Morons of the Cross

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

March 15, 2009

Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.

No one in one’s right mind would want to be called a fool. When Mr. T. on the 1970s lighthearted action series A-Team, called the bad guys, “Fools!” it was always a call for a laugh. Foolishness is often defined as stupidity. And for sure, no one wants to be called, “stupid” either!

When Paul was writing to the Corinthian Christians, he was directing his remarks to people who were boasting about having wisdom and the rhetorical eloquence in sharing that wisdom. Wisdom for the Corinthians is both the possession of exalted knowledge and the ability to express that knowledge in a powerful and rhetorically polished way.

But God, however, has revealed in Christ another kind of wisdom that radically subverts the wisdom of this world. God has chosen to save the world through the cross, through that shameful and powerless death of the crucified Messiah. For some people, they would say, “that’s foolishness.”

From the world’s point of view, a scribe, someone who is an expert in Jewish law is wise, but God’s foolishness on the cross is wiser. From the world’s point of view, a debater of this age, someone who is a popular speaker is wise, but God’s foolishness on the cross is wiser. Whether you might be a good talker or a wise philosopher and have all the wisdom of the world, God’s foolishness on the cross however ridiculous it might appear, is still wiser.

Philosophers, Torah scholars, and most significantly, popular orators—all esteemed leaders of Paul’s days—fail to understand what is really going on in the world. Their vaulted wisdom has failed to grasp the truth about God. Paul is saying that this failure is itself a mysterious part of God’s own purpose. It is “in the wisdom of God” that the world has failed to know God through wisdom. Why? Because God’s ways are shocking and amazing, contrary to what our minds would consider common sense.

In contrast to “this age,” God has exploded common sense and say that through the foolishness of our proclamation of the cross, those who believe are being saved. The Greek root for “foolishness” is moria. This Greek word is preserved in the English word, “moron.” When we believe in Jesus Christ who suffered, tried, buried, and died on the cross, from the world’s point of view, we are foolish or in another word, “a moron!”

The scandal of this message is difficult for today’s Christians like us to imagine. We have become so used to being called Christians that we have lost how scandalous it was in the first century to follow Jesus. To proclaim a crucified Messiah is to talk nonsense.

Crucifixion was a gruesome punishment administered by the Romans to “make an example” out of rebels or disturbers of the Roman state. As a particularly horrible form of public torture and execution, it was designed to demonstrate that no one should defy the powers that be. Yet Paul declares that the crucifixion of Jesus is somehow the event through which God has triumphed over these powers. Rather than proving the sovereignty of Roman political order, it shatters the world’s systems of authority. Rather than confirming what the wisest heads already know, it shatters the world’s systems of knowledge. And still, the world saw nothing of this to be wise but rather foolish.

While we may not like to be called, a fool, stupid or a moron, Paul says, “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1:25).

Moron Lens

If Christians don’t see the world from the point of view of the world, then how do we see the world? As “morons of the cross,” we take the central event at the heart of the Christian story—the death of Jesus—and use it as the lens through which all human experience must be projected and thereby seen afresh. The cross becomes our starting point to understand the truth.

Assigned to this Sunday are two other Scriptural lessons that can help us see the world through the lens of the cross. In Exodus 20:1-17, Moses hears God’s demand for his covenant people—the Ten Commandments. A recent survey reveals that less than 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments. How many can you name?

While it’s not that important to be able to name all Ten Commandments by heart, the point is to practice them, to obey them—which makes it more troubling that three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that, “God helps those who help themselves.”

That statement is from the deist, Founding Father Ben Franklin, not from the Bible. “God helps those who help themselves” is in fact one of the most unbiblical ideas we know. It may be common sense, wise, and reasonable but it’s not what Christians believe. It is Jesus who made the dramatically counter assertion: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If we see the world from the lens of morons of the cross, we don’t just help ourselves, we are told to help and love our neighbors too.

In 2004, we ranked second to last, after Italy, among developed countries in government foreign aid. Per capita we each provide 15 cents a day in development assistance to poor countries. Our charitable giving like giving to the America for Christ Offering increases our average daily donation by just six more pennies, to 21 cents. It’s also not because Americans are too busy taking care of our own; nearly 18 percent of American children lived in poverty (compared with 8 percent in Sweden). By any measure of caring for the least among us—childhood nutrition, infant mortality, and access to preschool—we come in nearly last among the rich nations.

Days before his crucifixion, Jesus summed up his message for his disciples (Matt. 25) by saying that you can tell one of his followers by how well they had fed the hungry, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoner. If the world were to look at us, would they be able to see that we are followers of Jesus when it comes to helping our neighbors? If we see the way we give to those in need from the lens of a moron of the cross, we begin to realize that we come up short. We have yet to become foolish for God.

