Scripture Reference: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
The gospel of Christ is not obscure and deceitful. It does not ask for blind faith, faith without a reason, but it does ask for confession. It does not spare us the decision to recognize Christ as Lord. That decision is not made for us by the facts of the case, or by our parents, or by some irresistible logical proof. We sometimes try to avoid the risk of faith for our children by telling them that there is no other choice, that faith is unavoidable. That used to be convincing in a society dominated by the churches. However, that doesn’t bode well for an individual’s right to choose, no matter their choice.
As an example, Jesus was very forthright when He warned His listeners that they should not follow Him unless they were ready to suffer, as He was going to suffer.
The disciples of Jesus however, are a minority, not because particular doctrines that they hold on the grounds of particular revelatory experiences are not convincing to others. “The Greeks” could have respected that kind of special information. The disciples of Jesus are an unpopular minority because they love their enemies as Jesus did, and because their commitment to this path does not depend on its prior acceptability to others. It is not that they choose to be foolish but that they are committed to another standard of wisdom.
Sometime in August of 1525, in the midst of a frustrating debate about infant baptism in the office of the German Protestant reformer Oecolampadius, one of the Anabaptist participants said:
“What is needed is divine wisdom in order to see honor in the cross and life in death; we must deny ourselves and become fools.”
He was quoting our text, repeating a well-worn argument, familiar in the medieval pursuit of a mystical insight and in the Protestant argument against the then, scholastic church. What he was calling for, and what Paul is calling for, is not some sort of mysticism as being over or against reason, nor blind faith as being over or even against scholarship. What they called for is the understanding that the cross of Christ is in fact a new definition of truth, both as power and as wisdom.
One way all of us, both “Jews and Greeks,” seek to avoid this call is to redefine “following Jesus” so that it focuses on some point other than the cross. Like the famous Pastor Henry Maxwell in the best-selling Christian novel In His Steps, we transform “doing what Jesus would do” into doing with integrity and courage whatever we actually think is right in a particular situation. Yet the early Christians did not make Jesus an example in His celibacy, or in His not having a gainful occupation or a domicile—only in His cross; of which we also are to carry our own on a daily basis. In the Christian light, it is not foolish or weak, but rather showing our strength in following Jesus!
The other way of escape is to give great importance to the cross, but to give it some other meaning. In Christian pastoral care we speak of a person having a cross to bear and mean by that some conflict in interpersonal relations, or some intractable sickness or handicap. An accident or an illness may be called a “cross.”
In yet another school of pastoral care the cross symbolizes the experience of death to self: the discipline which in mystical or devotional exercises one can undergo as a part of becoming a Jesuit or a Quaker or a Wesleyan.
Or it is possible to move the cross from the realm of pastoral care to that of theology. In the realm of sin and grace it refers to the miracle of atonement. In the realm of history one can puzzle over the historical details of the Gospel accounts.
To Be Continued
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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