Wisdom: The Art of Living Well...Pastor Phil Strong

Jesus: The Wisdom of God (Part 9)

11-21-10

(read: 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:10)

● I find standing before this story a bit like standing before the miracle of birth. Although I had developed some physiological explanations for the process (conception and gestation), they all paled in comparison to the miracle and mystery held out before me. Wonder was the truly appropriate response. The same is true as we stand before the cross.

● Like other would-be-messiahs before him, Jesus believed that he was somehow “fighting for” Israel as her representative; that victory would come about, or be born out of, intense suffering. In its darkest period, the “light” would burst forth signaling the dawn of a new day.

● Paul, typically, directs the issue back to the cross. “Why did Jesus die?” The ancients would have said that “he got in the way of the powers” (both incarnate and disembodied).

The problem of evil says, “Look wider; look deeper”. The difference between our culture and that of our ancestors is that they recognized the powers as evil and were willing to name them. The story tells how evil, in its various forms, all converged at the cross.

The political evil (empire of Rome- Pilate), the religious evil (corrupt temple system- Caiaphas), Israel herself as well as the powers working behind the scenes, if you will, influencing and motivating (e.g. demons shrieking at Jesus presence, Judas being prompted by the devil, etc.)

            The soldiers, the betrayer, the corrupt court, the disciples who abandoned him and the mocking observers… “If you are the son of God…” and “He saved Israel but he can’t save himself…” You discover even the sense of God-forsakenness: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

            The gospels record it this way: “From about noon until 3:00 p.m., darkness came over all the land…” (Matthew 27:45)

Paul saw the cross as the ultimately shocking and ultimately glorious work of God in defeating evil, once for all.

            Jesus would take what had become the widely-accepted symbol of death (the cross) and infuse it with death-defeating power.

● The ancient world knew how to celebrate victories over hated oppressors. Without the benefit of “Tweeting” or “24-hour news feeds”, they would return home parading all the proceeds of war--- the precious metals, laptops, droids, Wii games, espresso makers, and, if he had not already been killed in battle, at the very end of the processional, the defeated King.

            This was, in a sense, what the Romans thought they were doing with Jesus (who died under the banner of “King of the Jews”). They stripped him, beat him and dragged him through the streets, symbolically demonstrating their power to squelch any foe.

● Paul loves to rehearse the paradox of the cross: “… he stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority at the cross and marched them naked through the streets” (Colossians 2:15, Message).

● Paul was well acquainted with the conflict that existed between the gospel he proclaimed (wisdom of God) and the wisdom of the world (explanation of reality apart from God) [you can read about it in Acts 17].

He knew that when he came to a city like Athens, which was replete with philosophers, to stand up and talk about this One-True-Living-Creator-God who had made himself most fully known in a crucified Jew named Jesus, whom he then, subsequently, raised from the dead in order to justify him (declare him to be in the right; validate his claims), he knew what kind of responses that awaited him.

Acts 17 records the varying responses: “dismissive”… “intrigued”… “convinced”. I would offer that most everyone you encounter is somehow reflected in those responses.

● But, what was even more surprising was that people often believed him. It’s because he knew that no amount of flash or polish in his presentation could ever compete. But, he believed that the gospel, when declared in simplicity, unleashed a power of its own.

            He had many ways of describing this: “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’, except by the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). “…when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but, as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe” (1Thessalonians 2:13).

Part of the real beauty of the story is that it’s something we could never have come up with on our own [the big “twist”].

            In fact, the cross is most often politely removed from our accounts of the story because it just doesn’t fit; it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t resonate with our culture and its vision of progress.

Paul says, in essence, you would never have come up with this one on your own no matter how many experts you gathered.

The gospels tell the unique story of the Creator-God taking responsibility for Creation; bearing the weight of its dilemma on his own shoulders---Isaiah 9:6).

            This is what it looks like when God rescues his creation from the power of evil.

This is what it looks like when God says, “[he] looked and saw evil looming on the horizon--- so much evil and no sign of justice. He couldn’t believe what he saw: not a soul around to correct this awful situation. So, he did it himself, took on the work of salvation, fueled by his own righteousness” (Isaiah 59:15-16).

This is not an explanation. This is not a philosophical conclusion. It’s an epic story.

We notice all throughout the story, the juxtaposition of “sin” and “death”.

Death was never romanticized but always seen as an enemy. Death is the antithesis of all of God’s good purposes for his world and the great enemy of hope.

Death, not as some arbitrary punishment from God, but death as the natural consequence of cutting yourself off from God--- from life.

● So, if Jesus had really defeated sin, death could not contain him. If he rose from the dead, it meant he had dealt with sin, definitively, and that God had fulfilled his promise to Abraham. God’s new world had arrived.

Hebrews 2:14 “… through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by fear of death.”

That’s what we really want to hear, isn’t it: “You have nothing more to be afraid of!”

                But, fear is so woven into the fabric of our lives that we can’t shake it merely because we are told to do so. We are consumed with fear for our jobs, fear for our children, fear for our relationships, fear of being alone, fear of being abandoned, fear of what others think of us, fear for our finances. Fear that we won’t have enough; fear that we won’t be enough.

            Even worse, random fears… fears we can’t even identify.

Can you imagine living your life without fear? Why is it that we are able to trust Jesus in death, but not in life?

The cross is the sign to the world that evil is not the last word… love is.

Love, not as some sloppy, sentimental gesture, but as patient and kind, caring for others more than for self, not forcing itself on others, not keeping records of wrongs done, never failing. We’re skeptical because we’ve never been loved like that before.

“It is finished”, is not just about endings, but about hopeful beginnings.

John 5:36 “The work that the Father has given me to finish…” (Gr. ‘to perform the last act which completes a process’). You can almost hear, intentionally I might add, echoes of the Creation story.

If we are paying attention, the events of the cross and the resurrection are the Exile and Exodus being played out in “cosmic-3-D”.

“What would it look like if God were to come and address the evil which had so distorted and corrupted all that he loves?” Would he come in an epic way? Pillar of fire, legions of angels, guns blazin’!

 He would look like a young, Jewish prophet; challenging the restrictive nature of Israel’s leaders, eating dinner with the very people assumed to be part of the problem, welcoming those whom society had marginalized; he would play with children, he would dignify the women he would meet, he would heal the sick, compassionately touching the untouchable… being a friend of sinners. Dying with them; dying for them.

“And you will call him Emmanuel, which means, God with us” Matthew 1:23.

Jesus would allow evil the opportunity to do its worst. He would, in turn, take its full impact, but exhaust it in the process.

“Who got the last word, O Death? O, Death, who’s afraid of you now?” (1 Corinthians 15:33, Message)

● The implementation of such a truth is worked out over a lifetime. It’s why we must allow the story to wash-over us, to interrupt our fearful and enslaving thought-processes; to never allow ourselves to get over grace as the movement of God toward us and the movement of God in us to help us realize the life that he envisions for us.

● We come full circle from where we started in April of this year when I suggested that wisdom means…

            ►God has promised that he will restore all of creation so that it will one day become all that it is presently “groaning” to be.

            ►God has made possible, through Jesus, a new way to relate to God and one another; a way which eliminates any obstacle which might prevent us from being with God and each other in restorative ways.

            ►God has made possible a way to live “normally” in an “abnormal” world. He has inaugurated his Kingdom in, with and among us so that we might experience a taste or sampling of a world set right in the here and now.