Let’s go back to the Ten Commandments. Despite the sixth commandment—Thou shall not kill”—we are the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate four or five times that of our European peers. We have prison populations more than six or seven times of that in other rich nations which by the way at least should give us plenty of opportunity for visiting the prisoners. Having been commanded not to kill, foolishly told to turn the other cheek, we’re the only Western democracy left that executes its citizens. The wisdom of the world is to get even and get revenge. But being morons of the cross, we must not kill, must not execute, must not do violence and we are commanded by Jesus to visit the prisoners because who knows, we may be visiting Jesus himself. As followers of Jesus, are we in our foolishness to believe in the cross going to stand up against the so-called wisdom of this country?

The other passage assigned for us today is from John 2:13-22 when Jesus got really angry at the temple. With a whip, Jesus drove out the moneychangers and said, “You’ve made my Father’s house a house of thieves.” Jesus poured out the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables. You can imagine the moneychangers scrambling around and getting on their knees to pick up all their coins on the floor. People were in the temple because they were more interested in making money and loving it than to worship God. Jesus wasn’t exactly speaking against commercialization as much as he was calling for having a right heart for worship and to seek the presence of God.

We say it’s a wise thing to save money and to have lots of it. And maybe in today’s economic downturn, we can even justify it. But Jesus’ radical command to love thy neighbor is often replaced by “love thyself” a lot in the way we live. Since the days of King Constantine when the world became supposedly Christian, emperors and rich men have sought to co-opt the “foolish wisdom” in the teachings of Jesus with the worldly wisdom that makes the rich feel good and the poor feel abandoned. The church is always in a struggle to keep from turning the worship of the true and living God away from God and toward ourselves. We’re always in grave danger of making golden calves of ourselves and becoming a people of self-obsessed idols. In fact, I believe that’s what the Women’s Retreat is focused on this weekend—not to covet your neighbor and free yourself from loving thyself.

The world has this godless message that proclaims, “It’s your money! You earned it, you deserve it, use it for you!” This type of message will fill up a church, but will it also end up killing the church? This message works, it works for many pulpits throughout the land, and it may keep on working for a long time to come. But when we hunger for selfless love and are fed only love of self, we will remain hungry. It may all sound like common sense to take care of ourselves, “God loves those who help themselves.” But from God’s way, the foolishness of the cross calls us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Being Fools Today

So today we gather as the church and we listen to scripture that stands over us, that calls us to account and prompts our examination. This is the practice of the Christian faith at our best and most honest.

Lent is a good time to be reminded of that sacred, holy distance, that transcendent space between our ways and God’s ways in Christ. We would be more than happy to go on with our worldly ways of taking care of our own, keeping what we earn for ourselves, worshiping our money as our idol, believing that God helps those who help themselves, punishing and executing those who have gone a strayed, and not acting like a fool or a moron. But unfortunately, if we want to be Jesus’ disciples, we proclaim Christ crucified—the cross. And in the eyes of the world, we are “morons of the cross” when we begin to act in the ways of Jesus.

There is a parable in the Gospel of Luke about a fool who is separated from his money—and soon.

The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build large ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:16-20)

From the point of view of the world’s values, the rich man was not foolish but rather a successful businessman. But God called him a fool because he wasn’t acting foolishly for God. God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. If this rich man thought first about his neighbor before his own plans of only taking care of himself, he would be following the commandments. And if he believed in the foolishness of the cross of Jesus, he would have given up everything he owned and follow him.

For me to be a “moron of the cross,” the crucifixion of Jesus is all the signs that I need to believe in the gracious love that God has for me and the world— God sent his only Son, Jesus Christ to die so that we may live.

For me to be a “moron of the cross,” the crucifixion of Jesus is more than all the human wisdom and knowledge that I need to believe that the power of God is saving me from my sins and is still saving people every day to know God’s merciful love.

There was a retirement party for a pastor. After everyone had offered tributes to this man and his ministry, he rose to speak in response. His first words were ”I thank Jesus Christ for making me into the person I am. Without Jesus, I might have been normal.”

What a wonderful thing to be said by a Christian! The world is always defining what is wise and worthwhile and acceptable and “normal.” But as Christians, we believe in the foolishness of the cross. When we begin to know Jesus and follow him along the journey of life, we’ll turn away from the values of the world and follow the wisdom of the cross. I never thought that I would call myself a “moron.” But I am a “Moron of the cross.” And if you wouldn’t mind me saying it, you are a “Moron of the cross” too.

Remember, God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength (1:25). Let us be “morons of the cross!”

Let us pray.

Lord, we have insisted upon signs when your word and the example of your saints speak volumes. We have chosen the wisdom of this world, folly though it is, over the cross that you have set on our path. However, if even now we should pick up that cross and follow you, we will be saved. We confess our hardness of heart, and pray now that you will challenge us with the blessing of your Spirit to see the world with your eyes, to hear the Word with your ears, and to consider the commandments you have written on our hearts. In the name of Jesus who carried the cross, we pray. Amen.