I Cor. 1: 18 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. 19 For it is written:“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” 20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
When militants of the Islamic State in Lybia executed 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians a few weeks ago, their spokesman said that they were sending a message to the people whose “heads have been carrying the cross.”
That anyone would carry the cross in their heads, they meant as an insult, for probably two reasons. The first has to do with the history of the cross, as a symbol, for Muslims in the Middle East, as well as for Jews. To them, the cross would never be a pretty piece of jewelry which one might wear around the neck as a sign of wealth, respectability or religious identity. Nor is it a reassuring reminder of God and the church as it towers over the roofs of a neighborhood. It’s not a comforting sign marking where a loved one died or lies buried, nor a compassionate sign of help in a disaster, like the Red Cross; the cross is for many Muslims a sign of terror, domination and humiliation, because it was on the shields and banners of Crusaders in the Middle Ages, or later, around the necks of colonial invaders and occupiers from Britain, France, Russia, or more recently, the United States. This terrible history struck a Mennonite Central Committee volunteer somewhere deep in the Middle East a few years ago, when it occurred to him that he was likely the first and only Christian ever seen in that particular place who didn’t carry a deadly weapon.
That in no way justifies what the Islamic State is doing. But keep in mind that most Muslims around the world are as sick at what Islamic State is doing as are we, and that most of the victims of Islamic State’s violence are other Muslims, and that many of them are speaking out against it. Becky and I have lived with Muslims, and we have Muslim friends. We don’t hide our Christian faith from them; I actually find it easier to speak with them about God and the spiritual life than with most secular Americans, and most of the time, they are glad to meet Americans who believe in God, the prophets and in sacred scriptures. I am glad to display the cross here, and to proclaim it as I shall today. I want everyone to meet Jesus, the Crucified. But all that history around the cross itself means that, in dialog with Muslims, we’re walking through an historical minefield. I hate that history as much as they do.
But there’s another reason why the cross is offensive, scandalous and foolish to many, for reasons that the Apostle Paul relates to his Corinthian friends, reasons that require no apology from us. Twenty centuries ago, the cross was not the symbol of choice for churches nor Christians. The associations it bore to death, shame, gratuitous pain and brutality were too strong, too immediate, too evident, on a daily basis.
That was the very purpose of the cross: not just a means of state-sanctioned murder, it was an instrument of very public shaming aimed not only at the crucified, but at everyone who witnessed its work, especially slaves and subject populations, to instill shock, fear, despair, silence, a sense of helplessness, powerlessness and complete compliance in them. The cross was a form of terrorism, a kind of political theater, to convince everyone that the crucified deserved what they got, for the crime of not knowing their place. And so would anyone else who didn’t accept theirs.
To understand its effect, just imagine our own emotional reaction to men in white sheets burning a cross in front of our house at night if we are black Americans; or seeing a lynching rope with a noose hanging from a live oak tree in Louisiana; imagine seeing a Swastika painted on our home or our synagogue if we were Jewish; or being American-born of Mexican parents who are late coming home from work. Is this the day that Mami and Papi got picked up and jailed for eventual deportation? Living numb, under the thumb of such constant, grinding fear and shame, was the intended effect of the cross.
For symbols of identity, the first Christians used the fish symbol, or a boat, or the letters of the first words in the Lord’s Prayer out of order, because you had to be careful about who saw it, and where. It was only after the Fifth Century Emperor Constantine made the cross a symbol of his military power that the church started using the cross as a symbol of identity and authority.
Yet the apostle Paul believed that his Corinthian friends needed a good, strong look at the revolting, disturbing, distressing and depressing cross again, the cross of Christ, crucified. And that brings me to the first question in my message outline: Why the Corinthian Christians needed to be reminded of the cross: because they were most definitely not carrying the cross in their heads. Status-seeking and pride of place, yes. And so the wealthy among them were looking down upon, mistreating, or ignoring the poor among them. Partisanship, power plays and divisiveness, yes. So they split up into rival factions such as those saying, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Peter,” or, “I belong to Apollos.” One-upmanship over spiritual gifts, most definitely, so that their worship services became chaotic competitions to show off who has the most dramatic spiritual gifts, or the most high-falutin’ rarified, esoteric, speculative knowledge about arcane heavenly mysteries that sound cool, but which don’t really help anyone live or love better.
