MARCH 29th, 2024 PASTOR DON PIEPER
GOOD FRIDAY Psalm 31:9-14; Mark 14:22-15:33
The Corinthian Complex 1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-31
“THE IRONY OF THE CROSS!”
I can imagine the reaction. “Here we go again! Why is he always going on about that? That was years ago – decades ago, in fact. What's more, he wasn't even there! He was miles away in Tarsus at the time. So why is Paul always going on about the cross of Christ? The Romans crucified hundreds, thousands, of people. Why does Paul have such a morbid fascination with this crucifixion?”
As the Greek philosophers in nearby Athens had said about Paul's message: “What is this babbler trying to say? What is he advocating? These are such strange ideas to our ears!” (Acts 17:18, 20)
From a worldly perspective, they were right. Paul's “message of the cross” was pure foolish-ness to those who considered themselves intelligent, well-educated individuals. As Paul himself noted: “When we preach Christ crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it's all nonsense.” (1 Corinthians 1:23)
It would seem, not much has changed in two thousand years. Talk about Jesus dying on the cross to save us from our sins and you'll get a very similar reaction from many today. In most academic circles today the idea of Jesus dying for our sins is mocked and ridiculed or ignored. So why risk it? Why risk a friendship over something that happened so long ago? Why does Paul risk it?
Well, simply put, because “for those of us who are being saved, it is the very power of God!”
(1 Corinthians 1:18)
But what does that mean? How can that be? Why is the cross the focal point of our faith?
In the words of author, George Dell: “The field had to be broken, the iron molten, the orchard lopped, the wheat winnowed, the stream imprisoned above the mill. Perhaps it's the same with a person's life. From defeat greater endeavor must be born, from tears increased purpose, from despair hope. Why should a man fall but to rise again, die but to live? Such is the iconic irony of the cross of Calvary.” (from George Dell's The Earth Abideth)
Paul readily borrows from Jesus the imagery of the Gospel's irony. He contrasts the foolishness
of the cross with the wisdom of the world, writing that “The foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God's weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:25)
His words reflect the focus of Jesus' Kingdom message and ministry. We pray for His kingdom to come, do we not, yet it's a kingdom that Jesus says will turn our values on their head. It's a kingdom that comes not through human effort, yet is manifest as humans submit and pursue it. It's an upside down, inside out, kind of kingdom where Jesus said you receive by giving, you are exalted when you are humble, where weakness becomes our strength, and where the first are last and the last are first.
The Bible itself, from cover to cover, celebrates God's ironic use of bad events to serve God's overall will. Three fourths of the Bible records the remarkable failure of God's chosen people. At the end of the Old Testament the dream of bringing light to the Gentiles dissolves as Gentile armies all but annihilate the chosen vessels of light. Yet as the apostle Paul looks back on that history, he sees a major advance as God turns the tables on the schemes of the enemy. Paul himself used whatever was avail-able to further his mission. On Roman roads built by the Caesars to subjugate the peoples of the known world, Paul and company carried the message of the cross across the empire. He appealed to Roman justice for protection even though he, most of the 12 and Jesus himself died at the hands of that 'justice'.
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Over and over again God's ironic patter prevailed. As Paul notes to his friends in Corinth, Jesus' execution brought about the salvation of the world. “Your grief will turn to joy!” Jesus promised.
(John 16:20)
Paul notes that God's ironic will and plan for our redemption continues to be played out in the lives of Christ's followers. “Few of you were wise in the world's eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose those the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise and He chose the powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose those who're despised by the world, those considered worthless, to bring to nothing what the world values.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-28)
That is to say, that in a miracle of grace, our personal failures can become tools in God's hands as well. Many people find that a persistent temptation, even an addiction, is the very wound that causes them to turn in desperation to God, so that the wound forms a starting point for a new life.
After trying many faulty cures, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, finally understood the irony of the cross. He reached the unshakable conviction that an alcoholic must hit bottom in order to climb upward. Wilson wrote of his fellow addicts: “How privileged we are to under-stand so well the divine paradox that strength rises from weakness, that humiliation goes before resurrection, that pain is not only the price but the very touchstone of spiritual rebirth.” (Bill Wilson)
The irony continues throughout recovery. Very few alcoholics, or other addicts report sudden, miraculous healing. Graceis not a magic potion, but a balm whose strength is activated daily by deliberate dependence on God. Wilson discovered that one does not conquer one's demons by simply trying harder, but by utterly submitting to God's will and relying on His grace.
