A Fourth Church Sermon by John A. Cairns

January 30, 2005 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Wisdom and Foolishness

John A. Cairns
Dean, Academy for Faith and Life
Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 15
Micah 6:1–4, 6–8
1 Corinthians 1:18–31

The people are boasting about their own possession of wisdom and rhetorical eloquence—or at least they are infatuated with leaders who manifest these skills.

And the Lord said:
“Because these people draw near with their mouths
and honor me with their lips,
while their hears are far from me,
and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote;
so I will again do amazing things with this people. . . .
The wisdom of their wise shall perish
and the discernment of the discerning will be hidden.”

(Isaiah 29:13–14)

Isaiah’s point is the God-talk is cheap and that God’s action
will shut the mouths of the wise talkers.

Richard B. Hays

Some ideas may work—or they may not. You simply have to watch them run their course. They have to be tried and tested. You have to wait and see how they pan out. Today’s election in Iraq is probably one of those ideas. We will simply have to wait and see whether the voting procedures work as planned; whether a significant number of potential voters will refuse to be intimidated by the insurgents; whether those elected will be able to move the country toward democracy; whether today is the turning point that many hope it will be. Some ideas have to be pursued before we can know their value, their authenticity, their importance. That would be true of the South Beach diet, of proposed corporate mergers, of the Chicago Public Schools’ Renaissance 2010 plan, of trading Sammy Sosa to the Baltimore Orioles for Jerry Hairston and three minor leaguers. With some ideas you just have to wait and see.

But just because some ideas require a little time and space to prove themselves does not mean we should allow ourselves to be convinced that all ideas are worthy of such open-ended consideration. Not every road is worth traveling. That is why I am concerned about a philosophy that has recently appeared on the scene. It is captured succinctly in an address to an incoming freshman class by the college’s dean. What he said was, “We encourage our students by telling them there are no bad ideas.” I submit to you that that can be a frightening thought. Benjamin Sparks, the editor of Presbyterian Outlook, labeled it “destructive tolerance that leaves souls shriveled and minds tired” (3 January, 2005, p.12).

If our goal is to encourage strong and creative intellectual activity and the beneficial use of our energies, it would seem important that we let folks know that there are some bad ideas out there.

The bean counters in Springfield found that out when they not only downsized Arthur Burchyett but also confiscated his customized wheelchair. Governor Blagojevich quickly said “bad idea” and put Arthur and his wheelchair back into the workforce. In a week when we marked the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and Hotel Rwanda received three Oscar nominations and the killing in Darfur continued, we should certainly be at the point of insisting that ignoring genocide and ethnic cleansing is a bad idea. Athletes on steroids is a bad idea. Disregarding the warnings issued for prescription drugs is a bad idea. Racial profiling is a bad idea. There are a lot of bad ideas out there, and that message needs to reach more than the incoming freshman class.

It needs to reach the church. The Christian community is not exempt from this “destructive tolerance.” There are a lot of bad ideas about Jesus out there. There always have been—and probably always will be. When we create a facade of tolerance, when we suggest there are no bad ideas, we are not helping the church define itself or deliver its message. We need to pay more attention to what the political pundits refer to as “staying on message.” We need to understand the importance of labeling a bad idea as a “bad idea.” But that is often easier said than done, because we want the church to be likeable, to be “with it,” to be positive and accepting, to agree with us. We have to watch what we put our arms around.

Take for example an end-of-the-year editorial that pointed to a promising future for the Christian church because—and I quote—“Jesus is bulking up” (Richmond Times-Dispatch 9 December 2004). Friends, I wish I was making this up! But, I’m not. The message was that the image of Christ is changing from Warner Sallman’s lovely and gentle “Head of Christ,” which has hung in church school classrooms for years, to the more muscular Jesus in Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ. The writer’s point is that as Jesus takes on a new face and frame, so the church will become more robust; more assertive.

Just as I was beginning to think that there might be something here—a kernel of insight, a reminder that in spite of its wide distribution, the Sallman portrait was only one man’s image of Jesus and certainly there were many others—just as I was beginning to make space to rethink my own concept of Jesus, I got to the conclusion of the editorial. After painting his picture of a more powerful, bulked-up Jesus, the writer offers this assertion: “Such imagery speaks to a muscular evangelism that is tired of turning the other cheek.” Whoa! The bottom line here is if we concoct—and worship—a stronger Jesus, we will not have to offer charity and forgiveness to our neighbors. We can take on all comers knowing that might makes right.