In their headlong rush for status, security and social respectability, the Corinthian Christians were bringing the world’s conventional wisdom about power, status, worth and wisdom into their fellowship, and into their faith, causing the church to break down into factions, and into gross immorality. Paul’s prescription for their pride, prejudice and partisan spirit was another look at the rough, bloody, public lynching tree of shaming, torture and execution on which their Savior took his place, to see how much they were thinking like, acting like, and identifying with, the crucifi-ers rather than with the crucified, with the executioners rather than with the execut-ed. Another good look at the cross would remind them of where the world’s conventional wisdom inexorably led, and the price it inevitably exacted: human sacrifice, and even, deicide, the murder of God. But if they can grasp the power that God exercised by identifying with the victims rather than the victors, that could break the spell of worldly, conventional wisdom, and free them to love and live more like Jesus, the crucified.
Which brings us to the next question in the outline: Why the preaching of the cross was so shameful, offensive or scandalous in the first place. You’ll notice in the outline two letters, a, and b, a) for First Century Jews, b) for Gentiles. Paul wrote that his Jews demanded signs, that is, drop-dead, knockenmstiff irrefutable demonstrations of invincible power, like King David routing the Amalekites in battle. To most Jews of Paul’s day, the preaching of the cross and a crucified Messiah was scandalous, because the Messiah was supposed to win, and his enemies were supposed to die in shame, pain and despair. The cross spoke of shaming, when they looked for Israel’s honor to be restored. It was a symbol of defeat, when they expected to be victorious. It was a symbol of weakness, when they expected power over the nations. “Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree,” said the Law of Moses, when the Messiah was to be blessed and to bring overflowing blessings. That’s why the cross was such a stumbling block to so many First Century Jews.
As for the second, B part of that question, why the preaching of the cross was also shameful, offensive and scandalous to First Century Greeks, or Gentiles: the whole idea that a king would be found among the poor, enthroned on a cross of shame, crowned with thorns instead of gold, that he would conquer through weakness, rise to power through humble servanthood, elevate the poor and the powerless, rule through vulnerability, wage peace instead of war, so that he would die even for his enemies, that was so contrary to the Greek and Roman ways of wisdom, which started with the world as it is, and then sought the best way to conquer and control it on its own terms.
That’s why the preaching of the cross appears foolish, offensive and scandalous yet today. It’s the second reason that Islamic State called its captives, “people who ‘carry the cross in their heads,’” and meant that as an insult. But not just Islamic State. Christians find comfort and hope in the cross as a sign of sacrifice, where the Lamb of God bore the sins of the world. I certainly do, for I have nothing of my own to offer God by which to justify myself. But talk about the cross also as a window onto the wisdom of God, as a way of seeing the world, unmasking its brutal nature, a way of addressing conflict, of fighting evil, and we Christians are not out of the woods of fear and disbelief, like the man who told Jesus, “I believe, Lord; heal my unbelief!”
To answer the third question, “Why might the message of the cross seem foolish, scandalous, even offensive yet today?” It’s because there is nothing new under the sun. The wisdom of the world has not changed since well before ancient Greece and Rome. It says, “the last one standing wins,” “might makes right,” “speak softly and carry a big stick,” “I don’t get mad; I get even,” “We don’t care if they hate us, as long as they fear us,” or even, “We make our own reality.” If there should be innocent victims of such do-it-yourself reality-making, well, sadly, we can’t avoid all “collateral damage,” and “you have to crack some eggs if you’re going to make an omelet.” In more crass and cynical forms, you hear it in that version of the Golden Rule which says, “Whoever has the gold makes the rules.”
In its more subtle forms, such conventional wisdom can take the shape of a church planting pastor who wrote in his monthly reports to the regional conference that, “We’re setting up more chairs in our worship site every Sunday for new visitors and seekers.” Not that anyone was actually sitting in them; but just the hint of growing numbers made him sound, “successful,” and so kept the money coming. For “nothing succeeds like success.”
