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Corinthians 1:18-25
Fourth Sunday in Lent
As I shared in the March Messenger, this text in Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth never
ceases to amaze me—amaze and offend. “For the word of the cross,” Paul wrote, “is
foolishness to those who are perishing; but to us who are being saved it is the
power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). Amazement might make more sense than offense.
So why offense?
The answer is embedded in the Greek. Paul says that the cross of Christ is
“foolishness,” from the Greek moria,
meaning “folly, absurdity.” Several
verses later Paul says, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews
and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ is the power of God and wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:23-24). The words “stumbling
block” is not strong enough, for behind the English is the Greek word skandalon, as in “scandalous.” The cross is not merely “foolish” and absurd,
it’s also scandalous, offensive, a shock to one’s notion of order and
propriety, an assault to reason and sense.
It’s shocking and disturbing and astonishing that a cross—this Roman
instrument of brutal torture and unspeakable pain, and, from a Jewish
perspective, an instrument of death, of extreme humiliation and disgust (both
for the victim and for the one forced to look at a crucifixion)—yes, it’s
shocking that a cross, of all things, should somehow, some way be a source of
life and power and hope.
Indeed, Paul wants us to see that the cross is a sermon.
“For the word,” the logos, “of
the cross is foolishness….” What Jesus experienced on the cross, what was
revealed about the nature of God on and through a cross, what was achieved on
and through the cross, the cross as symbolic act—all of it is preaching
something to us, conveying a message, extending a word. We could say, then, that the cross is an
event of proclamation. And the cross conveys
this “word” or message not once, but time and again. The cross is always
proclaiming a message to us through this event that continues to encounter us. Trying to summarize or fully articulate the
meaning of this sermon, the meaning of the cross, is, of course, the work of a
lifetime, the journey of faith. And often what the cross conveys (from the
perspective of the world) is, indeed, foolish, disturbing, unsettling, absurd, zany,
and maybe even a little crazy. But to
those who have been struck by the word of the cross, who have been moved by its
message, to those who have been stirred and transformed by the deeper wisdom of
the cross, it is something else entirely.
Paul says that those who have been struck by the word of the cross know
it is—remarkably!—the “power of
God.”
This is what amazes me. The cross conveys, transfers, reveals,
mediates, articulates, points to and participates in the very power of
God. The Greek word for power that Paul uses here, dunamis, is related to the English word dynamite and dynamic. Sure, it’s an
“explosive” image, but it should be viewed less as an expression of violent
eruption and more as intense, transpersonal, that is, non-human energy that
extends to us the dynamic being of God, a force that moves us and changes us
and transforms us. Paul uses the word dunamis (power) to describe his own personal experience of Christ,
as well as the work of the Holy Spirit.
All this probably sounds unusually abstract. I’m not trying to be theologically obtuse.
Instead, I’m trying to emphasize and draw out what’s embedded in the text. What
I’m trying to express is very real and concrete—there’s nothing more real than
the excruciating suffering of a body on a cross (especially for the one being
crucified). I’m trying to suggest that
the cross was not just a one-time event in Jesus’ life; the event itself
reveals something to us in our present.
It opens up something about the nature of God for us, something about the
grace of God; something that was true then and true now. In Fleming Rutledge’s recent book on The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of
Jesus Christ, a magisterial study almost 600-pages in length, taking
eighteen years to write, she asks an important question, “On the cross, was
Jesus simply showing us something (that is, something about God)… or was
something actually happening (that is, did Jesus achieve something for us on
the cross)?”[1] Probably a little of both. However, whatever was shown and whatever
meaning it has cannot be mediated to us apart from the crucifixion as scandal. Actually, we need to remember that, “In the
early days of the Christian movement the scandal
of the cross was far more self-evident than its meaning.”[2] The “meaning” took centuries to articulate—I
should say “meanings,” because the Church has never spoken with one voice or with
one understanding of the cross.
