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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? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

THE FOOLISHNESS OF FAITH

“I want it, so I should have it!” Such a statement makes sense insofar as the speaker is concerned.

“You need not get everything you want. It is better to learn some discipline in life. Restraint in getting anything you want is a helpful and healthy thing.” That makes sense also . . . a good deal more sense, in fact, than the original statement even though the one making the first statement may not think so.

The child who finds the first claim sensible will very likely press the second claim when he / she is a parent, however. The sense changes with time and opportunity and experience and a host of other things.

It is astonishing how many things make sense to one person while they are non-sensical to another person . . . perhaps even to most people. We make sense to ourselves on the basis of preconceptions and presuppositions, on the basis of personal (and usually quite self-centered) needs, or on any number of other premises that precede the “making sense” of a given moment or thought or action.

THE BOUNDARIES OF OUR SENSIBILITIES

The problem, of course, is that we are all locked into boundaries of existence and experience, and we judge actions, people, or ideas primarily on the basis of what we have previously encountered in life and the kind of sensibilities that have been raised by such encounters. A person who grew up with deprivation and scarcity, to use the opening examples, will typically use a kind of logic in decision making that will usually differ considerably from a person who grew up in a family that was frugal and found its security in savings, restraint, self-denial etc. People respond to their culture, their upbringing, their education, etc., quite differently from one another in what they consider a “logical response.”

In terms of our worldly existence there is no escape from this. The very way we use words leads to a certain kind of logic, for vocabulary shapes and forms our thought patterns. One of the problems interpreters of the Bible have in moving from the Old Testament to the New Testament, e. g., is this: the Hebrew language of the Old Testament is framed by and in turn creates a thought world very different from that in which the Greek language of the New Testament was formed. Each language has a certain “boundary” within which it “thinks” and “works.” It is vital to understand each in order to grasp the message of each. They are not particularly “at odds” with one another as though they contradict one another, but they each have their own particular “frame of reference” within which they must be understood.

In the same way our many and varied human understandings are bounded by the thoughts and experiences with which we are familiar. It is interesting to read imagined depictions in books or see portrayals of “other-worldly” beings in movies. In spite of the best efforts at such descriptions, they inevitably are bound up with the way we see and think and imagine within our human boundaries. Try though the authors or illustrators may, they cannot get outside of the experienced world within which we live. They can only extend it or distort it or exaggerate it. But try though they may to describe or depict an “other world,” we always recognize it in some way, for its boundaries lie within those of our own experiential world. Only recently, e.g., it was discovered that one of Saturn’s moons very likely has water on it leading to speculation that life may be possible “out there.” The assumption is that water is essential to life. But, of course, that is only to say that water is essential to life as we know it. Life forms not dependent on water or oxygen or the various surroundings within which we experience life is almost impossible to imagine. So our search for life is confined to environments similar to ours!

Looking at Today’s Text in This Light

This is essentially what Paul is contending for in the Second Lesson serving as our text today. To encounter the world on the terms with which God deals with it we must recognize a dimension that is beyond and outside our human abilities in and of themselves. Only when God gives us his eyes and the mind of his understanding can we see and recognize how differently things within our experience appear to him and how differently, in turn, he uses those same things to reveal himself to us, even though it is at best a vague and shadowy revelation using our human words and thought patterns.

Human wisdom has its place. Paul does not dispute that. He is very aware that human eyes and ears and hands and minds can and do recognize portions of God’s creation, making use of that creation and the human rationality that both comprehends and employs it in remarkable ways. But he is not interested in pursuing that line of thought. He is pushing past all that to tell us that within this created world God is at work in ways hidden to our everyday eyes and ears, mysteriously working through those ways in behalf of our welfare.

How, when, and where does God reveal himself, then, within this created world? That is his question. And to that he says, “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? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.”

