A Fool for Love

1 Corinthians 1: 18-31

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 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? 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.

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Several years ago, I led a mission trip to Sudan. In the evenings, we would take turns offering prayers, and I would use a short Celtic service from Iona. One of the prayers reads:

If you were wiser, Lord,
you would not bother with us.
But you are foolish,
And so we are your choice.

Another team member took great offense at my calling God “foolish.” I tried to explain that in the Celtic prayer, “foolish” didn’t imply “stupid” or “ignorant” or “oafish” so much as “unreserved” and “forthcoming”—like a “fool for love” in the lyrics of a country song who knows full well that his affections are being disregarded and even demeaned but “keeps on lovin’” anyway. In other words, God’s love for us humans remains steadfast, even as we disappoint time and again.

Paul used the word “foolish” to highlight the conflict that raged between the conservatives and liberals of his day. The Jews, his own people, became the stand-ins for pious, law-abiding conservatives, while the Greeks represented the intellectual and cultural elites. The first group tried to create order by way of obedience to the law; the second, by way of reason, logic and education. Paul believed that all things are subject to “the powers and principalities of the world,” but that only the unitive, or non-dualistic mind could process and accept this without panicking. He believed that conservative and liberal worldviews inevitably fail those who espouse them, because true wisdom—that is, the loving wisdom of God—cannot be politicized or parsed.

Paul writes “We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,” (1:23). Br. Richard Rohr explained in a meditation that “Neither the liberal pattern nor the conservative pattern can deal with disorder and misery. Paul believes that Jesus has revealed the only response that works. The revelation of the cross makes you indestructible because it says there is a way through all absurdity and tragedy. If you internalize the mystery of the cross, you won’t fall into cynicism, failure, bitterness, or skepticism. The cross gives you a precise and profound way through the dark side of life and through all disappointments.”¹

My friends, the “folly of the cross” is not a slight to God. What transpired on the cross on Good Friday doesn’t make sense until we confront its mystery. God took the worst thing imaginable—the killing of God’s own—and transformed it into love and, in turn, the redemption of the world.

¹ https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-folly-of-the-cross-2015-04-09/

prayer

God of steadfast love, light of the blind, and liberator of the oppressed, we see your holy purpose in the tender compassion of Jesus, who calls us into new and living friendship with you: May we who take shelter in the shadow of your wings be filled with the grace of his tender caring; may we who stumble in selfish darkness see your glory in the light of his self-giving; we ask this through him whose suffering is victorious, Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

(Revised Common Lectionary Prayers, p. 96)