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The Lord be with you. (People: And also with you)
I invite you to stand as we begin with the invocation and
the reading
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Our scripture reading is recorded in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.
The first chapter,
beginning with verse eighteen.
“The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing
but to us who are being saved,
it is the power of God.
For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the disarmament of the discerning
I will thwart.
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe?
Where is the debater of this age?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world,
for since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through
wisdom.
It pleased God through the folly of what we preach
to save those who believe.
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,
but we preach,
‘Christ crucified’;
a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,
but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks,
‘Christ the power of God
and the wisdom of God’.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than men
and the weakness of God
is stronger than men.
For consider your calling brothers.
Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, and not many were
powerful,
not many were of noble birth.
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.
God chose what is weak
in the world to shame the strong.
God chose what is low and despised in the world,
even things that are not,
to bring to nothing, things that are,
so that no human being may boast in the presence of God.
He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus
whom God made our wisdom in our righteousness
and sanctification in redemption.
Therefore, as it is written,
‘Let the one who boasts,
boast in the Lord’”.
This is the word of the Lord.
Lord I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts may
be acceptable in your sight,
oh Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
The text I’ve chosen for this morning is recorded in Paul's first letter to the
Corinthians,
the first chapter,
verse eighteen.
“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”.
This is our text.
Some of you know there was a time a few years ago when I couldn't talk and
therefore, couldn't preach.
I was
attending a church where, I'll be honest with you,
the sermons were
kinda hard to hear.
And it wasn't because I was struggling
with the cross I had to bear,
it wasn't because the pastor was a bad speaker even,
it was because this
pastor seemed embarrassed
to even mention
the cross
or Calvary.
And you know, his reasoning was that it was kind of a downer for people
and really they didn't need to be reminded about all that negative
stuff there in scripture.
He didn't like that
confession of sins, frankly, either.
That was a guilt trip for people
that they just didn't need.
So he took out both of those, he took that out of the liturgy,
and I kinda
didn't know what to do.
Here I am as a pastor in the
congregation,
what can I do? So I invited him out for a Lutheran beverage.
You know, that's a good way to start out and, you know, I
decided to talk about things a bit.
And, interestingly enough, the topic of his sermons just happened to come up,
and I simply said to him, “You know, I appreciate
your sermons. I appreciated the sermon on Elvis,
and the one about Yoga and Good Friday was pretty good too,
but once and awhile, I would also like to hear
about the cross.
And amazingly,
the very next Sunday,
he mentioned
the cross in his sermon.
He told them a good friend had talked to him about this, and I was kind of embarrassed
a little bit.
But unfortunately, the Sunday after that, we were back to hearing about his golf
game
and the gospel took another
long vacation,
and so did many of the members too, for that matter.
So now what is it about the cross that bothers us so much?
Well, not everybody
is embarrassed,
it's often seen out in public,
you know it's a nice piece of jewelry;
Madonna made it a famous
fashion statement.
I've seen some pretty cool tattoos as well and
I'm actually okay with that.
But much, although not all, of this is just flirting with the symbol
that has lost a lot of its meaning
in our culture today,
as our culture seeks to
denuded the cross of its horror
and of its power.
You know there's a poem by Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy 0:05:41.669,0:05:44.879 at. that expresses what I'm trying to get at. Some of you may be familiar with it.
It's entitled,
“Indifference”.
“When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged him on a tree.
They drove great nails through hands and feet and made a Calvery.
They crowded with the crown of thorns red were his wounds in deep.
For those were crude and cruel days
and human flesh
was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham they simply passed him by.
They never hurt a hair of him they only let him die.
For men had grown more tender and they would not give him pain,
They only just passed down the street and left him
in the rain.
Still Jesus cried “forgive them for they know not what they do”.
And still it rained the wintry rain that drenched him through and through.
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see.
And Jesus crouched against a wall
and cried
for Calvary”.
Calvary, in other words, was more endurable
then the indifference that passes for faith today;
that was the message of that poem.
“The message of the cross is
foolishness
to those who are perishing”.
In fact, I’ll go a step further;
“the message of the cross is irrelevant,
it's inconvenient,
it gets in the way.
Frankly, it's kind of embarrassing, it doesn't really fit, you know, with the
image we have of ourselves
or the image, at least, we want others to have of us.
We’re supposed to be the successful one… you know, whatever that means.
Good grades, good money,
good job,
good scores on moral combat,
what does the cross have to do with any of that?
Well, maybe there's a little connection with mortal combat, I suppose we could
go that way.
But really the cross,
it's all about defeat, death,
dereliction.
You can kinda see why my pastor didn’t want to talk about the cross. I mean,
let's be honest about this;
the cross is for
losers.