Almost two thousand years later, contemporary
Christians are prone to talk about the meaning of the cross, and over the
centuries theologians have conjured various “theories of the atonement,”
attempting to articulate what cannot be articulated.[3] We throw around statements such as “Christ
died for my sins,” assuming that “understand” the cross, that we understand
what Jesus was doing on the cross. Our
desire to focus on the “meaning” of the cross can too easily become an
abstraction, thus moving us away from the scandalous nature of the cross. Whenever we say what something means, we freeze-frame it, define it,
domesticate it to control it, tame it.
Once we think we know what it means, we’re done with it and we move on.
The
Apostle Paul knew what we tend to forget: the cross is always scandalous. It’s
an affront to reason and sense. The
“foolishness” of the cross, Paul said, preaches an unsettling word. And its message is no less disturbing for us
than it was for him. For Paul, the
scandal was and is that the power of God, the wisdom of God could be at work in
the most surprising and disturbing and shocking events and people—as in a crucified
body. The cry of dereliction from a crucified body is heard by the Living God,
indeed, is the cry of the Living God. Through
Christ, God experiences the pain and anguish of a crucified body. Indeed, God
is—can you believe it?—known, revealed in a crucified body. God’s love and judgment
and grace and power are at work in a crucified body—suffering, crying,
struggling, loving, dying. This is
nothing less than scandalous—and it needs to remain so. We should be wary about moving too quickly
from the offence of the cross to its meaning.
And we should always be suspicious of anyone who says this—and only this—is what the cross means. Yes, the cross has meaning(s) for us,
but it’s also scandalous, and it’s the scandalous nature of the cross that we
need to respect, honor, and preserve.
Because, you see, if it’s true that we discover God at work in Christ
suffering on a cross, this means that we cannot run from or avoid similar “bodies,”
that is, people who are being crucified today, in one form or the other. In other words, attention given to the scandalous
nature of the cross will open us up to meet God precisely in places and people
and situations that scandalize and disturb us.
In
The Cross and the Lynching Tree—referring
to the widespread practice of lynching in American society during Jim Crow—contemporary
theologian James Cone connects the lynching tree in the African-American
experience and the suffering of Christ on the cross (also known in scripture as
a “tree”). Cone says, “When American
Christians realize that they can meet Jesus only in the crucified bodies in our
midst, they will encounter the real scandal of the cross.”[5]
Just sit with this for a moment.
Where
is Jesus in the world today? Do you want to know where Jesus is in the world
today? Wherever bodies are being
senselessly crucified. He’s not causing
the pain, but sharing in, being present to the pain and suffering. God is encountered in human suffering, not
apart from it. We must not be afraid to enter the wounds of God’s people, face,
share in the suffering of our neighbors. We must not be afraid to meet God in
our deepest wounds. That’s where we meet
Jesus today. That’s where Jesus always
is, has always been, participating in human suffering. God is not “up there” in the sky, distant,
aloof, detached. God is “down here,” all
the way down into the depths of human suffering and pain, all the way “down”
into hell itself. This is just as
scandalous for us today as it was for Paul and the early church—and it’s just
as liberating for us as it was for Paul and the first Christians.
When
we enter into the places of deepest suffering, such as a cross, when we share
in the suffering of our neighbors, when our lives become cruciform something of
God’s power and wisdom and transforming love are experienced—I don’t know how
or why, because this makes no sense to me, it’s foolish and absurd, but it’s
true.
As we move through Lent and soon relive the drama
of Holy Week, I invite you to reflect and to pray and ask and share with family
and friends: consider the cross. What is
the “word of the cross” to you? If you
wear a cross, what does it mean to you? What
is the cross saying to you? Where is the
scandalous suffering of the crucified revealing the power and presence of God, leading
you to act?
[1] Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion:
Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 17.
[2] Joel B. Green and Mark D. Baker, Recovering
the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and Contemporary Contexts
(Downers Grove: IVP, 2000), cited in Rutledge, 17.
[3] For a helpful overview of these “theories,” see Colin E. Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of
Metaphor, Rationality, and the Christian Tradition (Edinburgh: T & T
Clark, 2003).
[4] James H. Cone, The Cross and the
Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016), 158.
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