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Picture a hyena! Do you like hyenas? Do you think they are beautiful animals? My wife does! I, on the other hand, think they are quite ugly, and seeing these funny and filthy looking animals leaves me with the same uncomfortable feeling when hearing their mad laughter. Although I know that hyenas have a lot of good qualities: They are for instance very effective in hunting. They are very social. They have incredible powerful jaws, even more powerful than those of lions. And they play an important role in the ecosystem as they feed on all debris carcasses. They are the so called garbage cleaners of nature. Still I can’t understand how someone can like these animals. But, as the saying goes, ‘Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder’. And it is something very similar that Paul points out in today’s word for the sermon, when he writes in his 1st letter to the Corinthian congregation:
“For the message about 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, and the dis-cernment of the discerning I will thwart." 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, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.”
What Paul emphasises with these lines is the following: God’s wisdom and the way, which HE has chosen in His wisdom, to save humans from eternal death and damnation, is the humiliat-ing death of His Son Jesus Christ on the cross. In last week’s sermon I said: “We are not in the position to say: this person will go to heaven, and that one to hell; not even about non Christians. We simply can’t tell, because we do not know, and we do not decide either.” After the service, someone approached me asking if the Bible, if Jesus isn’t clearer about what will happen to people who do not believe. That’s right, for He says: ‘Whoever does not believe will be condemned’ and ‘No one comes to the father except through me’. So I could have been more clearly as to what we can say as Christians, for we can say: ‘Whoever does not believe in Jesus, can be certain of damnation.’ Yet we still cannot make the final decision on behalf of God, and thus we cannot tell someone, or say about him or her that this person goes to heaven or to hell. But we can point out what Paul points out to his con-gregation: That it is Jesus and He alone as the crucified, who de-livers us and reconciles us with God. And it won’t change anything, if someone is not able to make any sense out of this, or if someone does not like this way of salvation. It is the humiliating and cruel death of Jesus that saves us; just like the Hyena remains a Hyena, no matter whether we like this animal or not. God’s way of salvation, His wisdom remains the same, not matter if people like it or not, or if people see any sense in it or not. And there always have been people who refused to believe in Jesus, because His death was in no way acceptable and compatible with their idea of salvation. Paul uses the Greeks just as an example. Their idea of God, as the epitome of all good things, was incompatible with the message of someone, who suffered the hu-miliation of the cruelest punishment of that time, which was actu-ally reserved to the most despicable criminals. How can it be something good, if someone suffers humiliation? How can it be something helpful, if someone powerful becomes helpless? In the same way Jesus didn’t fit into the Jewish idea of the Mes-siah. They expected the Saviour to be someone, who would free Israel and found the new kingdom of David with divine power and miraculous signs. So many Jews despised Jesus, who actually showed them that God’s word has to be understood and lived on a far deeper level than just politics. There are people like the Greeks and the Jews until this very day: People who either simply fail to believe, because they cannot fathom what God achieved by slipping into our role and suffering our fate and punishment. Or people fail to believe, because the humiliated Jesus on the cross simply doesn’t fit into their image of God. And thus the message of the cross becomes foolish for them, because they measure it with their own standards.
Those however, Jews and Greeks, meaning Israelites and heathens in the same way, who trust in God’s word and promise, see in Jesus at the cross the most powerful and beautiful manifestation of God’s wisdom and might. For God enabled them to see with an uncovered heart. In faith God enabled us to realize that only in this humiliating death, He could make up for our iniquities by entirely sharing our weakness and thus taking care of it downright.
The message of today’s Bible word for us is therefore very much the same as last week: Any God given talent or potential should be used to support the spreading of this Gospel. However: If we at some stage rely more on our talents than on the message, we have lost the right track. Because: It is not a particular methodology that creates Christians. In the same way it is not a particular type of music that creates faith within people; neither the music Johann Sebastian Bach nor any particular modern or African Style of music. And if music is the reason why people come to church, then something is not right. We should beware of this, never putting more emphasis on our talents than on what we are actually trying to support with them. In the same way we should be aware of splitting up the Gospel of Jesus, just telling the nice part with His resurrection, the Gospel of glory. This is it, what Paul also points out by means of today’s word for the sermon, when he says: “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.” Unfortunately one can find it very often in contemporary churches that they just preach the powerful and glorious Jesus and that he takes care of you and will manage everything. This is not wrong, but often people haven’t been told, why Jesus is able to take care of us, and that He wants us to trust in Him, meaning His sacrifice for our sins. People often haven’t been told that Jesus had to die, because we are simply not able to help ourselves. But only if we share THIS message, people will be able to see Jesus on the cross together with us as who He really is: The ONE and beautiful God, who humbled himself, in order to share our fate, and thus to care for us in the most loving and thoughtful way. May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our crucified and risen saviour! |