It may also be why the Islamic State spokesman reviled its victims for “carrying the cross in their heads.” Because the cross is directly repudiated by Islam. The Muslim holy book, the Quran, speaks of Jesus as a prophet. Like most of God’s prophets in the Quran, Jesus went through some ridicule and resistance. But “God forbid,” my Muslim friends say, that such a shameful defeat as death, on a cross nonetheless, would ever happen to one of God’s prophets. In the Quran, God always proves the prophets right with a crushing defeat of their enemies. So the Quran says that God took Jesus up to heaven before he could be crucified, and someone else died in his place, perhaps Judas, for betraying him.
I say that not to belittle Islam nor my Muslim friends. It’s simply another version of conventional wisdom, no worse than what we find in secular societies, which says that power, success and survival are their own justifications. But at the height of Nazi Germany’s initial triumphs in war, the German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote, “The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.” The cross then is not only something we look at, it is something we look through, like a lens, a lens which unmasks the true nature of conventional, worldly wisdom. The cross is also a signpost, standing between us and the world’s reward systems, warning us that the world’s business-as-usual still leads to human sacrifice and even the attempted overthrow of God.
To further answer that third question, “Why the Cross is still scandalous, offensive and seemingly foolish today,” it is like that mysterious hand from heaven in the Book of Daniel, which King Belshazzar saw, interrupting the revelry of his wild and drunken feast, writing words of warning on a wall, to tell him that he and his kingdom had been measured, weighed and was about to be handed over to the Persians. The cross of Jesus Christ is the divine hand writing on the walls of the world’s palaces the names of the forgotten, the overlooked, the despised, the neglected, society’s scapegoats and expendables, the “collateral damage” of our conquests in war or commerce, for it was with them that Christ identified on the cross.
With the cross, the divine hand is also drawing a question mark over and against all the slogans of conventional wisdom, and the prideful assertions of self-sufficiency and supremacy. A Thousand Year Reich? A flag on which the sun never sets? The inevitable march of history toward this economic system or that ideology? Just because we control the levers of fear, force and finance?
To which the cross of Christ says, “Really?” And, “Again?”
With the cross, God’s hand is even drawing an arrow, not the kind you shoot from a bow, but the kind you draw on a map, or a picture, to point to something important that we’d otherwise miss at a glance. The cross of Christ is God’s hand-drawn arrow, pointing downward, through the ranks of human status, to the victims, the sacrifices and the collateral damage of empire building and conventional wisdom. It points also to that alternative, seemingly foolish and counter-intuitive wisdom and power of God which conquers through surrender, which rules through serving, which neutralizes evil not by avenging it, but by absorbing it, forgiving it and returning it with love.
Which brings me to the last question: Why the cross is “The Wise Folly” of God. How can Paul call this sign of ultimate weakness, “the power of God?” Or to put it another way, If the cross is God’s question mark, even, God’s emphatic No! with an exclamation mark, to the world’s conventional wisdom, what is God saying Yes to with the cross? The cross is the way in which God says Yes to you and me and every child of Eve. It’s the New Testament gospel version of the rainbow after Noah’s flood, which serves ever to remind us that God’s judgment stops here and now, with this. Or think of it as our version of the horns on the altar in Solomon’s temple, where anyone, guilty of any crime, could flee for refuge, take hold, be safe from punishment, and find asylum. The cross then is God’s New Testament mercy seat, and God’s Yes! and Welcome! to all who come, knowing that they need such mercy. The cross is the divine zero, written into the ledgers of God’s justice, saying that the books are closed and no one is keeping score against us, not even God, only Satan, the Accuser. So why should we? “There’s no free lunch,” says the world. But the wise folly of the cross says, “Yes there is, when God pays.” And it shows how much God is willing to pay on our behalf. The cross then is the supreme symbol of the sovereign, extravagant, counter-intuitive and costly grace of God about which I have been speaking this Lenten season.
If we should prove so faithful in thought and deed to the biblical meanings of the cross that others might say of us that we too “carry the cross in our heads,” even if they should mean it contemptuously, I hope I would respond by saying, “I’m so glad that you noticed. I’m so glad that something of the cross was evident in our thoughts, words and actions. Thank you for the compliment. But the credit finally goes to the One who carried the cross on his back, to the one whose whole life was patterned after the cross.”