Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; 1 Corinthians 15:32 Series: 2021
Third sermon in the Lenten ‘Restless’ series, on being restless with foolishness, preached from 1 Corinthians 1:18-25. Paul’s play on foolishness/wisdom according to the cross versus the world frames the message: the world’s wisdom is endlessly restless, always chasing the next thing (Bitcoin, fashion, apps, fantasy football), and boredom is diagnosed as the ancient sin of acedia (citing Cassian and Aelred). The kerygma of the risen Christ offers God’s abundant life freely, against the transactional logic of the world (no free lunch, Facebook users as product). The preacher calls the congregation to embrace the foolishness of the cross, which is concretely the foolishness of radical love of neighbor, and to break through the world’s lies about worth and the next great thing, being willing to look foolish for God.
Illustrations: star-wars-fandom, obi-wan-more-foolish, han-shot-first, bitcoin-gamestop, fantasy-football, cassian-acedia, aelred-enlarge-horizon, facebook-product, no-free-lunch, no-bargain-with-god
March 7
Restless with Foolishness
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
A few weeks ago, pastor Matt asked me if I liked Star Wars, and I didn’t know exactly how to respond. I didn’t know how much he was ready for. There was a period of my life when I adored Star Wars and the Star Wars Universe. There was one moment in about 1999, when I had read every book in the Star Wars expanded universe all of them. I looked at the list on starwars.com to confirm. I think there were about 45 novels published at the time, as well as The Shadows of the Empire comic books, where a clone of the emperor comes back and Luke thinks that he’s going to get close to the Emperor in order to betray him but then Luke actually ends up turning to the dark side and Leia, who is almost always super Force powerful in the stories, ends up saving him. The movie watched the most was of Return of the Jedi because we had a recorded copy of it from HBO from when my grandparents had got a subscription to HBO for six weeks and recorded all of the movies on VHS. I remember having long debates on online message boards and icq in the 90s. For instance, a lot of arguments about the edits to the original Star Wars episode four a New Hope and whether Greedo or Han shot first. George Lucas went back and did some edits and used a little better technology before releasing a special edition, but he changed that interaction and made it so Greedo shot first. Nerds don’t like change. I also had lots of debates about the prequels. I was excited about the prequels before they came out. I was interested in how much of the end of the Star Wars novelization from 1978 would be included in the movies. All that is to say, I didn’t know exactly how to answer pastor Matt’s question, but I do like Star Wars. My Star Wars fandom has mellowed a lot but over the years, that doesn’t mean I have forgotten much. There’s this one scene in the first Star Wars movie episode 4 where Obi-Wan Kenobi that I kept thinking about this week. Obi-Wan and Han Solo and Luke Skywalker are together and Han says to Obi-Wan Kenobi, “Oh, you’re just a foolish old man.” And Obi-Wan says, “Who’s the more foolish the fool or the fool who follows him?” Foolishness is a funny word. It’s always a contextual word. Who is the more foolish? Foolishness is always compared to someone or something. Who is the more foolish, the fool who thought Star Wars was a cool movie or the fool who spent hours and hours and days and days and days reading, arguing, digesting this made-up story for children. Who’s the more foolish?
My brothers and sisters, We are continuing our series on restlessness. Two weeks ago, we talked about being restless with temptation. How temptation is always tempting and it leaves us restless, unless we rest in God. Last week, we talked about being restless with suffering. How suffering collapses our vision so that it’s hard for us to see and think straight but our goal in life is not to avoid suffering but to stand with those who are hurting in this broken world and to point to the healing and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This week, our theme is being restless with foolishness. There’s a deep ambiguity with this term. Foolish according to whom? In the scripture I just read from First Corinthians, Paul plays up this ambiguity. There’s a foolishness according to the cross and a foolishness according to the world. There’s a wisdom according to the cross and a wisdom according to the world. When we act as Christians and follow Jesus Christ, we can look foolish to the world. Later, in this letter, Paul points out that if there is no resurrection of the dead, we should just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. But if there is resurrection, t everything should change. And we must live our lives in the truth of this reality that the universe has been turned upside down by resurrection. Death no longer has power over us. And yet, it can still be difficult to parse out the difference between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of the cross. In some ways, Christians have made the cross quite worldly and palatable. The church tasted power and it liked the flavor. The church tasted influence and authority and it liked the flavor. The wisdom of the world is constantly seeking the next thing. What is the next thing? What is the next Bitcoin or Gamespot stock? What is the next thing? What is the next technology? What is the next app? What is the next fashion? What is the next hit streaming show? The world tells us we need to stay ahead of the curve. What is the next thing? What is the next device? It’s going to be great. What is the next football star that we need to draft in our Fantasy League. What is the next thing? The wisdom of the world is easily bored. The wisdom of the world easily finds things old and empty. Boredom itself points to a deep restlessness. Boredom is a form of restlessness. When we are bored, we are not in a comfortable place. We’re not where we think we should be. We think about other things that we could be doing. We think of other people who could be entertaining us. “This party is boring. There’s nobody to talk to. The sermon is boring. He just goes on and on. The song is a boring. I don’t see the point. It’s just the same thing over and over again.” In our house, we try to restrict the use of the word boring. It’s like using another kind of swear word. It is not to be done. Boredom so often comes from our own lack of willingness to truly see what is around us as God’s beautiful and interesting creation and presence. Boredom in Latin is acedia, which John Cassian described in the following way to monks under his supervision : He looks about anxiously this way and that, and sighs that none of the brethren come to see him, and often goes in and out of his cell, and frequently gazes up at the sun, as if it was too slow in setting, and so a kind of unreasonable confusion of mind takes possession of him like some foul darkness
This acedia can strike us all, and if we wish to resist, something must change.
