Banner Logo

Sermon

Sermon Graphic


Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
St. Stephen’s Anglican Church
The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, February 2, 2014


Upside-Down Wisdom


Learned people who know a lot of things about the world have always been highly valued. Generally, they are thought of as wise. But the Bible tells us that there is wisdom, and there is wisdom. Wisdom that comes from God is precious.

There is another kind of wisdom. It, too, is highly prized in this world. But it comes not from God but from man’s own capabilities of reason and ingenuity and observation. Those are all good things. But wisdom that is only man’s wisdom does not lead to the things we value the most.

Our text today from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians is all about the difference between God’s wisdom and the wisdom of this world. It is a startling text. It says that God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. (I Corinthians 1:20) Foolish! Not only incomplete or inadequate, but foolish. Why is that? Wouldn’t you think the towering thoughts and smart ideas of all the best minds ought to be called something other than foolishness? Our text today lumps the proud and the wise and the strong all together and says God shames them by choosing that which is weak and lowly. What’s that all about?

In order to make sense of this, we have to begin with a fundamental biblical truth: No one in this world is without sin. I John 4:8 tells us, “If you say you have no sin, you deceive yourself, and the truth is not in you.” Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure.”

Out of this deceitful heart and this sinful mind come the thoughts, perceptions and ideas that become the wisdom of this world. It is the wisdom of this world that leads us to believe that we are the center of everything, that we are so smart we can figure everything out, and that therefore we don’t need God. Does that sound like an overstatement? Well, here is a quote from a well-known scientist on one of the great questions: What is the meaning of life? This is what Richard Dawkins, the famous, outspoken atheist said in his book, The God Delusion:

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning ....The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.

Now if Dawkins were talking about his daughter who thinks she has to have a man in order for her life to have meaning, you could see some wisdom in what he says. But that isn’t what he is talking about. Dawkins is arguing against those who say that the meaning of life comes from the God who created us, and in whom we live and move and have our being. He is saying it is childish to ascribe the meaning of your life to God.

Do you see where wisdom leads when you take God out of it? This is an example of what Paul calls the wisdom of this world. And because the wisdom of this world is so corrupted by sin, God’s wisdom turns it all upside down.

But as I Corinthians 1:20-21 tells us,

Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 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.

The ultimate foolish thing of God is the salvation of the world through Jesus’ death on the cross. I picture God saying to the heavenly host, “Watch this and learn.” And then he turned the world’s wisdom on its head: He sent His only Son to be mocked and beaten and nailed to a cross and die as the ultimate triumph over evil. That makes no sense, according to the wisdom of this world. A total victory requires decisive force.

And the foolishness continues. God holds out His hand of forgiveness, restoration and salvation to anyone who believes this upside down wisdom. Verse 18 says, “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.”

It seems as though, ever since the Age of Enlightenment began in the late 17th Century, scholars in their wisdom have been trying to prove there is no God. But this wasn’t new in that century. Our scripture tells us that the same thing was going on in the First Century. If it didn’t make sense to the enlightened secular person, it couldn’t be true.

That is why Paul wrote this letter to the Church in Corinth. Corinth was a highly metropolitan city. It boasted many sophisticated people, many rich people, many highly respected people. This was an environment not unlike our own. Into this environment, the Christian Church had taken a toehold. As you know from our own experience, when the air you breathe is filled with ideas that question or contradict or ridicule your faith, being a believer is difficult. In ancient Corinth, the logic of people with high-falutin’ human ideas was infiltrating what the Christians were thinking. Some of those ideas questioned the demanding moral standards the Christians lived by. Some were fine-sounding philosophical arguments that opposed their beliefs. For example, the Greeks’ idea of a supreme being was someone who was not moved by feelings or emotions. Yet these Christians worshipped a God who suffered on the cross. He is a God who grieves over His lost sheep and rejoices when those who were lost are found. And so, the Greeks would say, “That Jesus you worship can’t be God.”

