The
Message of the Cross Makes the World’s Wisdom Foolish
Homily
for the Elevation of the Holy Cross (13 September 2015)
1
Corinthians 1:18-24 John 19:6-35
In today’s reading from
the First Letter to the Corinthians, St Paul explains “the message about the
Cross.” It is still a hard message for
us to understand. Like so many aspects
of Christian faith, it seems contrary to what we think of as normal.
Just think of a few of the
paradoxes of our faith: Jesus tells us
to love our enemies and to forgive those who hurt us—but our first reaction is
to hate our enemies and to try to get revenge.
Mary was a virgin, yet she gave birth to a son. Jesus is the Son of God, yet He became a
man. Jesus died and was buried, but He
rose to new life. In the Divine Liturgy,
we offer bread and wine, and the power of the Holy Spirit changes them into the
Body and Blood of Christ.
So here’s another
paradox: the cross was the most
humiliating and degrading form of death the Romans used to execute common
criminals. Yet Jesus willingly suffered
that death so that He could rise in glory and give salvation to the human race.
This is what St Paul is
talking about when he says, “God has made foolish the wisdom of the
world.” The wisdom of the world is what
we think we know. It is the whole mass
of facts and beliefs and opinions and customs that “everybody knows.”
But in fact what everybody
knows is different from place to place and from time to time. A few centuries ago, in Europe, everybody
knew that bathing frequently was unhealthy.
Now we are almost fanatical about washing. Not so long ago, everybody knew—including the
Catholic Church—that God approved of slavery.
In the USA, everybody knows that all of the people in the Middle East
are Muslim. When I was growing up in the
almond-growing country of Central California, everybody knew that green almonds
were poisonous.
What “everybody knows”
isn’t necessarily true.
St Paul says, “The Jews
demand signs and the Greeks desire knowledge.”
He means that different groups or nations have different ways of looking
at the world.
For us Christians, the
Holy Cross changes the way we look at the world. It is a stumbling block to some and a joke to
others, but to us believers it represents Christ,, the power and the wisdom of
God.
The Holy Cross is like the
flag of Christians. It does not save us,
but it is a symbol of our salvation. It
reminds us of God’s love and of Jesus’s life-giving death. It consoles us with the knowledge of
forgiveness and salvation. It inspires
us to endure suffering. It stands in the
middle of the world like the Tree of Life stood in the middle of Paradise.
But the Cross is
meaningless to us unless it makes us remember that the wisdom of the world—the
stuff “everybody knows”—is foolishness.
When we see the Cross, we must remember that Christians are different
from the rest of the world. We live by
the message of the Cross—Jesus’s message of love and forgiveness and justice
and salvation—not by the message of the TV dish or the internet.
Today we sing, “We bow in
worship before your Cross, O Christ, and we praise and glorify your Holy
Resurrection.” The world’s wisdom says
the Cross is humiliation and death. The
world’s wisdom says there is no Resurrection.
God’s wisdom says that Jesus came so that those who believe in Him would
be called by Him, would be His brothers and sisters, would love one another as
He loved us, and would not perish but would have eternal life, giving thanks
and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and
ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
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