Pasadena Presbyterian Church
Sermon Text
 

FOOLISH WISDOM

Sermon preached by Dr. Mark Smutny

Sunday, March 15, 2009

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.  For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."  Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom,  but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, 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 Corinthians 1:18-2

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.  Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.  He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me."  The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?"  Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."  The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?"  But he was speaking of the temple of his body.  After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.                                                                       - John 2:13-22

We are in the middle of Lent, a season of reflection, confession of sin, and repentance.  Into the mix comes this jarring story of Jesus with a whip, overturning the money-changers’ tables.  Thank God we’re past Stewardship season!  With his scorching anger Jesus claims his Father’s house has been turned into a marketplace.

What’s wrong with a marketplace?  Up until six months ago, many of us practically worshiped the market.  America’s gospel of the free market could fix anything.  It was God’s “invisible hand,” distributing goods and services efficiently and fairly, without the intervention of government.  The market cranked out an abundance of wealth in a global economy.  The freedom of unfettered markets was America’s gospel, promoted all over the world as the solution to all ills.

And American Christianity and the market fit together perfectly like a hand in a glove, like chocolate and peanut butter.  Look at the largest, most successful mega-churches in America and you’ll see just how tight this fit is.  A prosperity gospel is preached that links belief in Jesus and the promise that abundant blessings will come your way.  “Toss your bread on the water and it will return to you a thousand times!”  “Believe in Jesus, stay positive and you will be blessed with abundance.”  So they said.

It’s what makes us a Christian nation isn’t it?  If you work hard, think positive thoughts, believe in the Lord Jesus, and rely on your own self you will prosper.  What could be more American than that?  Why would Jesus get so upset about the temple and the market getting in bed with one another?  Or have we allowed our Christian faith to accommodate a little too closely to common culture?

It’s Lent, a Christian season when we look inside and reflect, confess our sin and honestly acknowledge the gap between our ways and God's ways.  It’s time to look at ourselves personally yes, but also corporately, as a people, as a nation that aspires to Christian or Jewish-Christian values.  It's Lent.  How are we doing as a so-called Christian nation?

Well, one measure is Biblical knowledge.  A recent survey[1] reveals that seventy percent of Americans believe that the Ten Commandments should be displayed on public land.  The same survey found that less than forty percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments.  How many can you name?

Maybe it's not that important to be able to name all of the Ten Commandments.  The point is to practice them, to obey them - which makes it more troubling that three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.”  That statement is from Ben Franklin, who was a deist,[2] not the Bible.  God helps those who help themselves is in fact one of the most unbiblical ideas.  It is Jesus who made the dramatically counter assertion:  “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
 

Are we a Christian nation or one founded on Jewish-Christian ideals?  Days before his crucifixion, Jesus summed up his message for his disciples in Matthew 25 by saying that you can tell one of his followers by how well they had fed the hungry, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoner.
 

In 2004, we ranked second to last, after Italy, among all developed countries in government foreign aid.  Per capita we each provide fifteen cents a day in development assistance to poor countries.  If we add in charitable giving, our average daily donation increases by just six pennies, to twenty-one cents.  Are we a Christian nation?  

In 2004, nearly eighteen percent of American children lived in poverty compared with eight percent in Sweden.  By any measure of caring for the least among us - childhood nutrition, infant mortality, and access to preschool - we come in nearly last among the rich nations.  Our overwhelmingly Christian-American nation trails badly in all these categories, categories to which Jesus paid particular attention.  And it's getting worse.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that the number of households that were “food insecure with hunger” had climbed more than twenty-six percent between 2000 and 2005, well before the recession hit.
 

How are we doing with the sixth commandment, “Thou shall not murder”?  We are, of course, the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate four or five times that of our European peers. We have prison populations greater by a factor of six or seven than other rich nations (which at least should give us plenty of opportunity for visiting the prisoners, one of Jesus’ commandments in Matthew 25).  Having been commanded not to kill, foolishly told to turn the other cheek, we're the only Western democracy left that executes its citizens.  Despite Jesus' condemnation of divorce, our marriages break up at a rate that's worse than any country in Europe.  Teenage pregnancy?  We're at the top of the charts.
 

