The Foolishness of the Cross
Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah
March 5, 2023 Second Sunday in Lent
How the cross has changed in 2,000 years. Today it is decoration. We wear it as jewelry. We post it on our churches. We get crosses tattooed to our arms and stick it on our car windows. I saw an 18-karat gold cross made of diamonds that was on sale for $24,000 on the Tiffany and Co. web site. (I do a lot of my shopping there…)
But in Jesus’ day and when Paul wrote these words in First Corinthians, it wasn’t like that. The cross was an instrument of death. It was a tool of cruel torture. Romans crucified people to publicly humiliate them. They nailed human bodies to crosses to send the message that anyone who messed with them would get the same.
Crosses were for the worst of the worst. It was reserved for slaves and barbarians. It was the most shameful way one could die. It was reserved for the scum of society. A cross said you were a loser, weak, criminal, unpatriotic. Crucifixion was a method of execution that was so crude you did not mention it in polite company.
And that’s how Jesus Christ died. The Son of God died a shameful, humiliating, wretched death.
Paul, one of the first preachers of the gospel and maybe the most important, said he and others preach Christ crucified. And he said the message was foolishness to those who don’t get it or reject it.
Paul said that the message of the cross is foolishness. Why would he say that?
First of all, he was being ironic. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. The cross is foolishness to Jews and Greeks, and by that Paul meant all of humanity. By Jews Paul means religious people. By Greeks he means secular people. And in Paul’s day, both of these groups thought God doing anything through something reserved to execute the dregs of society was foolish.
It was foolishness to Jews because they wanted to see some spiritual power. If God was in something there needed to be signs of his working. God had done great signs through Moses. He did great signs through Elijah. The Jewish leaders would often find Jesus and ask him for signs to prove he was of God. They would come to test him, asking Jesus to show them a sign from heaven. “Do a trick Jesus. We want to see some fire and smoke.” Jesus never played the game.
Jews also believed the Messiah was going to be a person of tremendous military, political and social power. The Messiah would be a national success, making Israel great again. But pairing God with any nationalistic agenda is always true foolishness as he has shown again and again. For Jews there was no way a Messiah would be executed.
It still happens that humans want to turn the gospel into a way of increasing their own personal or political power. But the good news is about God dying on a rubbish-heap on the wrong side of the government. The good news is about God confronting those in the world who pose as powerful and prestigious.
That is why Jesus is a stumbling block to Jews. The prophet Isaiah had said that when God comes to his people “…for both Israel and Judah he will be a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare. Many of them will stumble; they will fall and be broken…”[1]
When it says Christ is a “stumbling block” that is where it comes from. Some Bibles might also read “scandal.” It is the same word and it means both of those things. Christ crucified is a scandal. It is hard to believe and hard to accept.
The message of the cross was foolishness to Greeks because they prided themselves on intellect. Corinth was a prominent Greek city known for professional speakers who came around and spoke with great eloquence. Corinthian people were more fascinated with speaking ability, and how well someone could entertain and fascinate. Greeks thought themselves very wise and sophisticated. The had no time for simpletons, common folk, and certainly not criminals.
We get our word “moron” from the word Paul used for “foolish.” The word “moron” came to be used in psychology about one-hundred years ago. It referred to someone with an IQ in the 50 to 70 range. The term is no longer used. We use the word “moron” now to put someone down. It means someone is stupid, lacking in good judgment, mentally deficient. It is a demeaning term.
Paul says that God’s plan to save people is moronic. Who would ever dream that God would act through the killing of his Son? Yet, this is how God has made people right with him. It is a foolish message and only fools can believe it. Again, Paul is using “foolish” in kind of a sarcastic way. He is actually saying that God has a wisdom that is higher than anything any religious person or philosopher can fathom.
Paul asks, “Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher or philosopher who can match wits with God?”
There is a story of a philosopher who thought he could make a fool of God. One day the philosopher was walking in the woods and he came face to face with a figure in a radiant beam of light. It was none other than God himself. The philosopher had spent a lifetime pondering God’s existence so he was in awe. At least temporarily. Then he decided to take on God.
“You are the Lord, I presume,” the philosopher said. “Yes, I am,” God said.
“Well the, Lord, I wonder if you would be good enough to answer a few simple questions that have been troubling me for many years.” “Certainly my son.”
“It is true, Almighty, that what is for us a thousand years here on earth is for you nothing but the merest moment?” “Yes,” God replied. “That is quite true.”
Then, the philosopher asked again, “And is it true that a million dollars here on earth is for you nothing but a paltry penny? “Yes, also quite true.”
The philosopher paused and then asked, “Then I wonder if it would be possible for you, if it isn’t too much trouble, to give me a penny?” God replied, “Why certainly. I’d be more than glad to. I’ll be back…in just a moment.”
If you’re going to play golf with God you better keep an open stance.
