Foolishness of God

It has always seemed strange to me to read this text on a college campus. Here we are, students of higher education, going to classes and learning. We spend our days trying to acquire knowledge and wisdom, whether it be in arts, sciences, engineering, nursing, or business. Yet this text seems to be telling us that we should not be seeking this wisdom.

That’s the first reason why reading this text seems ironic this morning. The second is that we are in the season of Epiphany, when we celebrate the coming of the Magi to Bethlehem to see the baby Jesus. The Magi are commonly referred to as the Wise Men, and one pastor I know of has updated the description and called them “faculty from a university in the East, who took a leave of absence to follow the star.” Yet these wise men got the message. It was not foolishness to them . They had carefully checked scriptural passages, knew what the star meant and had an idea of where it would lead. They were even wise enough to stop and ask for directions once they realized that they had gone to the wrong city.

We see them as wise. You have to wonder, though, what their colleagues thought of them. They packed their bags, gathered their gifts and supplies for the journey, and started following a star. Imagine if a group of our theology profs packed up their bags (though their caravans would be more likely to have eight cylinders than camels) and left following a star that would lead them, very truthfully, God knows where.

The first verse of the passage I just read states “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.” The wise men got it. We get it. Don’t we?

Do we really understand? The Corinthians thought they were getting it. Corinth was a bustling seaport, with trade in information among the things for which it was well known. The Corinthians were scholars and learned in the wisdom of their age. They thought they had understood everything . That was their problem.

Paul had to write to them and remind them that they shouldn’t be putting their faith in their wisdom. They had nothing from themselves to be able to boast. “Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” Instead they needed to put their faith in the son of a carpenter who had been executed in the worst way imaginable. And if that didn’t seem foolish enough, there were his teachings. The first will be last? Whoever wants to be great must be a servant? Blessed be the poor? This foolishness of God certainly doesn’t fit with the wisdom of the world.

That temptation is still with us. We want to put our trust in our own wisdom, our own righteousness. But that doesn’t work. We all make fools of ourselves. As Paul reminded the Romans, we all sin, and fall short of the glory of God. And when we try to rely on our own wisdom, we hit this stumbling block called the cross.

Psalm 15 asks “Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill?” The answer is “He whose walk is blameless.” None of us can truthfully claim that. Only Christ can. We need to be reminded of that every now and then, and will begin to be strongly reminded of it in less than a week when the season of Lent begins. For in Lent we move from the mountain top of the Transfiguration through the valley of the shadow of death to the cross which is foolishness. What seems even more foolish to the world is what’s on the other side of that cross, an empty tomb that shows that death has been beaten. But that is the wisdom of God, that Christ’s death has secured for us eternal life.

Just as the ancient song of the psalm teaches, more modern songs can do likewise. A contemporary song, God’s Own Fool by Michael Card, sums up this lesson quite well, and it is with that that I will close. When we in our foolishness thought we were wise/He played the fool and He opened our eyes/ When we in our weakness believed we were strong /He became helpless to show we were wrong/ And so we follow God's own fool/For only the foolish can tell/Believe the unbelievable/Come be a fool as well.