Vicar’s reflection at Eggleston. Tuesday of Holy week

Tuesday of Holy week: 1 Corinthians 1.18-31

Choices. You can tell a lot about someone from the choices that they make. The clothes they wear, the way they cast their vote? The newspaper that they read, the programs they like on TV, the way they decorate their home? On the basis of our bank accounts revealing more about us than we’d like to think we might learn something about a person by how they spend their disposable income: that much on …(you fill in the blank). As the Chair of Governors of a school I bump into people’s choices about schools quite often: of course parents always choose the best school for their child…unfortunately this often comes with a reason why every other school in the area is hopeless, not good enough for their little darling. We justify our choices because our choices reveal who we are: our values and opinions project our sense of self and we understandably guard this: when it is challenged we feel threatened at a deep level. Maybe that’s why our common life has become so loud and shrill: we struggle with disagreement.
And violent disagreement sits behind this evening epistle reading. Who is Jesus? What is happening on the cross? To some the message about the cross is ‘foolishness’. Christians are idiots. Do you remember those who were styled the ‘four horsemen of the apocalypse’? Richard Dawkins led the charge at the turn of the century alongside Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. People of faith were no better than those who believed in fairies at the bottom of the garden. Their language against believers was strident and dismissive. Now, it seems, with money from their best sellers in the bank but old age focussing the mind, Dawkins at least is less confident in his full-throated atheism: recognising that without the anchor of faith much of western civilisation collapses. But then – back then it was all ‘foolishness’.
The apostle Paul had an impossible task. How do you explain the work of God when that work seemingly makes no sense? Jews demand signs, he says. Greeks look for wisdom but he cannot produce either: or rather, Jesus’ signs are just that (signs) they are not proofs. And for all his incredible learning there was no philosophy in the ancient world that could make sense of a crucified Messiah. You can’t argue anyone into the kingdom of God. The message of the cross is still hard to grasp, difficult to comprehend.
Paul invites his readers to ‘consider their own call’. From speaking about Jesus he turns his attention to those who had come to faith. More importantly I guess, he turns to their experience of faith and uses it as part of his argument.
‘God has been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ crucified.’ Yes, this is hard to comprehend but just think of how you have experienced God’s grace, how your experience of God’s presence (however slight that may be) has transformed your life. This (says Paul) is of a piece with the nature of a God who chooses unlikely, ‘foolish’ ways to show himself. Your call is of a piece with God’s revealing himself on the cross of Christ. Hear his words again…
not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are…
I love that bit…God chose things that are not…to reduce to nothing things that are! And it does make a sort of sense.
God chose to make a man and woman from the dust of the earth; to reveal his glory, to enable his image to be seen. God chose an elderly man and woman (Abram and Sarai) to give birth to a child of promise…the become the father of many nations. God chose the younger brother Jacob (a conniving so and so) over his older brother Esau to become ‘Israel’ the patriarch. He chose a man with a stutter to lead Israel out of Egypt. He chose a childless woman to give birth to Samuel and Ruth the Moabitess widow to be the grandmother of David. His chose David the shepherd boy above his older brothers to defeat Goliath and to rule Israel. He chose a prophet who felt himself to be alone to defeat the prophets of Baal and a servant girl to tell Naaman that Israel’s God could heal his leprosy. And when Israel went into exile he chose Esther to deliver her people from Haman and a reluctant Jonah to proclaim forgiveness to Israel’s enemies. Ours is a faith that finds room for a shamed teenage mother to bear the Christ. And her son chose fishermen and tax collectors, women, foreigners and lepers to follow him.
God’s choices differ so very greatly from ours. Thank God He chooses us to follow in the footsteps of the crucified Messiah. Chooses us to share the shame of bearing a cross. Chooses us to carry the weight of it. Asks us, like Christ, to learn obedience so that the things of this world might be upended and the kingdom values of faithfulness, forgiveness and grace be shown to the world in our lives. May glory be given to Him, the source of our life in Christ Jesus, the only One who can bring life out of death and may we always remember we have not deserved or earned this calling: ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’, for He alone is worthy of glory, honour and praise now and forevermore.