Steely Dan saying they got a name for the winners in the world. I want a name
when I lose.
How about… loser?
Jesus was the biggest loser of them all
and it wasn't because he lost forty pounds on some TV show.
He was the biggest loser because,
frankly, he died as the worst
sinner
that ever lived.
He was foolish enough to take on more than we could bear;
my sin, your sin,
the sins of the world and it, frankly, killed him.
Or perhaps it's better to say he let it kill him.
The king of the universe
you know what he did? He set himself up.
He set himself up like someone playing Losers Chess.
You ever hear of this game?
The object of the game is to lose all your pieces
instead of
getting all the opponent’s
pieces.
In Losers Chess, the king wants to die
and, frankly, so do all his loyal subjects; including the bishops and pawns,
the rooks and knights, and even the queen.
In Losers Chess, you have to lose everything to win.
And that's exactly what Jesus did at Calvary; he lost in order to win.
He lost everything! He lost
his dignity,
he lost his reputation, he lost his father, he lost his friends,
he lost himself
and his own life, in order to win everything
and everyone.
The king deliberately put himself
in check when he went to Calvary and his opponent said, “Checkmate!”.
In went the nails,
the spear,
out went the last breath of life,
the kiss of death.
The king was dead.
Game over.
And it was over,
but the loser was that grand master himself; Satan, along with his pawns; sin and
death.
The game is over,
but it's also just getting started.
All you pawns, rooks,
and knights out there,
all you bishops… my
fellow Theology Department…
the queen too, which of course, is the church;
it’s game on for all of us!
But here's the thing;
we're all in the game
to lose.
Now I'm not talking about
Losers Chess, and I'm not talking about failing your midterm,
or bombing your paper, or not showing up for class.
Feeling like you're a loser that has nothing to offer the world,
that's a type of losing, sure,
but not a very helpful one because it's simply not true. I mean, each of you are
created in God's image
and have wonderful gifts to give as God put you here.
What I’m talking about is
losing yourself,
losing what this world uses to define you and instead defining yourself
by another standard; seen in the one who said,
“If anyone wants to save his life,
he needs to lose it”.
You know, there was a song by Queen back in 1977, it was my first
year of high school
and I went to a Lutheran high school- thinking about Lutheran Schools Week
last week-
and the song was
“We Are the Champions”.
Yeah, great song. It was usually played at most sporting events because of that
line, you know, “there's no time for losers
cause we are the champions of the world”.
Which then, of course, was followed by,
“We Will Rock You”. I’m not gonna do a chant for that so forget that.
But we are the champions!
But today’s text seems to be saying, “we are the losers my friends.
but we’ll keep on fighting till the end”.
Why? Because we know the biggest loser has already won everything
for us and he tells us
to lose too.
What are you supposed to lose?
Lose your self-serving pride,
lose your attitude of getting ahead at all costs,
lose your ***, greed,
hatred;
whatever it is that is getting in the way of your relationship
with Jesus. “Lose yourself,
and you'll find yourself”, Jesus says.
You find yourself in him. So take up your cross, take the gospel of forgiveness and
life
that seems so foolish to the world,
and see the power
that is there; a power that
is there even at the weakest moments of our lives, in fact especially there,
when there's nobody to turn to but God.
I mean, maybe midterms is a time when you're feeling a bit weak,
a bit overwhelmed, wondering if you're gonna make it.
But what those weak moments in our lives do, is they get everything else out of
the way;
all the distractions,
all the sideshows, all the fluff and stuff.
They take our guard down and they make us deal with the core of who we are,
and whose we are,
and who ultimately is in charge of everything, and who actually has the power
to do something about it.
That's something we often forget.
“For when I am weak,
than I am strong”
Paul says.
God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the
weak things of the world to shame the strong.
He chose the lowly things of this world, and the despised things,
and the things that are not to nullify, he says, the things that are,
so that no one may boast before him.
It’s better to lose
everything and gain Christ
than to have it all
and have nothing to show for it
except an empty boast in the end.
Well the message of the cross,
that is foolishness to the world, is the message
of a reckless God who put it all on the line
for you and for me. He played the
fools gambit
and gave up everything for one very simple reason; he loves you.
The loser that you, loser that I am,
he knows that sometimes you have to lose to win, that there is power in that
cross.
The cross is the power of God.
My former pastor didn't get that,
although I hope he does now.
The world doesn't get it either.
Frankly, it doesn't care.
Its got too much else to worry about than
to worry about an irrelevant cross.
But my fellow losers,
we are the champions of the world because we have a God who gave up
everything;
a God who’s strength was made perfect in the weakness of that cross where he
brought us to life.
Knowing that, may we take up our crosses
and follow him,
willing to lose whatever it takes to win and be with him forever.
In Jesus name, amen.