THE FOOLISHNESS OF LOVE

None of us willingly considers ourselves a fool. Instead, we prefer to consider ourselves wise and savvy individuals. After all, it is indeed true that generally speaking we are as a group, smart, educated, people who have seen and experienced much in our lives. Consequently, we are not easily taken advantage of by others. We may be many things, but foolish we are not.

Moreover, in most instances, we try to live morally upright lives respecting the rights and sensibilities of other people.

Indeed, for the most part we evaluate and research every major decision we make in life. From the largest to the smallest decisions we make in life most of us gather information from every available source before we make a decision. We try very hard to be as wise as we can be. Without question, then, we work hard to avoid the label of “fool”.

So, then, it is something of a truism to say that foolishness is not a trait we normally admire in someone else, or aspire to in our own lives. We certainly do not encourage our children to become foolish in the same way as we encourage them to become honest, moral, or respectful people.

The notion of “foolishness” is seen as something negative. To call someone foolish is to say that he/she is careless. To call someone foolish is to also say that he/she has ignored established facts and conditions in making a decision.

This idea of a fool as being someone who was either ignorant, careless, or willfully disobedient, was just as commonplace during the first century as it is in our world today. Yet, the Apostle Paul wrote to his beloved brothers and sisters in Corinth telling them they should become “fools” for Christ. In verse 18 he wrote, “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 did he mean when he wrote this passage? In what way was Paul encouraging the Corinthians, and now us to become fools? What does a “fool” for Christ say and do? How does a “foolish” Christian act in everyday life? Why do others-specifically those who do not have faith in God and Jesus Christ-see the Christian way of life as “Foolishness”?

Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians is actually laid out in clear terms. What he is telling us may be hard to accept and to believe but it is not hard to understand what he meant. Paul believed that the teaching of Jesus Christ, while considered foolish by the wise of the world, reflects God’s will and therefore a higher wisdom. Paul believed that the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ revealed a wisdom and strength that surpasses our human understanding of wisdom and strength.

Paul wanted his readers to remember that while the wisdom of the world would normally consider the fact that Jesus was executed as a sign of weakness and defeat, in truth, it demonstrated wisdom and strength beyond human understandings of wisdom and strength. In verse 25 Paul wrote, “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

Let us consider just several of Christ’s NT teachings:

1. Jesus teaches us that compassion for those less fortunate among us-even if they have brought it upon themselves-is our calling.

2. Jesus’ teachings and his witness in how he lived his life shows us that forgiveness of one’s enemies is not only more desirable than vengeance against them but is actually more effective in changing the hearts of those who oppose us.

3. In how he lived and in how he died, Jesus demonstrated that God’s and other people’s needs should come before our own

Taken as a whole, the life, death, and resurrection Jesus Christ teaches us that love is ultimately more powerful than even the strongest hate. Such an approach to life runs diametrically counter to worldly wisdom and our human understanding of strength. It is foolishness.

Even so, for Paul, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, revealed the ignorance of our human wisdom and revealed the weakness of our human conception of strength.

For us, today, the apparent weakness and foolishness of the cross informs and guides us in our own search to live as disciples of Christ. The “foolishness” of Christ is a revelation of God’s love for us. Christ demonstrated through his teachings, through his death, and through his resurrection, that God loves us and cares for us beyond our understanding.

By any conventional standard, walking to the cross was an act of foolish love by worldly standards. Christ gave up life itself, sacrificed everything. And for what? As each of us already knows, Jesus died for people who could not even stand by him and support him during his trial and conviction.

As Christ’s disciple’s, we are called to follow his example; to model our very lives after our master’s witness. We too, then, are called and empowered to love one another foolishly. We are called to love against conventional wisdom.

As we consider Paul’s encouragement to us to follow the example set for us by Jesus Christ, let us remember to whom Paul was writing. Who was his original audience? In Corinthians, Paul was writing primarily to Greek speaking and thinking people. Let us also remember that in Hellenistic culture, there was always a premium placed on logic and reason.

As I read this passage form Paul’s letter to Corinth, and consider it from the perspective of my own life, I am reminded of just how Greek I really am. Perhaps this is true for you as well. So often in life I prefer reason to coincidence and logic to irrationality. Moreover, most of the time when I face troubling situations in life I find myself wishing for some, pure, unmistakable, sign of God’s power and presence in order to help guide me. Such a sign would then provide me, I imagine, a logical and reasonable way to know what I need to do.

