March 11, 2012
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When someone wants to get their life back on track, they might start coming to church. If you have a questionable history, you may want to become legitimate again by being a member of an established church. You can’t run for the Presidency without some church affiliations. Churches are prim and proper; we color inside the lines; we enjoy well-organized programs; we value balanced budgets, logic and tradition. Let’s be honest, none of us like to be thought of as foolish—that’s why many of us go to church in the first place. There’s some status that comes with the name, “First” Chinese Baptist Church.
Status consciousness appears to have been one of the many problems afflicting the church in Corinth, as we can surmise from Paul’s letter to this church—a church he had founded. The ancient Greek city in which it was located had been destroyed by Rome in 146 B.C.E. and re-founded by Julius Caesar about a hundred years later as a colony for freed slaves and other poor people. So in Paul’s day, Corinth was a city of “upwardly mobile” folk. There was little “old money” in the town, but it was full of folk trying to “make it.”
Imagine what we have here—people who were in this church in Corinth were prone to follow one leader or another in light of the social status that would then be conferred upon them—a social standing that, they hoped, would enable them to overcome their former shameful status. It’s kind of like why some people come to church today.
The Symbol of the Cross
Paul will have none of their preoccupation with social standing. In fact, he reminds them of the foolishness of the gospel of the crucified Christ. Crucifixion was more than state sponsored execution; it was meant to demean and shame the victim. Indeed, it may have been embarrassing to these early Christians that their Lord had met his fate by crucifixion.
Today you can’t find a church without a cross prominently displayed. We have one up here. We wear them around our necks. We may even hang them in our homes. I have a few in my office. But in Corinth in the time of Paul, the cross was not a sign of status or upstanding recognition. It was a sign of shame and embarrassment. The Corinthians were looking for ways to look good.
Paul in his most eloquent and somewhat circular argument begins with the cross is foolish to those who are perishing but the very power of God to those who are being saved. We have two journeys here in different directions with different ambitions and expectations but both uncompleted journeys. The primary difference between these two directions is the way the people perceive the cross. For those who are oriented toward the worldly journey, the cross is foolish. Why would you want to be associated with death and shame? For those oriented toward the way of Jesus, the cross is the very power of God. For those who follow Jesus, the cross symbolizes for us the ultimate love of God to take away the sins of the world.
Wisdom and Signs
In verse 19, Paul turns to Isaiah and the psalms to make his point, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Paul tells us that the way of God is truthful compared to conventional wisdom and conventional cleverness. But for the Greeks in the city of Corinth, they demand wisdom that is intellectually cogent and philosophically sound, that is to say, they want a God of intellectually respectability. You see, to be well educated is to be wise.
As Asian Americans, we have a problem with this. We are more like the people in Corinth. Most of us have been nurtured and taught to acquire knowledge, credentials, degrees and hopefully wisdom on the way. We have an understanding that the more knowledge we can accumulate, the more important we become. Then we’ll have social status with all the initials behind our names. I have no problem with the goal of getting a good education since I have a BD and a M.Div, and almost an EDD behind my name. But if this is a journey that we are on with the ambition and expectations to being saved, it’s foolish.
Paul said, “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Paul challenges the sage, the scholar, the debater and ask, where are they? All that various cultures have to offer, God has made foolish. All their best efforts or best practices, these ventures of the heart and mind have not led people to know God more fully. And Paul knew what he was saying because he himself was something of a scholar and was speaking from experience. Well intentioned as a Pharisee and his devotion to the Torah undoubtedly was, Paul knew from bitter experience how that very good thing in his own life led him down paths of violence and pride.
While the Greeks desire wisdom, the Jews demand signs. Having been a people, not only of the Word, but a people who have come to expect signs like the cloud and the fire of the wilderness, signal markers along the path, Paul is saying that the sign they are looking for is the sign of the cross.
Paul admits that for the Greeks a God who dies is foolish, and for the Jews, the cross as a symbol of messianic coming is ridiculous—a stumbling block too big to overcome. Neither the moral striving of the Jews nor the philosophical inquiries of the Greeks, the best and most noble that both cultures have to offer can deliver the knowledge of God represented by the cross of Christ.
The Meaning of the Cross
If it’s not the moral teachings of the Jews or the philosophy of the Greeks that would lead us on a life journey toward the way of Jesus then where do we begin? Paul says in verse 25, “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” God’s foolishness from the worldly journey’s point of view is Jesus Christ on the cross but this is wiser than human wisdom. God’s weakness from the worldly journey’s point of view is Jesus Christ on the cross is stronger than human strength. What we think we can do with human wisdom and human strength cannot come close to what God has done in Jesus Christ on the cross.
