Will Willimon…a professor at Duke said one time that one of the dangers of spending as much time in church as we would when we became pastors was that everything would start to make sense to us. Now for a long time I wasn’t really sure what to make of that comment…I mean isn’t the point that we want all of this stuff to make sense to us? So what is the danger in that?

Well now that I have been at this at least for a little while I understand a little better what he was talking about. I talk about the Christian faith so often…so effortlessly and casually that I start thinking that all of this stuff we talk about and believe actually makes perfect sense. I completely get it…it’s not that hard so why doesn’t everyone get it? And yet in reality…I spend my time saying things and believing things that are a little hard to swallow and live when you get outside of these walls.

Do you ever do that? Do you come to worship or Sunday School and find yourself sitting here…peacefully listening to things and even believing things that you would never let anyone pull over on you out in the “real world?”

Blessed are the meek? Turn the other cheek? Love your enemies? Forgive endlessly? The last shall be first? Go…sell all you have and give to the poor? I mean really…be honest now. Blessed are the meek? Try being meek at work tomorrow or with whatever you are doing and see where that gets you. Meekness is fine for church but in the real world it will get you run over or ignored. Blessed are those who are peacemakers…they shall have done to them what they are unwilling to do to others. Blessed are the merciful…they shall get it done to them a second time. Blessed are those who are persecuted for God’s sake…they shall be called fanatics and avoided.

The point I’m trying to make is that when we hear the gospel with our Sunday morning ears it all makes sense to us right? We feel good about it…we understand and believe it. But when we hear it with our Monday morning ears…when we get out of here and back out into the “real world” surrounded and influenced by those who don’t know the lingo or understand what we are talking about…we quickly realize that it all sounds a little bit…well “moria” as Paul says in the Greek…which means foolish.

And really nothing sounds more foolish to those outside of the faith community than the message that is at the very heart of our Christian faith…the message of the cross. Now to us…with our Sunday morning ears…the story of the cross…what happened on it and why it happened makes sense for the most part. But to many people in this world…the message of the cross makes no sense at all. How could it though? It isn’t logical…it isn’t rational….it can’t be proven or explained scientifically....and for some reason nobody there that day had their camera or cell phone with them.

Think about it…we claim that God has redeemed the world…and forgiven all of our sins through the humiliating crucifixion of some guy in some small corner of the world that claims to be a human man and God himself at the same time? No wonder people think the idea of the cross is foolish…and at times I wonder if we are more sensitive to this criticism than we think we are.

Don’t get me wrong…we talk about the cross… but not for long. We tend to move past it pretty quickly because it can be a bit awkward…maybe even embarrassing to try and explain why an instrument of execution is the central symbol of our faith.

So we either rush past the cross to hurry up and get to Easter and the resurrection…to the whole power and glory thing…we like that part…which is pretty evident when you listen to and read most of the contemporary Christian music and books out there. Or we pretty the cross up by making it into art…covering it in gold or silver… making it into jewelry or putting it on a beautiful poster.

And the thing is this struggle with the cross is not a new problem….from day one…the message of the cross was difficult for people to believe. In our second reading today Paul is writing a letter to his young and struggling Corinthian church because they were still heavily under the influence of the wisdom of the day…the people from the real world….and as a result they were struggling with their Monday morning ears.

Now at the time of Paul what you knew and how well you expressed it….was what gave you status and power and the philosophers, debaters and scribes were treated with the kind of adoration that we treat movie stars and professional athletes with today….and these wise people of the world…these non-believers that surrounded the church in Corinth obviously thought that what Paul was teaching sounded a bit crazy.

They even got these young Corinthian Christians wondering if Paul with his teachings was trying to compete with their own teachings. But Paul is quick to point out that his gospel is not just another slickly packaged philosophy meant to compete with the others. It is an announcement about God intervening in the world for the sake of the world. And this wisdom of God…which is Christ…is so far above and beyond the wisdom of the world….that it’s a completely different discussion.

Paul isn’t saying here that wisdom has no place in the world. Sometimes this text is interpreted as wisdom vs. faith and so we should see wisdom is a bad thing. Paul isn’t saying that…the wisdom of the world is fine when kept in check….Paul is talking about a different kind of wisdom…a new kind of wisdom…the wisdom of God.

And the problem was that for all of their worldly wisdom these brilliant thinkers and philosophers that the Corinthians idolized….had failed to grasp the truth about God. They just couldn’t get past the cross…it seemed so foolish and so it became for them as Paul said a stumbling block….something that got in their way…tripped them up and kept them from going any further.

And it is still a stumbling block for so many people today. Armed with their wisdom gained from this world and their knowledge of logic and reason….there are many people who just can’t get past the cross. And really what can we say? After all it is true. When looked at from the world’s perspective the cross and what it means makes no sense. Love doesn’t win over sin and death. Forgiveness doesn’t overcome anger and pain. We don’t find ourselves by giving ourselves away.

But what Paul is teaching is that actually that is how it works…and for those who believe….the cross is the very power of God for our lives. What we see in the cross is the deepest truth about the character of God…his love his mercy…his compassion. The fact that he was willing to join with us in our suffering and sin so that through the death and resurrection of Christ he could overcome it for us.

And because of this knowledge our whole way of the seeing the world and living in it is turned upside down…and now everything must be looked at through the light of the cross. And when we do that we see that God’s ways are the opposite of the world’s ways.



Growing up there would be days where I would be playing with my brother and he would pull out the opposite day argument on me. Did you ever have that used on you…or maybe you were the one using it on someone else? So I would be playing with something of his and he would come up and take it…and I would be like, “hey you said I could use that.” And he would say “I know I did but today is opposite day didn’t you know that? So by saying you could use it….I actually meant you couldn’t.”

Now I used to get so frustrated by opposite day because I couldn’t figure out how my brother was getting the schedule for opposite days and I wasn’t….and back then we didn’t have the internet so I couldn’t even look it up. Now I won’t share how long it took me to actually figure out that there were no designated opposite days….let’s just say it was long enough….finally someone told me a few months ago.

As followers of Christ it is almost like everyday is opposite day for us…because God’s ways really are opposite of the world’s ways….and that’s exactly how it should be because ultimately they are the only ways that work. The only way to overcome anger and pain is with forgiveness. The only way to make your enemy no longer you enemy is to embrace them. The only way sin and death are overcome is with love. The only way to find yourself is to give yourself away.

Now maybe all of that makes sense in here to our Sunday morning ears…but we can’t hide in here where we are safe with our crazy thoughts and countercultural message…because we are called to take it out there…to talk about and live it…even when that will feel awkward and embarrassing. Even when we wonder what normal people will think.

But no one ever promised this would look normal in the worldly way…we are called to be foolish…we are called to look crazy….because we know….we know that the message of the cross as foolish as it may look from the outside…really is the power of God that transforms our lives.

Already we are almost half way through our Lenten journey…Easter and the resurrection will be here soon enough…and when they get here don’t worry we will celebrate the power and glory of God. But I think it is important that we not get ahead of ourselves. Lent is not just a countdown to Easter…the Lenten journey is important because it gives us time and space to think about what the cross means for the world and for our lives. To think about how the foolishness of God…is still so much wiser than any wisdom the world may have….and what a gift it is that he gives this wisdom to us. Does that make sense to your Sunday morning ears? I hope so…but even more I hope that all of us will go and live it out with our Monday morning lives.



Amen