This is (more or less) the text on my sermon from Easter Day (1st April). The passage was 1 Corinthians 1:18-25.
We preach Christ Crucified – foolishness to the Greeks, and a stumbling block for the Jews. And actually it’s no wonder it’s rejected, because “Christ Crucified” doesn’t really make any sense – in itself it is a nonsense. It’s like an oxymoron, where we’ve got two words that don’t make any sense together being put together. So, phrases like “soft rock” – how can rock be soft – by definition rock is hard. Or maybe you’ve been asked to send in an “original copy” of something – how can something be original and a copy? What about “Virtual Reality” – it’s a nonsense term – something can’t be virtual and real. One of my favourites is probably a “sure bet”. How can something be a sure bet? If you’re sure about about it, then it’s not a bet, and if you’re betting on it that you can’t be sure!!!
So why is Christ Crucified foolish? It’s perhaps harder for us to see if we’re familiar with the story of Easter, and the whole idea of atonement, so we need to go back in time a bit to the first century, and think about what “Christ Crucified” meant to folk in the 1st century.
“Christ”, or Messiah, means saviour, or anointed, God’s chosen king. It was understood to mean someone who would come and save Israel, free her from the oppressive rule of the Romans, and establish a new golden period, like a second Kingship of David. Whereas “Crucified” means someone executed by the Romans, using the most barbaric and humiliating means yet devised by humanity. The cross was the symbol of Roman power – a way of exerting fear and control over Rome’s subjects – you disobey us and this is what happens to you.
So, you put these two together, and you end up with the person who was supposed to free Israel from Roman rule being arrested, tortured, and killed by Rome. It’s what you might call an epic failure. A messiah on the cross is a failed messiah – and Jesus was neither the first nor the last of these.
You can look at it from the Western or Greek perspective, of logic and wisdom – and it makes no sense at all. The person who was supposed to save us couldn’t even save himself. It’s like someone jumping into a swimming pool to save someone, but drowning because you can’t swim yourself.
Or from the Eastern or Jewish perspective, with its emphasis on power, signs, mysticism, what could be weaker or less powerful then someone hanging on the cross?
Either way – Christ crucified is folly – a failed messiah…
Except that the story didn’t end on Good Friday, as we know, and as we celebrate this very morning. Death couldn’t contain Jesus. The tomb and the stone were not strong enough to store his body. The resurrection of Jesus changes everything that went before. You know those optical illusions, where there are two different pictures in one picture, depending on how you look at them? Like Rubin’s vase, which is either two silhouette faces in profile looking at one another, or a picture of vase with a black background. When you first look at it, you see either the faces or the vase, and don’t even realise that there is another picture. But when someone points out the other view, you can never go back to just seeing it as a picture of a vase. There has been a paradigm shift, your view of the world has changed. Or think about fidget spinners – you see a young person fiddling with their spinner, and think that they are not paying attention or engaging. But actually what might be going on is that they have so much energy and need to be active, having something to channel that excess energy into enables them to listen to what is being said. So instead of a fidget spinner being a sign that they are not paying attention, it’s a sign that they are!
And so the resurrection changes our whole perspective on Good Friday. It shows us that actually the death of Jesus is not the point of failure, but of victory. The one on the cross was the one with the power to overcome death itself. It’s not that he couldn’t save himself, but that he didn’t save himself. Jesus freely gave himself, in folly and weakness, in order to demonstrate God’s love and power. Easter morning turns the whole crucifixion on its head. When Pilate put the sign reading “Kings of Jews”, he meant it as a mocking, and as a warning. But in the light of Easter morning, we can see that it’s the truth. When the soldiers crowned Jesus, and put him in royal robes, they were mocking, but it became the truth.
Suddenly we understand that when Jesus said “It is finished” it really was all finished. Love had won. Death and sin had been defeated. I wonder if this is why the gospel writers don’t have very much to say about the resurrection? Take Mark’s gospel – 667 verses in what is thought to be the original, with its short ending. How many verses would you think were about the resurrection – more than a 100? 50? 20 verses? In fact, Mark writes just 9 verses about the resurrection – less than 2% of his Gospel. In the book he wrote for the purpose of telling the Good News, just 9 verses on Jesus coming back to life – almost a postscript! Compare that to 5 chapters written about the passion and death of Jesus. And it’s a similar picture in the other gospels, although not quite so extreme. I think that this is because the resurrection isn’t the point – it’s wonderful, we celebrate it, we worship our risen king, but the Good News is that Jesus died, and won the victory over sin and death.
So to the western minds we say – God’s folly is wiser than all our wisdom. Only by coming to earth as a human, living among us, and dying for us could humanity be saved. Only the one who is the God-man could take all humanity with him through the gates of death into new life.
To the eastern minds we say – God’s weakness is stronger than our strength. What greater power could you want than raising from the death. What greater symbol could you want than the cross, turned from being a tool of oppression, pain, and fear into the ultimate symbol of love and rescue.
Easter morning shows us that the light of God changes everything – it turns the place of deepest darkness, of utter folly, of helplessness into the place of greatest victory.
Thank God for Good Friday, and thank God for Easter morning!!