He proceeds to speak of how “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom.” Do we not understand this within the realm of our early twenty-first century where we have joined the two in our questioning? “If God has power, [‘Jews demand signs’] why does he permit the waters of a tsunami or the force of mighty hurricanes to destroy lives, property, and the morale of vast numbers of people [‘Greeks seek wisdom’]? If God is so powerful, why does he not stop the waters at land’s edge or tame the winds over populated areas[‘Jews demand signs’]? If God is so powerful, why does he not stabilize the earth rather than to permit earthquakes to devastate entire regions of the earth with their accompanying misery? [Greeks seek wisdom’]” The “signs” sought by the Jews in their Messiah were such as would push back Roman rule and the “wisdom” the Greeks sought were understandings of the deep mysteries of life on this earth. We have managed in our age to merge the two into one giant question that one hears rehearsed almost daily on television or on the radio, not to speak of personal conversation. We want “rational” explanations, for God surely must be rational after the fashion of our rationality, is he not? How could he be our God if his rationality is not like ours, for we are the ones who determine what is rational and what is not, do we not?

“It is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart,’” Paul points out. Or, as Isaiah put it, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Is. 55:8, 9 ESV) To make sense of the mystery behind such natural devastations as we experience on earth is ultimately nothing more than mere speculation. We can more easily discern the reasons behind those wreckages of civilization wrought by the human hand in wars and economic disasters, for we sense the deep-rooted sinfulness of our human condition to be behind those miseries. But even there the strange twistedness of our human devilishness causes us to pause and wonder. So we are caught before and behind in the awe-filled mystery of the hiddenness of God.

Martin Luther wrote, “It is the nature of God that he creates out of nothing; therefore, God cannot make anything out of him who has not yet become nothing. Men, on the other hand, change one thing into another, which is a futile occupation. Therefore God receives none but those who are forsaken, restores health to none but those who are sick, gives sight to none but the blind, and life to none but the dead.” And perhaps there he has caught a small glimpse of why and how this “hidden hand of God” works. It reduces to “nothingness” our humanly experienced wisdom as a window through which trust in his good will for us can be engendered.

Looking at Today’s Gospel in This Light

This gives us a back-door entry into today’s Gospel. The “earthy” thing is clear in the event with which our reading is introduced. It wasn’t hard to see that a man was radically and authoritatively upsetting the affairs of the temple. Driving out those whom he considered desecrating the temple, he exploded in wrathful indignation, saying, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” It was enough to ignite considerable consternation in the whole of Jerusalem, for few thought of the “trade” as little more than making possible the appropriate temple sacrifices and offerings. His actions were largely inexplicable to the average citizenry . . . and even to those in charge of the temple business (for, after all, there was, indeed, a “business” side to the temple even as there is a “business” side to any church today).

So far so good for earthly wisdom.

But the disciples recognize some “inner sense” at work in this troubled moment already at this point. They “remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” Undoubtedly to them in this moment of time that meant that Jesus was so overcome with indignation at what he saw that he could not contain himself. He had to defend the honor and integrity of the temple.

That understanding, however, did not seem to surface for those affected by this tumult. “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” they asked. (Remember: Paul said, “Jews demand signs.”) I. e., “By what right do you intrude into our arena of influence?” And Jesus introduces, as is typical of him according to John’s Gospel, an evasive conundrum, saying, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

So much for earthly wisdom!

To those around him the statement clearly referred to the now-cleansed temple building before them. It had been forty-six years in the renovation, the additions to and the building up of this building. How could it be torn down and rebuilt in three days? It was clearly nonsensical to any dimension of human understanding.

Of course, when John tells us that “he was speaking about the temple of his body,” the statement would have been even more nonsensical to the ears and minds of those with whom he spoke, for they were quite confined to earthly understandings. Here an entrance into another whole realm of reality was opening up, however. Only later would its “inner secret” be revealed. “When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this.” The temple of which he spoke was a lively one, standing there before these dumbfounded people seeking an answer to their question in terms of an earthly response.

