Sermon on Theology of the Cross I Corinthians 1:18-25

Sometimes we work at cross purposes. Paul calls Christ crucified, the power of God, the wisdom of God.Luther called the turth of this the theology of the cross. The power of God is obscured by its oppososite. Dubus, in a Father’s Story, ends with a prayer. “God says, so you love your daughter more than Me. Yes, he replies. Then you love in weakness, god says. As you love me, the father replies. The cross appears to be divine foolishness, the weakness of God? Shakespeare has them possessing wisdom .My old teacher Donald Capps wrote that the wise fool sees the two-edged nature of life, of failure in success and vice-versa, the dangers of playing it safe. We do foolish things for love. Does it make economic sense to spend what, a quarter, a third, of a yearly salary on an engagement ring? Sometimes when something doesn’t make sense, we need to search for a deeper wisdom.

A few weeks ago, we read of the transfiguration, a resurrection preview. With Paul this morning we read that the cross transfigures everything. Use “things that are not” as God’s future, new action, new perspective. It looked like the cross closed all the doors. Only god could use ti to open up doors of salvation, to make an instrument of death, an instrument of eternal life. Only God can create a new future out of nothing, so tha tit is not more of the same. Only God can make something out of nothing, even the abyss of death. Is it the wisdom of God’s own as a victim, instead of seeing God as a potential victimizer?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to talk about the power of God in the resurrection? Why make a symbol of defeat the core of a faith? In part, it shows that God can be with us in thick of thin. In its way, it is a response to the question thrown at Job. It is one thing to get along when things are good, how about when they are terrible?

As Paul says, the cross faces the last great enemy death, and confronts it from within, even the shadows of the tomb. As Douglas John Hall says, really the last enemy is less death itself than the fear of death, the hold death has over life. As Moltmann wrote years ago, the cross is not afraid of death, so the crucified Christ can bring the world the change it so needs. Maybe that is a way to glimpse what Paul is getting at when he speaks fo the things that are not, the power of death, the power of erasing a life. The cross moves our eyes from our own suffering and to the suffering of others. It moves us to compassion and the quest to find ways to cure, at least to ease, that suffering.

I sometimes wonder if Protestants should have some crucifixes around. It keeps the cross from becoming quite so easily a piece of jewelry, a mark fo protection, or even a tattoo.

I under stand the notion of an empty cross-betokening resurrection, but it makes the cross safer, les awful, somehow. IN our time it would be a needle for lethal injection or an electric chair.

God is not on the side of the victimizers, because God is on the side of the one on the cross. God is not on the prowl looking for new sufferings to test us. That idea is cast out with the cross, in its sense of once, for all. It is not for us to tell others who suffer that is your cross to bear. With its arms outstretched, the cross tells us to reach out to those in trouble. God is willing to play the fool for love for us, to taste bitter defeat and even death for us. In the end, the cross tell us that we use use ever power at our disposal to kill God’s love, but love, weak little love, will still win in the end.