately signified Good News. He might have cinematically exploited the event...
For believing Christians, the Cross represents a scandal that shows the way in which the truest nature of God comes to be a part of our living reality. Immanuel, God with us, signifies what God faces, with us, - all that hurts, harms and destroys - with what needs to be healed.
This does not mix well with conventional wisdom neither in this century nor the first century, where we always believe that only the strong and the rich prevail.
Why would God identify with the meek, the sickly, and the suffering? Is God a loser?
Well, it seems that God always identifies with the losing side- - and redeems it.
Transforms it.
Which is why Christianity has never been a very effective as a civil or an official religion.
Why?
Because it always takes the losing side.
And once you can spot a loser, you can always take advantage of them…
But Christians are always taken advantage of. We simply call it “turning the other cheek”..
Religion never does well when it is made into the law. We always promote “unnatural” and “non-conventional” giving and receiving, adjustment, forgiveness, love and mercy. Things which cannot be regulated or enforced.
This past week you thought the news was that the Prime Minister of China visited the US. But far more “scandalous” was that the Chinese Government quietly erected a huge 26foot bronze statute of Confucius in front of the National Museum of China, facing Tiananmen Square and opposite the huge portrait of Mao. That happened as a result of normal everyday Chinese being to quietly accept an event such as Tiananmen Square without the deeper explanation and obvious truth that good government (that Confucius so dearly espoused) can never sanction the disregard and lack of care for humanity that happened over the legitimate protests in that Square. For the government to erect that statute in that place is a quiet admission that the line of good and humanitarian government was breached, and that must never be forgotten. Confucius now watches over that bloody site. Deeper truer beliefs have prevailed…
Now we all have been devastated with the tragic events in Tucson. Absolutely terrible!
But notice what is happening in the wake:
Acts of kindness
Acts of caregiving
Acts of generosity
What we already know is that Gabby Gifford is going to survive. Doubtless not as she once was – her life will be for ever scarred. But now something even greater than she was previously a bout, she will probably now achieve.
The universal of transformative healing has already started all around her life. All sorts of others are participating in that with her.
Overcoming the hurt with good.
Christians are those who can look at a Cross, look at devastation, and know quite clearly that there is something beyond it.
“For the message about the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.”
That is the greatest Epiphany there is:
The cross which always transforms devastation and hurt…..
……into healing and good.
It is simply the power of God.
As Christians, we are asked to join God in the healing.
For this is how the world is to be saved Amen