Playing the Fool

Delivered March 11, 2012

I Corinthians 1:18-25
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There was a time when fools had a place in society. It was not exactly an honored place, but it was role that allowed them to make a living and even move in high social circles. I am talking about jesters who were a part of court life. In Medieval times jesters were a common sight in royal courts, and in Renaissance times aristocratic households employed them. The stereotype of such a fool is a man who wore a distinctive colorful costume with a three-cornered hat with bells on the ends. They were regarded as court mascots, who not only provided some comic relief, but were supposed to speak the truth when others were afraid. They were expected to criticize their master or mistress and their guests. In fact Queen Elizabeth I is said to have rebuked one of her fools for being insufficiently severe and critical of her. Excessive criticism, however, could lead to a fool being punished, or even executed, if the royal family decided the fool had overstepped his bounds. So it could be a precarious position to hold; you had to play the role of the fool wisely.

Today there are no such wise fools that I can think of. We have comedians who make fun of the powerful, it is not quite the same. In the Bible we find the word fool used most often in the book of Proverbs where the fool is contrasted with the wise person. The word fool is used to describe the one who departs from God’s ways. The Psalms go so far as to declare, “The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” In fact the term “play the fool” comes from the King James Bible. It is from a scene where King Saul, who was a bit crazy, apologizes to David, whom he is trying to kill. He says to him, “I have sinned. Return, my son David. For I will harm you no more….  Indeed I have played the fool and erred exceedingly.”

In the New Testament Jesus tells the parable of a rich man who stores up possessions on earth, and neglects his spiritual life. When he dies, God calls him a fool. But in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus warns, “Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.” You would think that Jesus’ admonition would cause his followers to delete the word from their vocabulary, but we haven’t. The word fool is regularly used to describe those we wish to criticize in the harshest fashion. To be called a fool is the harshest putdown.  No one wants to be thought a fool. As the saying goes, we do not suffer fools gladly. No one wants to be made to look a fool. And that brings us to our Epistle Reading for this morning. The apostle Paul uses the term fool in connection to the message of the cross. He describes how the gospel is viewed by people and how he views it. There are three things he says about the message of the cross.

I. First, he says the message of the cross is foolishness. He says in 1:18 “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.” He says in verse 23 “we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness.” The heart of the Christian gospel - the cross - is considered foolish to many people today. As a pastor I have come across this very many times. I am considered a fool by many people for what I believe, and you would be considered fools also, and not in a light-hearted jesting way. The so-called New Atheists, who would be more accurately described as antitheists, make it clear that they consider Christians to be fools for believing what we do. It goes to show that things have not really changed in the two thousand years Paul penned these words. The message of the Cross is still considered foolishness. Why?

The message of the Cross is considered foolishness because the existence of God cannot be proven. This is the one argument I keep hearing over and over again. We live in a Western society that considers science to have the final word on all truth. The scientific method can only speak about the physical world. It can say nothing about the spiritual realm. God is not an object somewhere in space and time in the material world. God is not an energy field that can be measured.  By definition God is Spirit who transcends the physical world. Therefore science has nothing to say about God one way or the other. Those who dismiss God on scientific grounds have assumed that the only reality is that which can be measured with scientific instruments or deduced from scientific data. Their presupposition is that nothing else exists. That assumption cannot be proven. Science cannot prove or disprove God; God is outside the domain of scientific investigation.

The message of the Cross is considered foolishness because Jesus – especially his nature as the Son of God and his resurrection from the dead - cannot be proven. That is true. Jesus lived 2000 years ago. You can’t even use the word “prove” when it comes to ancient history. You can only look at the archeological and written evidence. When it comes to ancient personages, the life of Jesus is better documented than any other life. Of course the events of his life were not recorded by impartial historians using the modern methods of gathering and confirming information. There was no modern discipline of historical science back then. But Jesus’ life, works, deeds, and even his resurrection are better documented than most other events in the ancient world.

Even people in the first century thought the idea of Jesus’ resurrection was foolish. There is a scene in the book of Acts where the Apostle Paul has the opportunity to present his case before the distinguished philosophers of Greece at the Areopagus – Mar’s Hill in Athens – a gathering place for thinkers located right below the Parthenon at the Acropolis. The intelligentsia of the time listened respectfully to Paul until he mentioned the resurrection. Then they began to mock and heckle him. It is the same today. People today often dismiss Jesus’ resurrection out of hand, saying it is silly to believe this because it is obviously impossible for a man to come back to life after really being dead from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. Yes, of course it is! That is the whole point of the resurrection of Jesus – it is a once-in-history event! If it was commonplace or scientifically repeatable in the laboratory, it would have no historical or theological significance! Of course, you can’t prove it two thousand years after the fact. But the historical scientific method can’t say it didn’t happen either, only that it is highly improbable – which is the Bible’s point. You have to weigh the historical evidence. As far as Jesus’ divine nature is concerned, of course you can’t prove that Jesus is the Son of God. But it is a reasonable inference if the New Testament documents are reliable in what they say about his life.

