Text: I Corinthians 1:18-25

In the passage we read today, Paul wrote: God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

In my lifetime, the era when our society had its highest confidence in the wisdom and strength of us human beings was in the early 1960's. A few of you can remember those days when many people in our society were confident of the good that the best and brightest among us could enable us to achieve. I remember the optimism and hope that was so prevalent then. A new generation of leadership was coming to the fore in all aspects of our society: industry, financial institutions, government, social services, the arts. A symbol of those times was the declaration that before the decade was ended we would place a man on the moon and return him safely to earth. It was more than a declaration of confidence in our technology and organizational abilities. It was a declaration of confidence in our ability as humans to solve any problem on earth. It was a time when many in our nation confidently assumed that all we needed to transform the world was human strength, ability and wisdom.

Of course that was also the decade when one of the covers of Time magazine raised the question many were debating: "Is God dead?" It was a time when it was not unusual to hear people speak of the post-Christian era. Many authors wrote about secular Christianity, and much was said about "man coming of age," that is, human beings no longer needing to depend or rely on God. Human intelligence, wisdom, strength and power were going to transform the world from the mess it was in into the world it was meant to be.

But hardly had that era of optimism begun before our society was torn apart by assassinations of leaders and by riots in our cities triggered by the frustrations of feeling trapped in poverty, conflict about Vietnam and angers fueled by racism. In the midst of all this turmoil there was an explosion in the availability of drugs, and a sexual revolution set loose by "the pill." The goal was self-fulfillment, self-actualization, focusing on oneself. The problem was and is that self-centered people tend to be insensitive to others; they have trouble caring, sharing and trusting. In the early 1970's, our society's increasing mistrust and suspicion of leaders and institutions was given painful confirmation in all that led Richard Nixon to resign from the Presidency.

In the early 1960's, at the beginning of that era, this was not what we were anticipating. We were anticipating being led to a new frontier of social and technological advancements by the best and the brightest among us. But, looking back on that era that was marked at one end by the assassination of John Kennedy and at the other by Richard Nixon's farewell salute, what was seen more often than not was the rubble of many shattered dreams.

In the passage that was read today, Paul wrote: God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

What is this foolishness and weakness of God that Paul was talking about? It is the message of the cross. Paul wrote: 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. According to Paul, God's strength and wisdom is given expression in the cross.

I want to try to talk about what Paul meant when he spoke of the cross being the expression of God's strength and wisdom. The cross is God's most powerful declaration of unconditional love. In the crucifixion of Jesus, we discover the amazing love of God. It is through God's self-giving love, revealed in the cross of Christ, that we humans discover the hope that enables us to deal with even the worst life has to offer.

In the cross we see totally unselfish love that for the sake of healing and hope for the world is willing to be tortured to death. Jesus' willingness to trust God so completely that he was willing to be crucified appears to be foolishness and weakness to those who place their basic trust in human abilities, human intelligence, human strength and wisdom.

But to those who are able to trust that in the crucifixion of Jesus God is at work redeeming the world, the self-giving love of God revealed in the cross is the revelation of God's wisdom and strength.

It is all so simple, and yet so difficult to express adequately. In the beginning, God created us human beings to need one another. Each of us is needed; and each of us needs others. We humans are interdependent. And being interdependent, we are to live together, serving one another. As the Bible says, we are to love one another.

But living this life of love is not automatic. We are humans, not robots that are programmed. As humans we must decide whether or not we will love our neighbor as ourselves. We have to decide whether to share or be selfish; we have to decide whether we will give of ourselves for the good of others or live lives that focus only on ourselves. In living, we choose either to be so focused on ourselves we use our abilities trying to manipulate or force God and others to do our bidding, or we live striving to love others as God in Christ has loved us. We have to decide whether we will view life and the world as an interdependent creation in which we are to live together loving one another, or whether we will view the creation as a dog eat dog world, an arena of conflict in which only those with the most power get what they want in life.

We were created in love to live lives of love. But that requires us to choose love rather than selfishness. To make such a choice takes faith. We have to trust God and God's love in order to live self-giving lives of love. A choice has to be made.

The history of humanity reveals that more often than not we have chosen selfishness rather than love. We humans have not chosen God's way; we have chosen our way. In the beginning, our loving God created us to love. When we humans chose not to love, we made a mess of things.

In Jesus, God became one of us to reclaim us and to show us how to live by showing us what it is to live lives of love. But we humans were so frightened and threatened by the unselfish love revealed in Jesus we tried to get rid of that threat by killing him.

When we are self-centered and we are convinced focusing only on "what is mine" is the only way to survive, the self-giving love revealed in the cross of Christ not only looks foolish, it is unnerving—even frightening, because it calls our self-centeredness into question. One of the primary reasons Jesus was hated and killed was because his way of living, his loving others, frightened people.

The love revealed in the cross of Christ is clearly an unconditional love, and the people who orchestrated his execution were convinced such unconditional love was a threat to all they held dear. They could not see the possibility of redemption because they were so focused on getting what they wanted and protecting what they had. Those who wanted Christ crucified were so focused on the do's and don'ts of their religion and on the need for a revenge-like justice for violators of the law that they were unable to embrace mercy that made a new and better future possible. They were so certain the sinner could not change that they were unable to be instruments of God' grace in changing and transforming the lives of sinners. They were so rigorously focused on their human efforts to earn God's rewards that they were insensitive to the grace God was offering. The truth of the matter was that the unconditional love of God's grace threatened their view of life and their way of living. Frightened by the grace of God incarnate in Jesus, they crucified him. And the story of those who crucified Jesus is all too often our story also.

Yet even as we humans killed the merciful love of God, the mercy in God's love was revealed, and those who have been able to see it have been transformed.

Paul told us that for those who trust only in human wisdom and strength, any talk about the kind of love revealed in the cross sounds like foolishness. The humble compassion revealed in the crucifixion of the Messiah is a humility that persons whose living is centered around themselves cannot understand. It looks like weakness. For all those who are looking to God to fix things and make us religious folks healthy, wealthy and wise, the crucifixion of the incarnation of God calls into question the power of God. Paul told us that for many the message of the cross does not make sense.

But to those who are in the process of being saved, to those who have the ability to see more than self-centeredness allows us to see, the message of the cross is the message of God's self-giving, unconditional love. The message of the cross does not simply tell us that God loves us unconditionally, the cross also reveals the kind of love that is to shape our living. In the cross we see God's love for us and we also see the paradigm, the example, of the kind of self-giving love God has intended us to live from the beginning, the kind of love and living that fulfills the purpose God has given us.

God, may the wisdom and power in your unconditional love revealed in the cross of Christ enable us to live as you intend us to live. Amen.

God, as we move closer and closer to that week we call Holy, the reality of the cross looms large and clear before us. It is difficult for us to focus on this reminder of our sin and the suffering it causes. God, we would rather keep the cross safely tucked away in the attic of minds, buried in some old trunk containing lists of what our ancestors did long ago rather than look our crucified Lord and admit our sin is not all that different from those who hung him there to die slowly in agony. God, we would rather focus only on resurrection without having to deal with the reality of Jesus being tortured to death. We do not want to think about what loving us has cost you; we prefer to focus only on what we get out of your love. Forgive us. Forgive us for avoiding and even denying how much it cost you to offer us new life.

And God, forgive us for wanting a bargain basement, cheap grace that exempts us the costly discipleship of having the crucified Christ as our role model in living. Forgive us for failing to pick up the crosses we must bear if we are to walk in his footsteps, following him.

Forgive us and enable us to live as Jesus was teaching us to live when he taught us to pray: "Our Father …"