"The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?"
This is a rhetorical question Paul is asking today. If it had been a serious question, the answer could have been something like, look in the mirror, Paul. You are an excellent debater yourself. Many of Paul's arguments have withstood the test of time, afterall. Another serious answer to the question could have been, just head on down to the town square. Oratory was a very popular activity in this time, in this place, and people would regularly gather in the public square to debate. Classical oratory became popular in the 5th century Greek world, and it remained so in the Roman world, and in the time of Paul and after his time for several hundred years. Demosthenes and Cicero are probably two of the most famous orators of this classical period, but a lot of folks engaged in it. Oratory was a standard part of the curricula in most schools of the day. Certainly that leaves out a lot of people as education was much more limited at that time. There was no such thing as universal education. But for all of those privileged enough to have been formally educated, they would have studied oratory, including many of the people reading this letter. For everybody in general, going and watching speeches and debates was a hugely popular activity. So this is definitely not a serious question. Everyone knows where to go find some good debaters. Paul is asking rhetorically. And what is the rhetorical point to his question? To kind of mock them a little bit. But more importantly to make them a foil for his argument. I have nothing against speech and debate. I used to be a competitive debater in high school and college. I learned valuable skills from the activity. I don't think Paul has any problem with debate, either. This whole letter is an argument. Part of the letter today is Paul beginning to lay the foundation for the argument he is making.
Debate, then and now, is ultimately about success and winning. You want to convince the judges or the audience that you are right and that your opponent is wrong. To win and convince people, as Aristotle taught and every orator would have studied at that time, you use some sort of combination of your own ethos, your presence, your expertise, your position; the pathos of your audience, their fears, their anxieties, their worries, their pathologies. And third, your logos, your words, your carefully constructed logic of your words. Ethos, pathos, logos, the trinity of classical rhetoric.
Paul wants to remind his readers, this relatively young Christian community in Corinth, that what really matters is not the logos of our arguments, but the logos of God. "In the beginning was the Word, logos, and the logos became flesh." Paul points toward this true logos, not the debater's logos, not Aristotle's logos, but the true and ultimate logos, the Incarnate logos, the Incarnate Word Jesus Christ.
Most importantly, for his argument here, is the logos hanging there on the cross. "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God." This is counter to everything that the debater of Paul's age, of our age, of every age, cares about. Loosing instead of winning, failure instead of success. The cross, that shameful tool of execution of the Roman state, designed not only to kill, perhaps not even primarily to kill, but designed to publicly humiliate the victim, and to make a point to the whole body politic. There is no perfect equivalent in our world today, but certainly one way to think about the cross is as the ancient equivalent of the electric chair, lethal injection, or the firing squad. An even better equivalent is the lynching tree, which was not only used to kill individual black people, but as an act of torture designed to terrorize the entire black community, and to send a message about white supremacy.
To claim the cross instead of running from it was shocking, scandalous, and foolish. And yet rather than be ashamed that the one we proclaim to be our Savior died on this tool of humiliation and terror, Paul is saying that God went to this evil, God was nailed to this evil, and God transforms this evil to the foundation of true wisdom, true knowledge, true discernment, true boasting. The cross is the foundation of Paul's argument that is going to take him to the audacious claims in this letter of what it means to truly be a baptized member of Christ's body. When he will claim that even the weakest, lowliest member is not only necessary, but often the most valuable. It will take him to the audacious claims about the primacy of love over every other gift that God could possibly give us. Paul is laying the groundwork for his argument that what life in Christ is really about. What a perversion of the faith that the very thing that Paul says shall lead us to care for the most vulnerable and to love has been used to justify and commit violence. The lynching tree was used by Christians, by people claiming to be followers of a Savior who died in a similar manner. That is a perversion. Paul does not want us to become Pilate but Jesus. To stop sending people to the cross, but take up the cross and follow him, as Jesus said in the Gospel reading last week. "Foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God."
Winning, success, power, these all pull at us constantly. They are seductive, and yet they are nothing compared to God. The foolishness of God is greater than our wisdom, the weakness of God is greater than our strength. Winning, success, power are all useless in the light of the cross. As Paul says, it's foolishness. It is foolish to set the cross before the values of this world. But it is a similar foolishness in calling the old and barren Sarah and her husband Abraham to be the ancestors of great nations that we heard about last week. It is a similar foolishness to call the murderer and poor public speaker Moses to lead a movement of liberation. It is a similar foolishness in calling the foreigner Ruth to be the great grandmother of David, and calling the greatest sinner, David, to be the greatest king. It is a similar foolishness to calling the much too young Jeremiah, and the impure Isaiah, and the contrarian Jonah to be God's prophets. It's foolishness. And it's foolishness for the Messiah to go to the cross to be slaughtered like a lamb. It's so foolish that Jesus called Peter aside to rebuke him for suggesting it. And it is so foolish that no one in today's Gospel understands what Jesus is even talking about. It is only after the resurrection that the disciples begin to make any sense of what he said. It's foolishness, all foolishness. But it is the foolish wisdom of God. "Foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God."
My friends in Christ, we live in serious times. Times so serious that they demand God's foolishness to foolishly point to a still more better way: the way of love.
AMEN
