Texts: (all of the texts can be found by clicking the word "text")
Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22
This is the moment we live out of. Of all the moments in history, of all the moments in the history of Israel, of all the moments in the life of the church, this one story keeps reverberating throughout history, begging to be told over and over again, a story that tells a truth so deep, so real, that it must be told to each generation. The shape this life takes, the cruciform shape of love, shows what happens when hatred and love meet. If the cross doesn’t sound like foolishness to us, we’re not paying enough attention. The cross makes fools out of us, and out of our wisdom.
In our wisdom, we create divisions for ourselves and for others, trying to determine who is in or who is out based on exterior circumstances. Strangely, this did not seem to be the way Jesus went about figuring out who was included and who was excluded. It did not seem like Jesus much cared whether the people he healed were dirty, were sinners, were lost, or who were simply going to this healer as a last-ditch effort to be made well, to be saved, from the things that oppressed them. Strangely, it was the religious people that couldn’t see Jesus for who he was.
We see Jesus touching people who would have been deemed unclean in their society. Trespassing the boundaries of holiness, Jesus comes into the world and shows us what holiness actually looks like, and it looks nothing like the religious people had thought it did. “All the things that ‘in our opinion have nothing divine in them but rather point to man’s trouble, misery, and weakness; are the things that God chooses to be manifest in and through.”[1] Jesus touched lepers, he touched people who were crippled, who were blind, who were relegated to the outskirts of society. He touched women, he touched children, he touched the dead. Each of these people’s lives came to be identified by this man, this Jesus, who dwelt among them. All of the distinctions between holy and unholy, between sinner and righteous, were frustrated as Jesus refuses to be God confined to any space.
Jesus came to a bunch of fishermen, who we will see as we read the Gospel lessons for this year, can never seem to get it right, and to people like Paul, who spent their lives persecuting Christians, and turning their lives on their heads. It is completely foolish that Jesus would save the people who can’t get it right, who are obviously sinners, who obviously have no idea what it takes to be a person of faith. Jesus called things what they were, but in a way that changed their very existence. He healed and he saved, and the people walked away on the one hand changed forever and on the other hand the same as they were before. “Go, your sins have been forgiven you.” “Take up your mat and walk.” “Receive your sight.” “Your faith has healed you,” Jesus says. These great statements come to us not from long ago and far away, but right here and right now. In the midst of our blindness to God’s work, Jesus gives us sight. In the midst of our frailty in faith, Jesus gives us hope. In the midst of us questioning where God is, Jesus is right in front of us, in our brothers and sisters, in our neighbors, in the least of these. Jesus comes to us in bread and wine, and we carry him out to the world as we leave.
All of this happens not because we have somehow figured out the magical formula for what God wants from us; in fact, it seems the more we know about Jesus and how he works, the more we find we have in common with the Pharisees than we did with Jesus. Jesus, I like my little boundaries and barriers; they make me feel safe. Jesus, I like everything the way it is, I don’t want it to change. Jesus, if I reach out to this person and make myself vulnerable, what happens if I get hurt? All of these questions, all of the things we tell ourselves that keep us from living in to Christ’s reality among us, Jesus continues coming into our lives, coloring outside the lines and refusing to live in the little box we have created for him. It seems the less we realize we are able to get it right, the closer we come to understanding how God works. Stretching our expectations and stretching our imaginations, we find this incredible gift.
In so many ways, we want the gift to make sense, to be something we receive because we have earned it or because we deserve it, but the fact that the gift doesn’t make sense makes it all the more powerful. The fact that Jesus comes to people who know they are sinners, to people who have nowhere else to turn for help and for salvation, tells us an incredible story of what happens when God comes to dwell among humans. What is it to have a God that will watch humans make the same mistakes, the same sins, the same denials of God and God’s work, and still save them? It is for this very purpose that God saves us. It is because we continually repeat our messes, and God continually repeats our salvation.
This salvation is foolishness because it happens at the moment where it looks like it will not happen. Subverting human wisdom and shunning human strength, God uses what is weak to show God’s strength, and God uses what is foolish to show God’s wisdom. We are fools, to see God’s power most clearly displayed in weakness and God’s wisdom most clearly displayed in foolishness. Perhaps. We might be fools to believe it, but we would be greater fools not to believe it, for it is the very means of our salvation.
The cross is utter foolishness. To think that God would have to go so far, to make Godself utterly powerless in order for us to understand God’s power, is indeed a stumbling block. We trip over it each time we try to carry our righteousness to the altar. Our righteousness relegated to nothing, we hold out our empty hands and receive the body and blood of Christ. We stagger to the foot of the cross, thinking that we are lost, and realizing that we have been found. It is here, at the foot of the cross, that we can be real. We can be ourselves. Bringing all of us, all of our joys, all of our troubles, all of our blessings, and all of our challenges, at the foot of the cross we have an opportunity to tell the truth that to we who would be perishing this Word is our very salvation.
So, having been proclaimed righteous though we are not, having been proclaimed loved although we are unlovable, we begin to wonder: does this simply take everything bad and name it good? Does this confuse the whole relationship between good and evil, between God and Satan, between sin and righteousness? “What is remarkable, though, is that evil and suffering can become, paradoxically and mysteriously, a disclosure of God’s grace and love in that God acts through it not only to transform, overcome, and purge this evil, but to create something new, something that is life-giving and life-enhancing. This is the true mystery - and the scandal - of the cross.”[2] The scandal of the cross is that God has made Godself a fool for our sakes. We are not invited to call evil good and to call good evil. It is not until we see the cross for what it is - a symbol of death and hatred - that we come to appreciate the cross for what God has made it - a symbol of grace and love. If we too quickly skip over the death, we miss the resurrection. If we too quickly skip over sin, we miss receiving forgiveness. If we too quickly skip over unrighteousness, we miss being made righteous. If we too quickly try to make it all make sense, we miss the joy found in the foolishness and absurdity of God’s love for us.
Out of God’s foolish love for you, God has been made a fool for your sake, and it is your very salvation. God has taken what you named broken and called it holy. God has taken what you named freedom and called it slavery. God has taken what you named slavery and called it freedom. God has taken what you call scandal and named it salvation. The change that happens is not a superficial, outward change. It is a change that pierces the very core of who you are. It takes ahold of you and refuses to let you go. This is the story that begs to be told, generation after generation, of God’s love, hung on a cross, sweeping you up and making you a fool for God’s sake because God made Godself a fool for your sake. It is by this foolishness we have been saved.
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