Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany (A/RCL)
I Corinthians 1.18-31
Holy Trinity, Manasquan
Most of you missed the sermon I preached last weekend J, so I feel comfortable quoting from the same book I quoted then, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.
The novel involves a group of black women who have a special fondness for an old ship’s figurehead they call “Our Lady of Chains.” To them it represents Mary, the mother of Jesus. They tell a story how this statue washed up in just the right place to comfort their ancestors who were slaves. Our Lady of Chains encouraged their forebears to escape from slavery. They explained how “The bold ones fled, finding their way north, and those who didn’t lived with a raised fist in their hearts” (p. 109).
Once a year on “Mary Day,” August 15th, these women in the novel who are called the Daughters of Mary perform a ritual in which they wrap the statue in actual chains, to remember how the angry slaveholder used to whisk it away to remove her freeing influence. It never worked, though. The story these ladies tell about the statue is:
The master chained her in the barn fifty times, and fifty times she loosed the chains and went home. Finally he gave up and let her stay there. (p. 110)
The main character in The Secret Life of Bees is a fourteen-year-old white girl named Lily. She sleeps in the honey house where the Daughters of Mary place Our Lady of Chains overnight during this annual August ritual. Lily has a heavy heart and needs some comfort. All alone in the honey house, she looks at the statue swathed in chains and admits:
…[S]he didn’t look like she could be of service to anybody, bound up with all that chain around her. You want the one you’re praying to at least to look capable. (p. 258)
So – how capable does He look?? [Glancing toward crucifix on shelf in sanctuary….] He’s the One we pray to. Can you see how that would seem strange to somebody coming to all of this cold, somebody without our faith? Why would we consider Someone to be all-powerful who can’t even move His arms and feet because they’re nailed down?? What could we reasonably expect Him to do for us??
That was the attitude of a lot of
people in the mid-first century when
The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing…. (I Cor.1.18)
For
Most of the Jews of that time considered Jesus’ death on a cross an absolute scandal, because of Deuteronomy 21.22-23 which says:
When someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and is executed, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree; you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse.
To them, that referred to anybody who was crucified. In their opinion, not only was Jesus not divine, He was cursed by God. Understandably, in their minds that took Him out of the running to be their Messiah.
A supposed savior dying on a cross didn’t make sense to the Greeks either. They were pagans who worshiped power-full, not power-less gods. Their gods were in control. Their gods called the shots. Their gods were cool. They were not convicted enemies of the state and they did not die at all, no less die shameful deaths. How could someone who died protect anybody else from death??
The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing…. (I Cor.1.18)
…[B]ut we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called… Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. (I Cor. 1.23-25)
God’s actions don’t follow human logic; God’s actions are driven by divine wisdom and loving mercy. Jesus didn’t end up on the cross because He was powerless; He hanged there because He was obedient to the will of His Father in heaven, who sent the Son not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him…. Why the Son had to die is a great mystery we cannot begin to understand.
But what we do know is that:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor.5.21)
What we do know is that our Lord Jesus took upon Himself the punishment we should have borne for the sins we have committed.
…[H]e was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed. (Isaiah 53.5)
That is the mystery and that is the wonder. The cross, an ancient instrument of torture on which our Lord died, became the tree of life for us.
Seen from our painfully limited human
point of view, God’s actions often make no logical sense. For instance, why did God call such a ragtag
bunch of people to be the believing community in
…[N]ot many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.
(I Cor. 1.26-29)
Sometimes we look at our own lives and think, “What is God doing here?” “Where do I go from here?” “How can anything good come out of this painful circumstance?” And then we are blessedly reminded that God’s ways are not our ways, that God does not judge as humans do, that heavenly sense looks a lot different than earthly logic, that “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
The Daughters of Mary in The Secret Life of Bees call their statue “Our Lady of Chains,” not “Our Lady in Chains”:
‘They called her that not because she wore chains…’
‘They called her Our Lady of Chains because she broke them.’
(p. 110)
Our Crucified Lord is the One who understands our suffering and has taken it upon Himself. He was once exalted on the cross, and He is now exalted in heaven. The One who looks power-less is actually power-full. For us He is:
“Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (I Cor. 1.24),
God’s answer to our sin and our suffering, Jesus, our loving Savior and risen Lord, who is, despite all appearances, the very capable One to whom we pray. Amen