God's ironic way is audible in nearly all Jesus' stories and contacts. He held up the Good Samaritan, not the privileged religious leaders, as an example of mercy. His first missionary he chose was another Samaritan, a woman with five failed marriages in her resume. He pointed to a pagan soldier as a model of faith and transformed a greedy tax-collector into a model of generosity. On leaving, he turned over his ministry to a group of mostly uneducated peasants and roughnecks led by the traitor Peter. Each of their stories underscores the irony of redemption that is the power of the cross.
In the second week of our Lenten series two of Jesus' original disciples, depicted by two of his current disciples, described themselves as being snarky and as a couple of knuckleheads. In doing so they pointed to God's continued ironic ways by revealing his power thru weakened and fallen friends.
Paul pointed to the power of the cross by celebrating with his Corinthian colleagues what it is that Jesus delivered there – he delivered us from death into the very hands of the architect of life! “God has united you with Christ Jesus and Christ has made us right with God. It is Jesus who has made us pure and holy by freeing us from sin.” The cross is the bridge he built to life with God. (1 Corinthians 1:30)
We can't get there on our own but we can get there nonetheless. In most human endeavors, we determine the value of something by looking at the result of all the effort. A chemist who assembles compounds does not feel truly successful until someone finds a use for it. A novelist wants above all to be published and read. A prospector digs with one object in mind: locating the gold. Relationships proceed along a different path. In relationships, it is the journey that matters. Shared experiences create the intimacy we crave, and often difficult times bond the relationship the most deeply.
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It's no wonder that Paul and his peers referred to their following Jesus as “The Way”. Being Christian is not limited to what we say we believe but in our inviting Jesus into the daily details of our lives. As John Bunyan noted, only by pursuing the Way, progressing through its joys, hardships and apparent detours, can the pilgrim arrive at their destination. Phillip Yancey: “A relationship with God does not promise supernatural deliverance from hardship, but rather a supernatural use of it.” (Phillip Yancey)
There's a reason why today is called Good Friday and not Dark Friday or Tragic Friday. As
N. T. Wright poetically expressed it: “After the tears comes the silence: The slow night, the still sad time, Rinsed, empty, scoured and sore with salt, Spent, waiting without hope. After the night comes the Lamb: Bright morning star, with living water free and fresh, the fruit of Friday's toil.” (N. T. Wright)
Phillip Yancy tells of an Alzheimer's patient by the name of Betsy, who his wife visited in her nursing home residence. Each week they meet as if for the first time as Betsy fills her days staring vacantly into space, comprehending little to nothing of the conversations going on around her. Still, amazing, Betsy is able to read, often reading the same line on a card over and over again.
One Friday someone handed Betsy a hymnal and opened it to the hymn, “The Old Rugged Cross.” “On a hill far way stands an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame”, she began than abruptly stopped, and suddenly got agitated. “I can’t go on! It's too sad! It's too sad!” she said.
Staff and residents gasped. Others simply stared, dumbfounded. It had been years since Betsy had put words together in a meaningful way. She started to read again but again stopped at the same place and repeated her heartbroken litany: “I can’t go on! It's too sad! It's too sad!” Again and again, she repeated that line from the hymn and her sad response. The other residents slowly shuffled away, looking back in disbelief. Staff murmured in marvel: “What's happening?”
Betsy was wheeled back to her room and along the way she began to sing, to everyone's utter amazement, the entire hymn from memory. The words came in breathy, chopped phrases, and she could barely carry the tune, but the words rang out of her soul all the same with growing clarity:
“On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame.
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain.
So I'll cherish the old rugged cross, 'till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross, and exchange it some day for a crown!”
(The Old Rugged Cross by George Bennard)
Somewhere in her foggy mind, damaged neurons had tapped into a network of old connections to resurrect a pattern of meaning for Betsy. In her confusion, two things stood out: suffering and shame. Who knows better of human suffering and shame than Betsy, or my mom in her final days of dementia, and yet for her, for them, that classic, old hymn answered the question. Who knows...? Jesus does!
The hymn ends, as does the Christian story, with the promise that redemption will one day be complete, that God will vindicate himself with a burst of re-creative power, that personal knowledge of God will be as certain as the most intimate relationships we know on earth. As Paul will later put it: “For now we see through a smudged glass, but then face to face; now I know in part; but then I'll know even as I am also known. That is the message of the cross – and it is the very power of God!” (1 Corinthians 13:11-12: 1:18)