II. I want to move on to my next point - that the Message of the Cross is a Stumbling Block. Again verse 23 says, “but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness….” The Greeks thought it was foolish to believe the Christian gospel, but to the Jews it was a stumbling block. Someone asked me after worship last month why most Jews do not believe in Jesus as the Messiah. The answer is the Cross; it is a stumbling block. The Greek word used here is skandalon, from which we get the word scandal. Literally the message of the Cross is scandalous. Again, why?

It is scandalous for two reasons. First because Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. That was and is blasphemous to monotheistic faiths like Judaism and Islam. It is considered idolatry to say that a human being is God. This is why Jesus was crucified according to the four gospels in the NT, because he claimed to be the Son of God. At his trial Jesus was interrogated by several authorities secular and religious. As you follow his trial in scripture there was no case against him until he admitted he that was the Son of God and the King of the Jews. One was blasphemy to Jews and the other was treason to the Romans. For that reason the Sanhedrin condemned him and Pilate gave the order for him to be executed.

Today in many spiritual traditions it is not scandalous for a man to claim divinity. There are all sorts of gurus and avatars who claim to be divine. There are religious philosophies that teach that we all are divine. In fact they preach that salvation is waking up to this self-knowledge that we are all God. Claiming divinity is not likely to get you crucified today; indeed it is likely to get you a following with TV appearances and a best-selling book. What is scandalous today is to claim that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. That is seen as intolerant and exclusivist. One will be labeled narrow-minded or fundamentalist other pejorative terms. The message of Jesus as the only begotten Son of God is still scandalous to people; it is still a stumbling block.

The other reason the gospel is considered scandalous is because this Messiah Jesus, this only begotten Son of God, was crucified. It was scandalous to the Jews at the time because they expected the Messiah to be a national hero of great strength and power who would conquer the enemies of Israel, not be killed by them. No one likes weakness any more than they like fools. What if one of our presidential candidates advocated weakness as a virtue for our nation? What if he advocated loving our enemies and turning the other cheek even if it meant being our death as a nation?  Any chance that person would be nominated or elected president? Of course not! Likewise there is no chance such a person would have been hailed as Messiah - which was a political and military role - by first-century Jews. That is why a crucified Messiah was and is a stumbling block.

The crucified Jesus is still a stumbling block today, but for another reason. Today it is considered scandalous to say that it was necessary for Jesus to die on a cross for us to be redeemed from sin. People don’t have a problem with Jesus the Teacher, Prophet or even as Martyr for truth –like a Hebrew Socrates. But to say that he intentionally offered himself as a Sacrifice for sins is not very popular, even in many Christian circles. And to say that God the Father wanted this is scandalous. The New Atheists describe God the Father as a Cosmic Child abuser. The Cross is too violent for people to accept as God’s plan. It feels primitive and messy and wrong. The idea of Christ as an Atonement for sin is uncomfortable.

People do not understand why it is necessary. Why couldn’t God just be a nice Guy and just forgive with a snap of his divine fingers. God as Harry Potter – a wave of the divine scepter, say the magic words and everyone is forgiven. That is what people want. That is the type of popular deity that people make in their own image. To present Jesus Christ as a Sacrifice for sin is offensive. It is scandalous. It is a stumbling block in our post-modern religious world as much as it was 2000 years ago.  What the apostle Paul says is still true. “¹⁸ 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.” “we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, ²⁴ but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”   

III. This brings me to my third point this morning – that the message of the cross is revolutionary. By that I mean that it turns everything upside down. To most people the Cross is foolishness and scandalous, but to us it is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

It is the power of God. The cross looks like weakness. On Good Friday it looked like Jesus and his movement was defeated. The Leader was executed and his followers all fled in fear. What else could this be but weakness and defeat? How else could the world possibly see it? But in fact with eyes of faith it is seen as the power of God at work.  The Cross was part of God’s plan. It was not a mistake or an unforeseen development. The gospels make it clear that it was Jesus’ plan to go to Jerusalem and die. At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry John the Baptist pointed to him and declared, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” The Cross is divine power clothed in weakness.

In the Cross something happened that could not be accomplished any other way. On the Cross it was not just a man dying. It was death dying. It was the power of sin dying. It was evil being defeated. This is why I call it revolutionary. It was exactly the opposite of what everyone thought was happening. Everybody thought this was the end, but it was only the beginning. Everyone thought this was the end of Jesus life, but he was just getting started. That would not become clear until Easter morning, but it was already true on the cross. The cross of Jesus looks like death, but it is life. It looks like condemnation, but it is salvation. It looks like judgment, but it is mercy. It looks ugly to the world, but to us it is beautiful. It looks like the triumph of hate, but it is actually the victory of love. It is the power of God for those who have been called by God.

And it is the wisdom of God. “we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, ²⁴ but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”   Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah in our passage, saing, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”²⁰ Then he says, “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? ²¹ For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.”

Christianity is viewed as foolish by those who consider themselves wise. Christians are characterized as ignorant by those who consider themselves educated and intelligent. Religion is seen as a crutch for the weak and feeble-minded. The resurrection is viewed as a myth to be believed only by the gullible and superstitious.   The gospel is ridiculed as a self-deception accepted only by the foolish and the weak. But scripture says, “we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.”   Therefore I will gladly play the fool, and I invite you to play the fool with me.