I was almost seduced by a bad idea. And that is exactly what it is—a seductive, bad idea. I want to suggest to you this morning that we have never really taken seriously the Jesus of scripture, that we are continually reworking his identity and his message into a form that matches our preferences and supports our lifestyle. We are seduced over and over again to try to make Jesus in our image. And that is a bad idea.

When Ben Sparks attacks “destructive tolerance,” he is referring to ideas like this, ideas that draw us away from the Jesus of scripture. “If muscular evangelism does not turn the other cheek, it is not Christian evangelism,” Spark says. We cannot reinvent Jesus to fit comfortably into our culture. Neither Warner Sallman nor Mel Gibson nor you or I can decide who Jesus is, even though we may feel we are up for the task. In our scripture lesson for the morning, Paul talks about wisdom and foolishness and admits they are turned on their heads in God’s realm, particularly when we try to understand what it means to follow Jesus. What seems wise to us is foolishness in God’s eyes. And what to us is utter foolishness turns out to be the wisdom of God.

So, we need to be allied with “foolishness.” But as we come to grips with the antagonistic and acquisitive culture that surrounds us, a culture into which we blend with greater and greater ease, it can be tempting to become more assertive with our faith, to “bulk up” Jesus, to decide we know what God had in mind. Then it is a small step to decide that what is prevalent and popular must also be wise, that what we do is what Jesus would do, and before we know it, our bulked-up approach becomes part of an escalating dogmatism and an unflinching certainty that destroys the human life it clams to save. “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Corinthians 1:20).

Paul insists that we remember what actually happened, what Jesus really said and did and the fact that he was crucified. He plays the devil’s advocate and asks how could we proclaim as Savior of the world someone who had been crucified by the Roman authorities? When it comes to establishing Jesus’ Messianic authenticity, the religious community expects some kind of a sign, and the intellectual community expects a logical and rational argument. But what we have is a crucifixion, and that makes the claim that Jesus is the Messiah seem utterly foolish.

Almost as if he anticipated what would happen in the centuries that followed, Paul makes his case for not trying to spin the story in another direction, for not moving the emphasis to some more popular and pleasant moments in Jesus’ life. In other words, what might seem like the safe and smart thing to do would be a bad idea, “for the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:25).

What does all of this mean for you and me? It means we need to resist our own inclinations and the arguments of others that would define the Christian faith on the basis of what makes sense to a “wise” twenty-first-century audience. We can airbrush Jesus; we can bulk him up; we can make him loveable or stern; we can redefine his morals to be compatible with our best instincts. But that is a bad idea. None of that will allow us to ignore the reality of his crucifixion. None of that will connect us to God’s design, God’s wisdom. If your hope is to find a church home and a theological framework that will bless all the commonsense and logical assumptions that are widely held by your friends and neighbors, you have come to the wrong place. Here we are into foolishness. And we know we must treasure that foolishness if we are to communicate the good news this faith community has to share. The idea that being a popular, successful, upstanding member of society and being a follower of Jesus Christ are one and the same thing is foolish. Christianity insists we be counter-culture.

The idea that Jesus endorses our moral choices and personal peccadilloes is foolishness. What he put forward as wise left his contemporaries astounded. Eat with tax collectors, forgive the harlots, be suspicious of those who show up regularly for worship, live with childlike faith and simplicity, honor the least person you encounter as if he or she was God himself, share generously, turn the other cheek. Apart from when these ideas are discussed on Sunday mornings in this sanctuary, that kind of behavior does not often claim the day, does it?

We find it wiser to make the best deals, to have dinner with friends, to use our wisdom for making lists of the sins God will and will not tolerate, to go to church regularly, and to protect our cheeks at all times. That seems to be a wise and reasonable approach. And it might be had not the center of our faith been unreasonable, had not the Lord of our life lived as he did, had he not been crucified. Do you ever really stop and think about how foolish that is by any of the standards rational people use—a crucified Lord and Savior?!

When our eyes fall upon the cross, we are reminded that we are in a whole new ball game. Everything has been turned upside down. Life is no longer about homeland security or Internet access or reality TV or SpongeBob SquarePants or red states and blue states or the rapture or the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

It is about the foolishness of sacrificial love, of forgiving our enemies, of caring for the poor and inviting the lonely home for dinner, of walking miles in someone else’s shoes, of sharing your coat, and, yes, of turning the other cheek. There will be plenty of people who tell you that that is foolish, and based upon a dictionary definition or practical considerations, they might be right. But, remember that “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’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.” Which means that putting ultimate faith in human wisdom is a bad idea. Amen.