"For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.... For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but those who are the called, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ the power of God and Christ the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength." [1 Corinthians 1:18, 21-25]
Here is my diagnosis of what most greatly hamstrings our witness and our presence in the world as Christians in the 21st century. We are not crazy enough.
If we are really speaking the Gospel, we have to sound... well, crazy, to the ears of conventional wisdom. The New Testament itself has been telling us so for two millennia, but we are slow learners.
Or perhaps we think we know better. Maybe that's it--maybe despite all of our professed devotion to Jesus, and our public insistence that our whole culture should pay more official ceremonial attention to Jesus, maybe the problem is that deep down, we think we know better than Jesus and his upside-down, unmarketable, cross-shaped, self-giving kind of victory. We think we know better than a message about a God who is vulnerable, because that doesn't sound "successful," or "masculine," or "practical" or "real-world" enough. We think that we have to soft-pedal the whole notion of a God who saves the world by dying at the hands of the empire rather than "just winning wars" against God's enemies.
Maybe we think we know better than the whole way of life Jesus embodied, too. Because, come on now, if we are really honest, we can see that the cross itself is of one piece with the whole approach Jesus practiced day by day, too--it was a life of radical selflessness, radical forgiveness, radical generosity, and radical non-retaliation. It was a life of absolute insecurity--no home, no weapons for self-defense, no bodyguards, no spin-doctoring or press secretary to help him dodge the questions put to him by others, and no wealth to guarantee his next meal. Well, yeah, if you live your life like that, and then invite yourself to parties with outcasts and notorious sinners, it will be no surprise when you get strung up on a cross.
That doesn't sound very marketable, so says the conventional wisdom, and so a great deal of the last two thousand years has been spent trying to make Jesus and his way of life seem more "reasonable," more "respectable," and more "religious." Quite often, it starts with us finding ways to make Jesus' words and example seem like they just don't apply to us.
"Sure, Jesus said to give to everyone who asks of us, but, come on, he surely didn't have to deal with people who might abuse that generosity like we do!" we say, as if Jesus wasn't well aware that people will take advantage of radical generosity.
"Sure, Jesus said not to return evil for evil... but he doesn't understand the kind of bad guys we are facing these days!" we protest, as though Jesus did not live in a world where his people were under constant foreign occupation by a pagan empire on one flank and violent anarchists on the other.
"Sure, Jesus said that if we welcomed strangers we were welcoming him... but he couldn't have meant the kind of strangers we are dealing with in our day! He must have only meant nice, kind, well-dressed church-going strangers... you know, who already know the hymns in our hymnals and will want to join our churches right away, too!" we tell ourselves, when, come on, the Bible Jesus read (what we call the Old Testament) used the word "stranger" to mean "someone of a different nationality, different culture, and by definition, a different faith," not "prospective member of your church who just moved to town."
We have spent an awful lot of time, energy, and ink trying to paper over what Jesus actually said and did, and the way he actually lived and died and rose, because all of that just doesn't sound... reasonable.
And you know what? We end up just sounding like we have nothing that is "good" or "news" to tell the world then. We end up sounding like we are just one more voice of the conventional wisdom, just padded out with occasional inspirational quotes. We end up sounding like more of the world's basic advice of, "Be at least moderately good so that good things happen to you, while you chase after the same old goals as everybody else of more money, bigger house, and a life free of having to think about others." We just put a religious veneer on it.
So... here's my suggestion. Let's actually listen to what the apostle Paul had been saying from the beginning, and let's stop trying to make the Christian faith "sell" better by making it sound more common-sensical. Let's just quit even trying to make the news of a crucified God sound plausible or palatable or anything other than scandalous. And let's quit trying to make Jesus just one more voice of generic advice for how to make your family life better and your job more satisfying. He is not, and he isn't trying to be. Jesus instead gives us God's upside-down (to us) picture of how the universe really works, and that always is going to sound foolish to our ears until we dare step into the life of following Jesus. Jesus' way of winning and ruling the world seems as foolish to our conventional wisdom as Einstein's theory of relativity and of a space-time continuum would have sounded in Isaac Newton's ears. But once you make the leap into Einstein's view of the universe, things make sense in a way they never quite did for Newton's picture.
The same is true for us. Let's quit trying to make the Christian gospel look like a self-help or get-rich-quick scheme, or like the cross offers some secret insight for getting your kids on the honor roll and reducing crime in your neighborhood. It won't. But frankly, twenty centuries of "reasonable common sense" (that is, life lived by self-interest) haven't dealt with the brokenness inside each of us. Two thousand years of trying to re-brand Jesus' message as, "Well, don't hit the other guy first, but once he hits you, you have to stand up for your own reputation and punch back harder, or else you might get laughed at..." hasn't stopped "the other guy" from throwing punches. Making Jesus sound more reasonable doesn't get more people to want to follow him--it creates a fake Jesus who is less and less worth following at all.
Today, then, let's follow the lead of the line attributed to the French Easter liturgy that says, "L'amour de Dieu est folie!" ("The love of God is folly" or, to put it a bit more colloquially, "God's love is crazy-talk!") Until we are speaking of a love that sounds like nonsense, we are probably settling for something less. Until we are announcing a way of life that breaks with the old tired rut of conventional wisdom, we aren't speaking the Gospel. Until we are confessing as Lord a crucified homeless rabbi who didn't get along with the religious establishment and wouldn't endorse the political leaders of his day, we are probably worshiping an idol of our own making.
Today, let your faith stop trying to "look normal," like it doesn't make a difference in how you do what you do today. Today, let's start everything trusting that God's cross-shaped love really is crazy-talk... and that maybe we can be more in tune with Jesus' kind of victory when we try to let it make us look a little more crazy.
Lord Jesus, thank you for the holy foolishness that is your love. Let us speak it, live it, and lean on it today, come what may.
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