Yet, Paul’s point is exactly the opposite of this: Christians are called to trust in the grace of God, not to reason it out or to point to any visible and sure signs. Following God’s will for our lives always involves the unknown, therefore, it also always involves an act of trust.

I remember a cartoon panel I saw a long time ago. In the first panel a young boy is shown hanging onto a tree limb out over a steep cliff. He is hanging on for dear life. In the second panel, he calls out, “Help!” In the third panel, suddenly a voice calls out from the clouds, “Let Go!” In the fourth panel, the boy is shown with a thoughtful look on his face as he considers this for a moment. Then, in the final panel of the strip he answers the voice from the clouds with, “Anybody else up there?”

Is this not our problem? The world says a wise person would hold on tightly to what he/she knows. Only a “fool” would let go and trust the voice. Hanging on the boy may not get anywhere, he might not be able to climb to safety, but at least he hasn’t fallen. To let go would be foolishness…

Speaking theologically, maybe the old saying claiming that there only two kinds of fools is right on target: damned ones and fools for Christ. I pray for us to become the latter.

Let us make no mistake, to live as “fools” for Christ is to live counter to how the world calls us to live. Worldly wisdom teaches us to not get involved in other people’s problems. Worldly wisdom instructs us that if we want to avoid suffering and disappointment, then we should not trust others. The human notion of strength teaches us that the only way we can increase, is for someone else to decrease. With a human understanding of things, there are always winners and losers.

Yet we are called to live “foolishly” loving others. We are called to foolishly make ourselves vulnerable to defeat. In word and in deed, to be a fool for Christ is to live for others. Worldly wisdom does not respect or esteem such actions.

As I think about being a “fool” for Christ I think about a movie that I first saw when I was 14 or 15 years old. In the early 1960’s the Protestant Council of New York City produced a short film called the Parable, for showing at the New York World’s fair. Perhaps some of you have seen it and remember it. The movie was intended as a modern re-telling of the gospel message.

The Parable is about a circus clown who changes the lives of the people in the circus he works in. The clown goes from person to person in the circus and shows compassion and love to each person. The character of the clown essentially shoulders the other characters burdens.

For the tired roustabout the clown carries the buckets of water to the elephants.

At the baseball-pitch booth, a very angry prejudiced person is trying to dunk the black man perched over the water tank. The clown takes the black man’s place. This exchange by the clown makes the white customer very angry.

Under the big top a human puppet performance is underway orchestrated by the evil puppet master Magnus the great. Magnus is manipulating his human puppets in violent acts toward one another and the human puppets are inflicting great pain upon one another. At seeing this, the clown releases the human puppets from their harnesses freeing them from Magnus’ control. He then climbs into a harness himself. Magnus is furious and manipulates the strings of the clown’s harness wildly, so that the clown is thrown violently about. All the while, people in the crowd are shouting angrily and throwing things at the clown. Finally, the clown hangs limply in the harness - dead. His life has been beaten out of him by the fury of Magnus egged on by the angry mob of spectators.

However, that is not the end of the movie. The next day a change can be seen at the circus. The different circus people the clown had helped begin to help one another. Even Magnus the great leaves his puppeteering and dresses as the clown.

You see, these people’s lives had been changed by the one who had come into their midst. The clown had come into their lives not with the wisdom of power, but rather with the foolishness of compassion, service, and love.

The “foolishness” of Christian love is that we are called to deny ourselves, our understandings of wisdom and strength. The foolishness of Christ calls us to trust that God will guide us and fill us with a new and deeper understanding of true wisdom and strength.

As we make our way through life may we discover a renewed understanding of God’s wisdom and God’s strength for our lives. May this renewal of our hearts lead us to be “fools for Christ”. Loving as he loved. Having compassion as he had compassion. And giving as he gave-completely, totally, and without regard for someone’s ability to repay the gift. Amen.

Reverend Marc V. Mason

3^rd Sunday in Lent

March 19, 2006

Trinity Presbyterian Church

Travelers Rest, South Carolina