Preaching Christ Crucified (1 Corinthians 1)
Introduction
Hello, welcome to the Will Preach for Food podcast. I’m Doug, a pastor here at Faith Lutheran Church, based out of Shelton, Washington, a congregation of the ELCA. You can learn more about Faith at our website, www.faithshelton.org. Today’s podcast is for the fourth Sunday in Epiphany, January 29, 2023. I’ve entitled this podcast “Preaching Christ Crucified,” based on a reading from 1 Corinthians 1:18-24. Please grab your Bible, and let’s dive in. 1 Corinthians 1, beginning at verse 18.
1 Corinthians 1:18-24
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
“We preach Christ crucified,” declares the Apostle Paul in a letter he writes to the first century church he started in Corinth. We preach CHRIST, crucified. The center of our faith and life is Jesus. Christ is Lord and Savior, the beginning and the end. The church isn’t a political organization or cult of personality. No, Paul insists, we preach CHRIST Jesus.
Jesus is the incarnation and revelation of the God described throughout the Bible. God created the heavens and the earth with a Word. The Creator’s Spirit gives life to all living things. It has been noted that the name of God sounds like taking a breath: Yah. Weh. That life begins when we first utter God’s name: Yah. Weh. And it ends when we say God’s name for the last time: Yah. Weh.
YHWH, the Bible teaches, over and over again, is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounds in steadfast love: “Hesed” in Hebrew. It is translated steadfast love, lovingkindness, mercy. The hesed of God: the steadfast love of God never ceases. God’s mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning… God is faithful. God is hesed.
So when the creative Word of God becomes flesh—that’s how one writer describes the coming of Jesus into the world—it is no wonder that his life, ministry, and death all reflect and embody the hesed of God. We preach the hesed of God.
Crucified, died, and was buried
We preach Christ crucified. The central feat or accomplishment of Jesus is his crucifixion—his death on a cross. For us and for our salvation, the creed says, he came down from heaven…for our sake he was crucified…suffered death, and was buried. The cross is so much more than a mere divine transaction: there was a price to pay for our sins and Jesus paid it. The cross demonstrates and symbolizes the hesed nature of God: a God who suffers, a God who sacrifices, a God whose love is unconditional and has no bounds. The cross is not primarily about God’s judgment or wrath, but rather a demonstration of and sign of God’s hesed: God so loved the world. For us and for our salvation. For Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world, but to save us—mostly from ourselves.
And that is what we preach. We PREACH Christ crucified. The gospel message is that for OUR sake he was crucified. Jesus died for you. And everything we say and do is filtered through, seen through the lens of Christ. That means that we read the Bible through the lens of the cross. We see the world and our neighbors through the lens of the cross. We look for Jesus in all things and all people.
As a result, we start looking and acting and sounding a bit off. “You will know the truth,” warns Flannery O’Connor, “and the truth will make you odd.” Paul warns us that the message of the cross is foolishness to half of your friends, he says, and a stumbling block to the other half of your friends. The people around you will likely think you are either crazy or going to hell. Or both.
The Lutheran tradition embraces this re-forming thread within the Christian church, that weaves its way through the prophets of the Old Testament, the Apostle Paul, and Martin Luther—re-formers, re-framers. Eyes fixed on Jesus, always moving forward. No turning back. No turning back.
Micah 6:6-8
One of those prophets of old is named Micah. Remember who and whose we are, he warns us, 2600 years ago. Remember the hesed of God, who liberates from slavery and provides manna in the wilderness, who protects from enemy kings and evil curses, who pours out the Spirit and promises to dwell among the daughters of Eve and sons of Adam forever. Then he does some preaching. This is from the prophet Micah—one of the last writings of the Old Testament—Micah 6:6-8.
With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
“With what shall I come before YHWH and bow down?” he asks. What is a fitting response to the hesed, mercy, lovingkindness of God? What does God want or need from us? God already owns and rules over creation and every creature in heaven and earth. A poet named Asaph imagines God’s exasperated reminder to humanity in Psalm 50: I don’t need your bull (sayeth the LORD), for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the insects in the fields are mine… (Psalm 50).
God doesn’t need your bull! God has shown us what is good. If there is a proper and fitting way for us humans to respond to the hesed of God, Micah says, it’s this: to act justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.
Act Justly
Act justly. The best translation might be closer to “do the right thing.” Think before you act. Discern. Use your best judgment, then make your actions consistent with what you believe to be right, best. Do the right thing. Act with integrity. Don’t just do what you’re told. Don’t just do whatever feels good. Do the right thing, and, so far as you are able, do the right thing the right way.
Love Mercy
Love mercy. Fall in love with love, with the hesed/lovingkindness/mercy/steadfast love kind of love. The way I read this today is that we should always do the right thing, always leaning on the side of hesed. I think about the advent hymn in which we sing: “love be our song and love our prayer and love our endless story.” If hesed love is the defining characteristic of the God of the Bible, if hesed love is the defining message of the cross, then hesed love should become our deepest desire. They’ll know we are Christians, after all, by our love.