Isn’t that a bit like what we hear today from philosophical argument? “You say God is good, and you say nothing is impossible for God. But how can you say that when there is so much heartbreak in the world? If God is who you say, he would prevent all this.” It’s not new. Think about Jesus on the cross, and the crowd saying, “If you are the son of God, come down off that cross and save yourself.” (Mark 15:30-32) As 1 Corinthians says, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)

Paul is telling these beleaguered Christians, and He is telling us, that God’s wisdom is the precise opposite of human wisdom. And He is saying that God demonstrates His power by His sovereign choice. He chooses to lift up the lowly and the humble and give them the gift of salvation through their trusting in Him. And in so doing, He shames those too proud to submit to Him, shames those too “wise” to accept God’s way of doing things, shames those who trust so much in their own strength that they don’t need a savior.

Think of what you were when you were called, Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God. [I Corinthians 1:26-30]

Notice that it says, “Not many of you....” That means that there were a few, maybe just a few, who were considered wise or influential or of noble birth, but nevertheless believed that Jesus Christ is Lord. Praise God they were able to set aside their self-satisfaction and humble themselves before Him.

That is not a given for Christians, you know. Many who profess to be Christians have been corrupted by the wisdom of this world. Some are in high positions of the Church, and, like those among the Corinthian Christians, are leading the flock astray. Listen to retired bishop of the Episcopal Church, John Shelby Spong. He was considered so wise that he was given an academic chair at the Harvard Divinity School. Mr. Spong wrote these words while he was still Bishop of Newark, N.J.:

We human beings do not live in sin. We are not born in sin. We do not need to have the stain of our original sin washed away in baptism. We are not fallen creatures who will lose salvation if we are not baptized. We have rather emerged out of our evolutionary past, and we are still being formed. ...A Savior who restores us to our prefallen status is therefore pre-Darwinian superstition and post-Darwinian nonsense. A supernatural redeemer who enters our fallen world to restore creation is a theistic myth. [J. S. Spong, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, pp. 98-99 (Harper-Collins, New York 1998)]

Do you hear the wisdom of the world dripping from every word? Do you see how it has crowded out God’s revealed truth in this intelligent man’s mind? “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. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-19)

When you grant the truth of what God reveals to us, even though it may seem upside down, you realize the incredible comfort and peace it brings. We don’t have to deny the sin in our lives, because God has made a way for us. No matter how much these “enlightened” people tell us, our heart knows when we have done a terrible thing. Are we supposed to just live with that and carry around the burden of it? God doesn’t think so. He has gone to a lot of trouble to give us a better way, and that is to know and love and follow His precious Son, Jesus Christ. God’s better way is to lay all our shame and guilt and regret at the feet of Jesus, and accept His forgiveness and rejoice in His promise of eternal life. That is God’s love in action.

And do you know what else? When God shames the proud and the wise and those of high position or noble birth, He isn’t doing it because He hates them. It is because He loves them. He wants them to be in a position where they are humble enough to reach out to Him and be saved. When do we reach out to God? -- when everything falls apart; when we hit rock bottom. We reach out to God when all else fails and we know we can’t do it on our own. God knows that. And in His love, He gives a second chance to those whose pride and arrogance have blinded them to Him.

So God’s Word and God’s upside-down wisdom give us comfort and hope. And, as always, it confronts us and challenges us. Just like the Christians in ancient Corinth, we breathe in the air all around us, filled with the wisdom of this world. We, too, rub shoulders with those too proud to put their faith in God. Even among us, there is a whole spectrum of believers. So the question is, where are you on that spectrum? And where are we as a congregation on that spectrum?

Do you find your worthiness in God alone? Do you find your status and your privilege in God alone? Do you find your blessing, your power, your sustenance in God alone? If not, what do you need to let go of? Verse 31 says, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” How can you make that true for you?

Second: what do you project to those who know you are a Christian? Do they see you as someone who thinks and acts just like they do? Or do they see a humble sinner rescued by the grace of God?

And what about us as a congregation? What does this worshipping community project to our neighbors? Do we project pride, wealth, privilege? Do we seem aloof and unavailable? Or do we project humility, love, generosity, and joy?

For those of you who are puzzling over the cover on our bulletin today, those two fellows are Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamje. They are characters in J.R.R. Tolkein’s allegorical saga, The Lord of the Rings. Frodo and Sam are Hobbits, a race of people who are not wise by human standards, not influential and not of noble birth. And they were chosen to play the crucial role in the battle of good and evil, because only they were pure enough in heart.

Our scripture today says to us: Think of what we were when we were called. Not many of us were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.

© Jeffrey O. Cerar, 2014

Return to top

Sermon Archives