Jesus had given the clue to all this, though, when he said, “My Father’s house” in driving out those doing business there. “ My Father . . .” Not “your Father” nor even “our Father.” The Father was uniquely the Father of our Lord. And the zeal consuming him was nothing less than the zeal that would eventually drive him to the cross. It would, indeed, ultimately “consume him.” He was about his Father’s business. It seemed to those around that he was only about a zealot’s business or a radical terrorist’s business. But he knew whose business he was about, and his eye was set on a return visit in a couple years to complete what he was beginning here. He would cleanse the temple of this world of its pitifully broken bits and pieces of earthly treasures, sweeping this temple of earth clean with the crossbars that would hold him in death.

THE FAITH THAT MOVES THE BOUNDARIES OF OUR SENSIBILITIES

So we return again to the Second Lesson and hear Paul say, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Who of those confronting Jesus in the Gospel could possibly see in him “the power of God and the wisdom of God?” Not even his disciples were quite ready to speak of him in such terms at this early point in Jesus’ ministry.

It is a blessing given to us, though, to “see through” the event recorded in today’s Gospel because we can read it backward through his cross. In this man Jesus was hidden the salvation of the world. “The world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him,” John laments so poignantly. (John 1:10, 11 ESV) The poverty-stricken wisdom of this world is too confined by its own eyes and ears, its own experiences and sensibilities, to either comprehend or receive these “inside-out” ways of God by which he sends his Son to atone for the sins of the world.

Rather than a self-revelation by power, God is revealed in the weakness of Jesus’ suffering. Instead of a response of might to our human demands, God submits to the forces holding humanity prisoner without humanity even being aware of it. We look for God’s self-revelation on our terms. God reveals himself on his own terms. Those terms appear as weakness to our eyes. He submits his might to the requirements of those whose needs are for mercy and salvation. Jesus’ cross is the divine revelation.

The cross does not answer the questions we raise out of the realms of our earthly existence. “Why this or why not that?” we ask. And God responds, not in ways we search for, but by saying, “Trust me! I am ‘on your side.’ I will faithfully stand by you in the midst of your needs just as I have taken up that which you most need through the cross of my Son. Because I have done that one most important thing through him, you can trust me in everything else also. What you can’t understand, I stand responsible for. Just trust me.”

In the eyes of the world such faith looks terribly, miserably, horribly foolish, for it falls back on what eyes have not seen nor ears heard and trusts in that which seemingly has no basis. To those whose lives have been visited by the Spirit of God, however, such faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) It may appear as folly to those who look for power and wisdom of this age, but “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

Does this not describe the love born of faith in the final analysis? Such love is the strongest exertion of power one can imagine, for it is a way of seizing one’s own power that could well be used in self-interest and instead determining what to do with it in the best interests of those around. It takes determination, will power, strength, resolve, fortitude to give one’s self away rather than to use power in self-serving ways.

Therein lies the secret of the “power of God.” To earthly wisdom the cross is weakness . . . the account of a man who could not defend himself, who placed himself into jeopardy, who would not or could not resist the powers of this earth. His power is defined in this, however -- instead of using his power in his own behalf, Jesus challenges death itself. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” It is the act of one who has unflinchingly placed himself into the care and keeping of the Father whose temple has been desecrated, the Father whose Son dared against all earthly powers to cleanse it. It is the act of one who “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant . . . and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-9 ESV) That was a strong self-denying, yet self-giving love from outside the realm of our experiential existence -- an act that, although none of us can understand it well, lies at the heart of the foolishness of our faith. “It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” And we preach Christ crucified and risen from the dead for the sins of the world!

You, my friends in Christ, are among those to whom this folly has been preached. It is tangible and available in bread and wine through which this Word made flesh, crucified and risen, touches your lips to strengthen your lives. “My body . . . my blood . . . for you!” You, my friends in Christ, are among those who are called in your baptism to love from strength with a love like this self-giving love of God in his Son . . . a foolish love born of a foolish faith! Be assured of this, though: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” This God enfolds you in his arms and turns your foolish faith into a divine life-giving force for others through the foolishness of love!

Hubert Beck, Retired Lutheran Pastor
hbeck@austin.rr.com