In high school and in
college have you noticed that we give strange names to people in each different
grade? Instead of just calling them 9th,10th,
11th or 12th graders (or in college 1st,2nd,3rd,
4th year students) we give
these students the names of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. I guess
some of it makes sense, The oldest students in the school are the seniors, the
next oldest then also makes sense to be called the juniors, the next step down
from the seniors, but what about freshman and sophomore. Even freshman makes
some sense, even if it is a bit sexist,
because the students are fresh, new, beginners at the school. But that
leaves the curious name of sophomore. Sophomore is actually compound of two
Greek words, sophia, which means wisdom, and moros, which means foolish. We can see both of these words in other words
we often use such as philosophy which means love of wisdom, or moron which is a
straight connect to the for fool. The two
words combined making the word sophomore create a very odd meaning of the wise
fool. Now in terms of being in your second year of school I don’t know if being
a wise fool is a very good thing, I guess it means you are smarter than
freshman but not yet seniors, but according to Paul, a sophomore is exactly
what we are called to be. We are called
to be wise fools.
What do I mean by
this? Paul doesn’t actually use the term
sophomore, but he certainly uses the idea of being a wise fool. In our reading from 1 Corinthians this
morning, Paul starts out by saying, “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.”
What does Paul mean that the message about the cross is foolishness?
Today we are so familiar with the message that it has almost become an ordinary
statement for us, but Paul gives us insight to why this message seemed so
foolish. He says, “For Jews demand signs and Greeks
desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and
foolishness to Gentiles,” He says that first many of the Jewish people
of the time looked to signs and miracles as a sign of authority and power. We
see this often in the gospels where the people are asking Jesus to show them a
sign. And yet the gospel of the cross tells of Jesus dying on the cross. There
was no miraculous sign of him coming down of the cross demonstrating his power,
instead Jesus died. Paul said that for
many Jews, this became a stumbling block in their faith. On the other hand Gentiles, many of whom were
influenced by the Greek philosophers and the Roman orators, search for
authority through wisdom. The person at that time who could speak and argue
most eloquently, who could make clever arguments was seen as wielding much
power, and yet Paul acknowledges that the claim that the death of the Son of
God is an act of extreme power that Christians claim as a victory, seems quite
foolish. And yet Paul says, “For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's
weakness is stronger than human strength.”
To Paul, humans put too much stock into the wrong type of
power. We lift up as our idols those who have been cutthroat, ruthless, and
have done whatever it takes to make it to the top of their field, and we
celebrate it as ambition and wisdom. We label them as wise businessmen, or
politicians or what not. We tend to view their characteristics, such as their
looks, their education, their social upbringing, and we begin to strive for
those things in our own lives because we believe that is where true power
rests. Paul reminds us that the message of the cross negates this. In a dog eat
dog, individualistic society where the one who makes it out alive is the king
of the hill, the message of the cross
reminds us that true power is not who is able to conquer and outlast the other,
but rather who is willing to sacrifice themselves for their neighbors. The
message of the cross is not about what I can do, the message of the cross is
about what we can do together. The
message of the cross is not that our power comes from innate traits that we
have inside a select few of us, it is instead that we all are capable of great
things through the power of God.
Paul really drives this last point home, He says, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not 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 weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised
in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.” Paul says to us, look I know that most of us
were not born into nobility, born into some elite status; not all of all of us
have the same level of education, the same athletic ability, not all of us have
the same ability to speak in public or social skills, and yet all of us have
the same power through God. That
according to worldly standards many of us do not seem to be the most qualified
to participate in the important role of serving God, but we don’t live but
human standards, we live by God’s standards. We may be asking why me, what can
I do, it just doesn’t make sense for me to a have a role in this body of
Christ, and yet to the world the lifeless body of Christ on the cross doesn’t
makes sense earlier. And yet we know better, we know the power that is in the
cross, we know the power that is in God the father, and the power given to us
by the Holy Spirit. We know that we have the power to do great things through
the power of the cross, we know that as we gather as the body of Christ there
is power in each other for the sum of the parts is greater than any individual
part. We know that this calling that God has put on each of our lives is no
mistake, no matter what the world says we know that God has equipped us for
great things. As we continue to learn about what it for us as a church to truly
become the body of Christ, let us never think that we can’t do it. Let us recognize the call God has placed on
our lives, and on the lives of those around us. To the world we may not look
like much, what we claim that we can do through the power of God may seem
foolish, but I want to be fool. I want to be a sophomore.
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