Walk Humbly with Your God
Do the right thing. Make hesed love our aim, our ethic, our default mode. And walk humbly with our God. The humble thing is helpful, I think. Faith is not an ego trip, nothing to boast about, as though I’ve somehow accomplished or earned something. Walking with God has to do with obedience to God’s commands, I think. It has to do with aligning our lives and actions with God. It has to do with proximity to God. Jesus invites us to follow him, to walk with him, to trust his leadership and grow more like Jesus. That also means following Jesus wherever he goes, including to the cross. “Take up YOUR cross, and follow me, he says.” Doing the right thing isn’t always popular. Doing the loving thing can be hard. Obedience to God can get you killed. Just ask Jesus.
Matthew 5:3-12
One more Bible passage. This one is Matthew 5:3-12. These words of Jesus are sometimes referred to as the Beatitudes.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
At the very least, reading the Beatitudes ought to convince us that the way God measures value and “blessedness” is very different from the ways that social media, popular culture, and the IRS measure it. And I would also suggest that the list is descriptive, not prescriptive; and that the beatitudes are inclusive, not exclusive.
I believe it should be read DESCRIPTIVELY. That is, it describes how life is here on planet Earth. Poverty. Grief. Oppression. Bullying. These are nearly universal experiences. What Jesus is saying is that his gospel is INCLUSIVE, that no matter what you are currently experiencing—no matter how difficult or trying your circumstances, God is still faithful. God is hesed. God is with you. Your circumstances do not define you or exclude you. Jesus is not dictating a narrow list of pious virtues that somehow separate the haves from the have nots. It is a broad and encompassing proclamation of Christ crucified; the inclusive and boundless hesed of God.
Takeaways
So, welcome to Faith. God is here. God is faithful. God is rich in mercy, abounding in steadfast love. God is for you. Jesus died for you to show you and the whole world the hesed nature of God. In response to the hesed of God, we live to do the right thing, to lean into the hesed mercy of God, and to follow Jesus to the cross. We know that it won’t make us rich or happy or successful by the world’s standards. We don’t judge by outward appearances, but trust in the faithfulness of God. We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block for some, foolishness for others. Even if it kills us.
The Lutheran tradition is a reforming movement within the larger Church. This means that we Lutherans push the edges. We look for where Jesus is, and go there. We watch what Jesus does, and do that. We know Jesus is the Truth, and that makes us odd.
Like Paul, we look through the lens of the cross, we look at our world, and we wonder who is being left out or left behind. In Paul’s day the Holy Spirit led him to reach out to and include Gentiles—non-Jewish people—in the church. Jesus died for them, too. The hesed of God is for them, too. The Spirit of God fills and equips them, too.
Over the centuries the Spirit has compelled the church to reach out and include others who were once regarded as unclean, unworthy. It turns out women have a voice and calling in the church—who knew? And slaves, not only are slaves equal in God’s eyes, we also figured out that slavery itself is contrary to the hesed of God, so now we, the church, oppose it in all its forms, to this day.
We now realize that inter-racial marriage is fine, don’t we? And that a person’s race or skin color or ethnic background isn’t nearly as much a thing as we once believed it to be. And that it was and is wrong to displace nations and take Native children away from their mothers?
We know how governments and others in power can overextend and abuse their power, limit freedoms, censor communications. We notice the economic disparities in our nation and the damage being done to our planet. These trends do not reflect the hesed of God, either.
I bring all this up in part to recognize that many of these reforms aren’t very old. The war over slavery was barely 150 years ago. Sixty years ago white folk were aiming dogs and fire hoses at little black children for daring to go to a school that was for whites only. My mom was ordained forty years ago, and she was cutting edge. Inter-racial marriage was only just recently legalized in many states, having formerly been determined to be some kind of abomination in the eyes of God. The orange banner in the Faith Café remembers the unmarked graves of Native children stolen from their homes and left to die in boarding schools.
Through the lens of the cross, we have the courage to look at the way things really are. Filled with the Spirit of Christ, we are compelled to preach Christ, do the right thing, and lean into the hesed of God.
So now we are wondering about this whole LBGTQ thing. Surely the hesed of God extends to queer folk, too. Maybe, like race and skin color, one’s sexuality and gender expression isn’t as important as we once thought it was. There is a group of leaders of Faith who are attending a workshop this coming weekend to explore what it would look like to expand our welcome to people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions. They are going to come back with some ideas and suggestions for expanding our welcome, and we will wonder about this as a congregation, together, over the next year or so.
We’re going to get crucified for it. Half of our friends and family will think we’re going to hell. The other half will think we are wasting our time. But we resolve to walking humbly with our God. We will do this because the love of Christ compels us. For we believe and preach that the hesed of God is for both Jews and Gentiles, and everyone in between. Black and white, and everyone in between. Poor and rich, and everyone in between. Women and men—and everyone in between.
Conclusion and Doxology
Thanks for listening, everyone. To learn more about Faith, go to our website, www.faithshelton.org. While you are there, like us, subscribe, donate, or sign-up for our newsletter. You can subscribe to this podcast on most podcast platforms, including Spotify, Apple, and Google. Chas and Nadia—you’re the best. Thanks for your production work on this podcast every week.
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise God, all creatures here below. Praise God, above, ye heavenly host! Praise [to the] Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.