The Wisdom and the Power
23 January 2011
Third Sunday After Epiphany Year A
Isaiah 9:1-4; 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23; Psalm 27:1, 5-13
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God … Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ on the Cross: something that trips up Jews and impresses Gentiles as mere stupidity. But to those whom God is calling, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18, 22-24)
When I was in graduate school, I found myself often regretting that I did not have more time. I was father of a young family, trying to work nights to pay the bills, volunteering in my local church, and sometimes found my time to prepare for class was constrained. One day, I made the mistake of trying to explain my lack of preparation for an advanced Aramaic course taught by Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer, a Jesuit priest and one of the world’s finest Aramaists. I said that my time that week had been very limited and that was why I had run out of preparation half way through class. To this Fr. Fitzmyer innocently replied, with knowing eyes, “You know, Tony, you have all the time there is. Literally--there is no more time than the time you already have. It’s not that you have no time, but that choose to use your time differently than in preparing for this class.” I realized that he was right, as hard as this view seemed to be when I first heard it. In any given week, we all have exactly the same time. It all depends on our choices, on how we truly desire to use our time, and this despite all the various pressures and constraints we may feel coming from outside ourselves.
What we truly desire is sometimes not clear to us, due to our own lack of self-awareness or self deception. In the book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the young student wizard comes across the mirror of Erised—which shows the viewer what is the most ardently held desire of his or her heart. Harry’s mentor, Professor Dumbledore, tells him that it is not good to merely stare into such a mirror yearning, for a person could waste away their life lost in the vision rather than living one’s life. He does note, however, that learning what it is we most desire can be helpful in knowing oneself.
Recognizing what it is we truly desire can be of great use in ordering priorities and establishing values. If we find that our deepest desires are unworthy or wrong, such knowledge can help us sort out the issues and reorder our desires. If we recognize what we truly desire and find that our use of time and actions day to day are totally at odds with this desire, it can lead us to correct our course.
Saint Paul says that the idea of Christ on the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but the power of God to those whom God calls. He later says it is the power and the wisdom of God for those experiencing God’s grace. Such starkly different perceptions—“this is idiocy” or “this is the power and wisdom that makes sense of our lives”—reveal for Paul where our heart is. It is a kind of mirror of Erised, telling us what we truly desire. Paul sees the difference as rooted in the misperceptions and self-deceptions that most of us suffer.
The juxtaposition of the two ideas is stark: “Christ on the Cross,” that is, the desired Jewish figure of salvation, the Messiah, or ideal king of the future who would set all things right (that’s what the Greek word “Christos” means), dying on a Roman instrument of public torture, shaming, and slow death. The Messiah was supposed to fix all the bad in the world, not be overwhelmed by it. No wonder most people find it foolish!
He further explains what he means by contrasting what he sees as the deepest desires of the two largest ethnic groups he lives among: his own Jewish people and the gentile Greeks who surround them in the larger society and cities of the Mediterranean world. Jews, he says, seek signs; while Gentiles seek what they call wisdom.
He is referring to what the two groups base their values on, on what each demands as a warrant for authority, for meaning, for setting our priorities and ordering our life. He says Jews base their world view on a demand for evidences of God’s involvement: “Jews demand signs” that indicate God’s power, whether these are the miracles of Moses at the Exodus and establishing the Torah, or a call for obvious holiness and power on the part of prophetic figures or religious teachers. He contrasts this with the Hellenistic Greek culture’s fascination with philosophy, or the love of Wisdom: “Greeks look for wisdom.” That is, for the Hellenistic world, those claiming our intellectual and moral allegiance needed to demonstrate the internal coherence and consistency of their teaching and its congruence with accepted standards of prudence and wisdom. In the world in which Paul lived, people sought to find a reason for meaning and purpose in life seeking either evidence of God’s power or evidence of rationality and accepted moral prudence and wisdom.
To such standards of establishing value, Paul says, “we proclaim the Messiah on a cross.” He says this is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” And indeed it is a problem for anyone—regardless of religion or nationality—who don’t share Paul’s belief that God “constituted Jesus as the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead (Romans 1).
Paul’s experience of the risen Lord told him that death on the cross was not the end of the story, the sum of meaning. Rather he based his values and meaning on his experience of a Lord once horribly tortured to death who nonetheless was now more alive and vibrant than the living people he saw around him. And this turned many things on their heads. The legal demands of Scripture were no longer central. The distinction between so-called “good” people and “bad” people no longer mattered much. Death no longer held any terror.
And so it is for us. When we encounter the Risen Lord, our perceptions change, as do our desires. Life, once ordered by questionable appeals to our modern equivalents to the Hellenistic world's signs or wisdom, finds its meaning and value in the life, teachings, sufferings, death, and glorious bodily reappearance of Jesus. Love becomes the controlling principle. Hope, not guilt or fear, governs. Engagement, not apathy or resignation, takes over. Service, community, and worship in praise and thanks all of a sudden become very important.
And so it is for us. When we encounter the Risen Lord, our perceptions change, as do our desires. Life, once ordered by questionable appeals to our modern equivalents to the Hellenistic world's signs or wisdom, finds its meaning and value in the life, teachings, sufferings, death, and glorious bodily reappearance of Jesus. Love becomes the controlling principle. Hope, not guilt or fear, governs. Engagement, not apathy or resignation, takes over. Service, community, and worship in praise and thanks all of a sudden become very important.
Sometimes our perceptions of specific things can totally change. An example is how the author of the Gospel of John sees the crucifixion of Jesus itself. Where the larger early Christian view seems to have been "Jesus died on the cross, was raised from the dead, and then was lifted high into heaven," John says that it was at the very moment of the crucifixion that Jesus entered into glory, when he was “raised up on high” and "lifted up for all the world to see." It was this kind of shifted perception of the crucifixion that allows Paul to sum up his message as "Christ on the Cross." God in Jesus redeems what otherwise appears to be irredeemable, makes sense out of what otherwise appears to be senseless, gives meaning to what otherwise appears meaningless. When we encounter Jesus, things are no longer simply as they appear. And we are not what we were. That is why, for Paul, Christ on the Cross is a bellwether, a litmus test, a kind of Mirror of Erised.
If we take just what we experience here as the basis for our finding our meaning and values, I believe, there is little if any room for justice, fairness, or possibility of hope. There is only meaninglessness, randomness, and despair. Bold, existential attempts at creating meaning and hope within an empty universe begin to appear rather hollow if we base our judgment only on what see here.
Christ on the Cross was followed on the third day by Christ raised from the dead. And that risen Lord, though now gone from our sight, still speaks and calls. He is the source of meaning and value. When we hear his voice, everything starts to fall into place. He calls to us all. As we hear him, we begin to see what our deepest desires are. We begin to let him mold us, change us, from the distorted and broken things we are now into what God intended when God created us, into our true selves, and into our true desires.
Christ on the Cross was followed on the third day by Christ raised from the dead. And that risen Lord, though now gone from our sight, still speaks and calls. He is the source of meaning and value. When we hear his voice, everything starts to fall into place. He calls to us all. As we hear him, we begin to see what our deepest desires are. We begin to let him mold us, change us, from the distorted and broken things we are now into what God intended when God created us, into our true selves, and into our true desires.
The risen Lord is the ultimate sign of God’s intent, God’s love, and the universe’s meaning. He is the ultimate cohering principle and moral standard. "Christ on the Cross," says Paul, is "foolishness" to those who are perishing in a limited, hopeless world. But to those who hear God's voice, regardless of whatever limited standard of power or wisdom we once used, "Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
In the name of God, Amen.
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