As an early Christian writer (St. Aelred) said, “If we wish to resist the promptings of our sinful nature, we must enlarge the whole horizon of our love to contemplate the loving gentleness of the humanity of the Lord.” We need to expand our horizon. We need to expand our vision. This world is interesting and fascinating wherever we are, but often, we get limited by what we think can hold our interest or we’re so easily distracted by what is around us? We’re distracted by the dopamine hits of movies or of social media and getting likes and shares. We’re distracted by the dopamine of our team winning: our sports team winning our political team winning. We’re distracted by outrage. Facebook is designed to have the most outrageous items shared as widely as possible because if you are outraged, your eyes are on Facebook and they make money. All of these point to what Paul calls the wisdom of the world. Paul also says that in God’s wisdom, God realized that the wisdom of the world could not lead us to God; Only the wisdom of the cross. God was pleased through the foolishness of the kerygma to save believers. Kerygma is a Greek word. It kind of means what is preached about or what is taught in churches. The kerygma is the heart of the good news. Christ is risen! Christ resurrection is offered to us. More than the miraculous, we are offered God’s abundant life freely. Economics has an old saying, “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” The basic idea of which is that all of our actions have costs. Just because we don’t see them, does not mean that they are not there. For instance, Facebook and other social media is free because we are the product being sold.
As a theologian wrote, “Jesus teaches that our relationship with God should not be thought of as a transaction in which I give something to God—some slice of my time and attention, some thing that I give up as a sacrifice, some number of good deeds—in order to receive some benefit, whether this be a crude expectation of prosperity and material gain or, perhaps more likely, the more sophisticated desire for peace of mind and spiritual consolation. This is the idea that I can give God some determinate amount of my love, or at least of my obedience, in order to receive some specific reward. The entire life of Jesus is an assault on this idea. In embodying for us the God who is love, the God with whom we can strike no bargain but to whom we can give nothing less than everything, and from whom we can only receive with gratitude”
The foolishness of the cross, the foolishness of the kerygma by which we realize the truth of God can be a true foolishness. People can laugh at us. People can dismiss us. People can think we are suckers. For us in the season of Lent, are we willing to look foolish in front of others in order to stay faithful to God? And really, the kind of foolishness I think Paul is pointing to, and the kind that Jesus over and over again points to, is the foolishness of radical love for neighbor. Are we willing to look foolish? Are we willing to look unreasonable in our love of our neighbors? Are we willing to be challenged for our love of our neighbors? Are we willing to push against what is expected of us for our love of our neighbors? Are we willing to prepare our children to love their neighbor? Do we believe so much in God’s absolute love and perfection that we can share it with our friends even when it may make us look foolish? Are we willing to be mocked because of God’s radical love for our neighbors? Because, what it comes down to is that the wisdom of the world leaves us restless. The wisdom of the world is always trying to find what’s next. The wisdom of the world is always trying to compete with the people around us, always trying to be more clever, always trying to read more Star Wars books or watch more of the movies. The wisdom of the world tells us to moderate the kindness we show people. The wisdom of the world gives us rationalizations for why we shouldn’t do too much. Ultimately, this wisdom only gets us to a restless place. We never arrive where we are seeking. There is no end to the next thing. There’s always a next, next thing. In mathematical terms, it is always n+1. We don’t get to our source by trying to follow the latest fashions. We don’t get to our source by trying to stay ahead of the next big thing. We find rest and we find peace when we seek the Living God, who created everything. When we’re willing to be foolish for the sake of the Cross. When we’re willing to be foolish for the sake of our neighbor. When we’re willing to restructure our lives around offering ourselves to others. Love of neighbor is not a side gig. Loving our neighbor is not something we can just, you know, do in the marginal time once we’ve loved ourselves enough. God shows us what will happen if we marginalize love of neighbor and love of God, if we push that to the side, if we keep that as a tangent of our life instead of the center of our life. We are going to be restless. We are going to be unsatisfied or we are just going to lie to ourselves. In the season of Lent, I encourage you to break through the lies that the world tells us about what our value is and what our worth is and how we must always be striving for the next great thing. Let us break through the lies that tell us that unless we can do everything we can do nothing. Let us break through the lies that tell us that if you’re not contributing to society anymore, you’re not worth anything. Let us be willing to be foolish for God. In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.