Greeks were so steeped in their own high and sophisticated ideas that they couldn’t see a God who suffers. They wanted an eloquent, clever, brilliant God. A famous and adored late Buddhist monk and writer, Thich Nhat Hanh said that the crucifixion of Jesus is a very painful image to him because it does not contain joy or peace, and that this does not do justice to Jesus.[2] He is not the only one whose expectations haven’t been met by God. The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom. But then again, in a very ironic way he was very right.
Jews wanted a conquering Messiah. It says in the Old Testament that anyone who hangs on a tree is cursed. So, a so-called Savior on a cross didn’t make any sense to Jews or Greeks.
You know, if you think about it, the gospel is not common sense. We would not have thought this up. It is not clever, nor is it even plausible. Yet Paul says, “…for us who are being saved it is the power of God.” He calls the cross “power.” In Romans 1 Paul uses the same word when he says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.”[3] In 2 Corinthians Paul writes about his own “thorn in the flesh” as he called it. This was something that caused Paul great pain that God would not take away. But God told him that his power was made perfect in Paul’s weakness.[4]
Power in weakness. That is the cross. The wisdom of God.
And by working his plan to bring us to himself through the cross, God took all means of saving ourselves out of our hands. No amount of religious practice, no amount of academic degrees, no level of morality will deal with what separates us from God and what makes us right with him. It doesn’t matter our ancestry, accomplishments, or affiliation.
People are searching for God through meditation, morality and academics. They are looking for God by intensifying their religious practice. But God is found in a Jew who was crucified on a cross.
You would think the whole thing just petered out, but those whom God called have seen the wisdom and power of God in the cross. And here we are today. And the message of Christ crucified continues to move people, and most often those who are seen as lowly in the eyes of the world.
You would think that no one is buying the message of the cross anymore. Actually, the Christian gospel is spreading. Just not so much here or in many Western countries where we place so much reliance on intellectual sophistication, scientific certainty, and Taylor Swift. And as a result things like God moving through a cross is pushed aside. Although it is interesting the deep thirst for spiritual things that the so-called enlightened West is now experiencing.
But people around the world are coming to Jesus. According to a report on Christianity around the globe done by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon Conwell Seminary, most of the countries where this is happening are in Asia and Africa. Many are countries which are a majority Muslim. Of the top 20 countries where the name of Jesus is growing most not a single one is in Europe, North America or Latin America. The highest rates of Christian growth are found among all major non-Christian religious groups: Hindus, the non-religious, Buddhists, Muslims and lesser-known groups.[5]
The word of the cross is attracting those who know their need and own spiritual poverty.
Years ago when Nancy and I lived in Philadelphia, we went with a group of youth to a huge, outdoor Christian festival. It went on for several days. You camped out, and there were several stages and tents where there were top-named Christian bands and speakers.
The preachers would put on a show. They were famous, flashy, told great stories, knew how to pull on the emotions, and charismatic.
One afternoon at the main venue Elisabeth Elliot spoke. She was in her her older years. Elliot had dedicated her life to bringing the gospel to a remote place in the jungles of Ecaudor. She stayed and lived among the very people who had killed her husband when he tried to share the love of Jesus with them.
She wasn’t flashy like the other speakers. She didn’t jump around the stage. She didn’t raise her voice and try to get a lot of laughs. She wasn’t entertaining. I remember one thing she did that most of the other speakers did not, she began by reading from the Scriptures. And then she spoke about the cross. Her entire 30-minute message was about the cross.
There were probably 10 or 15,000 people there. And I’ll never forget it, as Elliot spoke on the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ people began to get up and leave. What she was speaking was the very heart of faith. It was true. It was Jesus. And people were getting up and leaving. Elisabeth Elliot wasn’t dynamic enough. She wasn’t entertaining. She was just speaking the gospel, one that she could back up with her life.
The message of the cross is foolishness to many, sometimes even those who sit in churches.
But remember that God chose – and is still choosing - the foolish things of this world, the weak things of this world, and the lowly things of this world to shame what is wise, strong and exalted in the eyes of the world.
The cross is often worn as jewelry today, and that’s OK. Because it has been transformed. It has been transformed by the Lord Jesus Christ who rose from death. The cross could not stop him. That’s why we view it very differently today.
I wouldn’t wear a cross that is $24,000. Simple is probably best. But if we wear a cross or put one up in our church or home, let’s make sure we are in line with it.
Let’s make sure we know it isn’t our religiousness or our know-how that saves us. Let the cross be us saying “I don’t trust my own wisdom or strength. But I place my life in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ.” As we sing in that great hymn, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.”
Later Paul will write, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.[6]
That was his plan. Foolishness to many. But in it is the wisdom of God.
[1] Isaiah 8:14-15
[2] Found in The Crucifixion, Fleming Rutledge, p.49
[3] 1:16
[4] 2 Corinthians 12:9
[5] From https://discipleallnations.wordpress.com/2013/08/25/the-top-20-countries-where-christianity-is-growing-the-fastest/
[6] 2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV and The Message