Since the days of Constantine, the rich and the powerful have sought to co-opt the “foolish wisdom” in the teachings of Jesus with the worldly wisdom that makes the rich feel good and the poor feel abandoned.  At the same time, the church has always struggled to keep from turning the worship of the true and living God away from God and toward ourselves.  We're always in grave danger of making golden calves of ourselves and becoming a nation of terrified, self-absorbed idol worshippers.

 
The godless message that proclaims, “It's your money!  You earned it, you deserve it, use it for you!” will fill up a nation with things or the want of things and kill its collective soul.  The church, the temple of the Lord, is just as vulnerable to a false Gospel.

The prosperity gospel that holds that with faith you will do well financially still works for many pulpits throughout our land. “Jesus and me,” sells.  However, the trauma that our nation and world are undergoing because of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression will not be cured by love of self.  The stimulus package may turn the economy around but we will still remain hungry.  The quest for more will still leave us empty.

 
Today we gather as the church, trusting in Jesus Christ, listening to the witness of Scripture.  This scripture stands over us with judgment. Christ holds a scale of justice where God calls us to account and demands our self-examination, confession of sin and repentance.  Here we engage in the practice of Christian faith at our best and most honest.

In one of the few occasions where Jesus got really mad, white-hot angry with rage, it was in the temple, the house of God.  “You've made my Father's house a house of thieves,” he screamed in one version, “a marketplace” in John’s version.

This event is reported in the other Gospels as occurring at the end of Jesus' ministry, during his last week, when he is moving toward his cross.  But John curiously places the cleansing of the temple right at the beginning of his Gospel, in the second chapter.  I think that John remembers this event at the first, right at the beginning, in order to defeat the possibility of false advertising.  John wants us to know upfront that Jesus is coming to clean house, with whip in hand, to drive out our false gods and to cure us of our foolish idolatries.
 

Jesus was the most incensed in a place of worship.  His anger was most fierce against his own people who claimed they were chosen, holy, set aside to be different.  He was angry with us for desecrating holy ground with crass materialism and the belief that we deserve God’s blessing because of how good we are.

What are we to do with him and his rage?  When I encounter anger, the pit of my stomach goes sick.  When I gain my senses I ask, “What is it in me that causes the other who is angry with me to judge me so harshly?”  I look inside myself and ask, “What is it in me that leads to such an expression of anger and underlying pain?”

I find it fascinating that John’s Gospel begins with this story of Jesus’ rage and toward the end of Luke’s Gospel Jesus weeps, saying, “Would that you knew the things that make for peace, but now they are hid from your eyes.”

I think we know that his rage and his tears are connected.  I think we know that the things that make for peace are the basics: are our children fed, housed, educated—all of them?  Are our elderly cared for and given dignity?  Do we spend more on armaments than we do on education?  Are we number one because of our ability to place a laser-guided bomb in a drone and launch it from thousands of miles away or because of the way we care for the least of these, our brothers and sisters?  Have we turned the Good News of Jesus Christ into an accommodation to the emperor’s gospel of might makes right, the rich are blessed, and the poor are to be blamed?

It’s Lent — a time of reflection, confession of sin, and repentance, a time to take a hard look at ourselves individually and collectively.  We will never be whole as a nation until we reclaim that part of our heritage that in its essence is truly biblical.  From Lady Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.” [3]

From FDR’s First Inaugural: “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.  These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.”[4]

Or these words from President Lincoln:  “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”[5]

I do believe Jesus is coming as the ancient creed says, “to judge the quick and the dead.”[6]  He holds up his scales and weighs us both individually and collectively as a nation.  As it says in Matthew 25:  “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.  All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.  Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing.  I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'  Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?'  Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 

It’s Lent.  May we receive his harsh judgment and fierce anger with listening ears.  May we examine ourselves individually and collectively and come to our senses.  May we seek his wisdom and claim the foolishness of his Gospel as our own.  “For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.”  May you believe in Jesus’ Gospel and be saved.  Thanks be to God.  Amen