The cross of Jesus Christ does three things for us. It produces knowledge of God, it indicts the touted wisdom of both Jews and Greeks and it brings the Jews and Greeks together.
The cross tells us that God so loved the world that he gave up his only Son, Jesus to die on the cross so that whoever believes in him, they will have eternal life. We know that God is gracious and merciful and would go to extreme measures to rescue us from what we do to ourselves.
The cross tells us that if we believe we can out-smart God by accumulating all the knowledge we can find, piling up all the degrees we can earn or even memorizing the entire Bible, we would have missed out on the truth that God just wants us to believe in Jesus. The cross tells us that if we are on a journey of finding signs, signals or concrete evidence for the existence of God, we have overlooked the ultimate event of the incarnation, the ministry and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. What more signs do we need?
The cross tells us that if we are seeking for social status and self-importance and think that we can achieve that by simply associating with a church, it’s not what the church is all about. Paul says, “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” (1:26-29).
The cross is disorienting and reorienting; it deconstructs and constructs. It leads to the disintegration of much that we strive for and hold dear in human life. But it also integrates. The weakness of the cross Paul proclaimed knocks us off base. For many of us if not most of us that base is likely something close to the center of the universe.
We want social status so that we can control and call the shots. We want knowledge, wisdom and degrees so that we can write our own tickets to where we want to go. We attend the “First” Chinese Baptist Church because from where we are we are the center of Chinatown, San Francisco or the world.
“Foolish” FCBC
But oddly enough, losing our coveted, if not delusional, spot at the center of the universe reorients us to the true center of the universe—Jesus Christ. This is the reason why you are here—maybe the first “F” in our church’s initial should mean “Foolish” rather than “First.” Maybe as followers of Jesus Christ on this journey oriented toward the way of Jesus the cross, the very power of God, we should be more precisely called the “Foolish Chinese Baptist Church.”
Paul does not write here about church order, tradition, or etiquette. Rather, Paul writes of the wisdom of God that is inherently un-comfortable, up-setting, and improper. God’s wisdom, turns upside down everything we thought we knew about the world. God’s wisdom takes its power in Christ nailed to the cross. It laughs at proper manners. God’s wisdom shows its love in humility on a bloody tree.
God’s wisdom is not what we expect. We would figure that God would align with the powerful people of Jesus’ day, to show God’s power in superior strength, to fight to the last and over throw the powers of Rome, to claim the human throne as human leaders have done for years. You would think that having the benefits of social status would show how believing in Jesus pays off.
God’s wisdom from the eyes of the world is foolish—God came to accept torture and execution, God showed love not by beating humanity, but by showing us the peaceful way to live, God contradicts the dominate understandings of what is godly—strength, power, supposed superiority and replaces them with love and grace.
At Foolish Chinese Baptist Church, how I wish that we could have free parking for everybody—to drive up at the very last minute and walk into church for worship. But God’s plan for our journey with Jesus on the cross is to fix our eyes on the constant stream of people who come to San Francisco seeking a new beginning and it’s our calling to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to them.
At Foolish Chinese Baptist Church, how I pray that we can have more people with Bible knowledge and wisdom about the world or more moments of spiritual inspiration in our Sunday morning worship services Sunday after Sunday. But God seems to be telling us that for the past 130 plus years, we have been faithful by being foolish and dedicated to following Jesus. Since Jesus Christ endured a shameful death on the cross, he has overcome our shame by letting us experience the boundless love of God. Christ takes this ultimate weight of shame off us, this feeling that no one loves us or respects us, and places this on himself. The good news of the gospel is that in Christ crucified, our shame has been overcome, and we are able to see and experience the unconditional love of God. This is the reason why we remain faithful in our church.
At Foolish Chinese Baptist Church, how much easier it would be if we were more homogenous and the same. If we only spoke the same language or all have the same economic class or have similar hobbies and interests, church would be so much more fun to be at. Just as the cross of Christ integrated Jews and Greeks together, it integrates and unifies our church together too. Paul suggests that while not many of us are wise, powerful or have noble birth by human standards, we are integrated by the cross. While it is foolish and challenging at times to be a “bilingual, bicultural and multigenerational” church in the heart of Chinatown,” the source of our life in Christ Jesus. Christ became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’”
We boast in the Lord because we are fools for Jesus Christ. This foolishness that we have in Jesus is wiser than human wisdom. This weakness in God that we see in Jesus on the cross is stronger than any human strength.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, teach us to be foolish for Christ on the cross. Lead us not to follow the way of the world but to follow Jesus Christ on the way to participate in the Kingdom of God. Strengthen and fortify us to be faithful to the Gospel of good news for the world that is so badly in need of hearing good news. Equip us to go out into the highways and byways of life sharing God’s love and forgiveness that we have received because of that ultimate sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us on the cross. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.