Excellent Answers Can't Get You to Love

My name is Tonetta, and I'm one of the pastors here at the Table Church. And today we're continuing our sermon series that we started last week that we're calling Hot Takes. Our hope over the next several weeks is to move through the book of 1 Corinthians in a way that helps us explore what discipleship looks like in close proximity to other people. People you didn't choose, people you can't control. We're asking, even as we are becoming people who have re-enchanted hearts and open hands and reignited imaginations, how we can be faithful when we encounter real-world issues like rivalry and conflict and status and sex and singleness and marriage and divorce and a host of other things.

In a world of so many hot takes, strong opinions, compelling ideas, what must be the foundation of our church? As a first answer to all of these questions, Paul issues a clarion call. Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, that you be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose. Among all the things that we can say, and we'll say a lot about 1 Corinthians in the next few weeks, primary among them is that this letter is an appeal for the church to live together in the shalom peace,

which has at its heart the right ordering of relationships. As the liberation and inclusion translation translates it, let there be no ripping apart between you, but be mended together with the same mind and purpose. Looking at the entire body of Paul's work, it's pretty clear that his exhortation is not about papering over conflict, but rather about taking seriously the human penchant for rivalry and competition and communal fracture. And as we move to the next part of Paul's appeal, it's important for us to remember that Paul is writing a letter to address very specific concerns from these people, Chloe's people. I love that Chloe's people have been immortalized.

I love that. And there's also been these concerns that have been sent to him as well from the church itself. Because it is a letter, we have to keep in mind that we are hearing one side of a conversation and we don't know all the specifics of what the church was concerned about. We do know that Paul had written another letter to the Corinthians before this one that we no longer have, it's been lost. And then we do know that Paul writes to them beyond this letter as well, creating the work that we call our book of 2 Corinthians.

Now, before I go on, I want to pause and address what might come up. For some of us, during what one congregant, Ethan, has termed all Paul fall. All Paul fall. Thank you, Ethan. I don't know if you're here, but thank you.

I know that some of us might feel a sigh or a temptation to roll our eyes at the prospect of an all Paul fall. You might feel a Lord have mercy. Here we go. And I definitely sympathize with that. I've repeated many times the story of how the great theologian and mystic Howard Thurman was profoundly shaped by his grandmother, Nancy Ambrose, when it came to his understanding of scripture.

Formerly enslaved and unable to read, she would frequently ask Thurman to read to her from the Bible. But she was clear that he was never to read to her from any of the writings accredited to the apostle, to the apostle Paul. When Thurman inquired, you know, why, why was that? She explained that those who believed that they could own her in body and soul, her masters, had always loved reading to the enslaved people from the apostle Paul. Instead, Nancy Ambrose loved hearing Thurman read, especially from the prophets and the gospels and the book of Isaiah and Psalms.

So if you feel this kind of inexplicable churning in your gut when you think about an all Paul fall, I honestly think that's good common sense. Paul is still centered by so many modern-day would-be masters, so many churches that desire to suppress certain kinds of people and certain kinds of theological ideas. We learn from the sacred wisdom of an illiterate, formerly enslaved grandmother, that if we want a different kind of Christianity, we have to center different kinds of scriptural texts. Texts that question the business as usual, exploitation and extraction, treachery and transaction of our world. Yet and still, we do need the pastoral concern of a Paul.

Paul who has been so misinterpreted. Paul who never expected his letters to be overheard. Can you imagine if somebody only got all your texts on one side? Paul who is so often misinterpreted out of a desire to push forward an oppressive agenda, but also just out of independence or ignorance of his complex rhetorical style. Paul is hard to read and interpret.

So there's also misinterpretation there. Paul who has entire New Testament letters credited to him that he probably didn't even write. And then Paul who would probably be horrified that so much of the church has chosen to put more weight on his words than on those of the very Lord that he served. Jesus. I read and I try to be open to all kinds of views on Paul.

So if you're in this room and you're like, I don't know if Paul is helpful. There are scholars who agree. Okay. If you're in this room and you're like, Paul is absolutely essential. There are scholars who agree.

Okay. And wherever you fall on that spectrum, I just want to say before we get deeper in that I expect things to come up. And I want us to remember something that was so well captured by Dr. Miguel de la Torre in a podcast that I encourage you to keep near you in the series. I think it's up. It's called the Found in Translation podcast, which by the way, features this translation of 1 Corinthians that is excellent and features our own Reverend Parrott in the back as a guest.

You'll start to hear his expertise on this next week. I want you to remember de la Torre's reminder that Jacob wrestling beside the Jabbok River in the book of Genesis is a good way to think about how we are to engage the scriptures. Scholars don't know whether the author there intended to say that Jacob was wrestling with God, that Jacob was wrestling with himself, or that Jacob was wrestling with a malevolent force. But what is clear is that Jacob wrestles. And we are people who wrestle with the scriptures, whether they seem to reflect God, mirror ourselves, or even release something sinister.

We should expect them to leave us with a limp. Not because we've been browbeaten into submission, but because we're being transformed into a mystery and forever made more aware of our limitations. And I can only hope and pray that as we wrestle with 1 Corinthians during this all-Paul fall, that the same would be true for us. Okay, with all that said, we're going to turn back to the scriptures and we're going to go to 1 Corinthians 18, 1, 18 through 31. This is the passage that immediately follows what I read at the top of the sermon.

And I'm going to read it aloud. And once I do, we're going to move into our passing of the peace time. And these are the questions that I want you to consider as you get into a group of a couple people, two, three, four people, maybe who you don't know as well. First, what are your hot takes on Paul? And there are mics throughout the building.

No, I'm stuck. I want to hear about your hot takes on Paul. And then how his writing forms you, for better or for worse? Are there passages that you find meaningful or struggle with? And then second, what do you feel, what do you notice in the passage that I'm about to read, feel compelled by, or have questions about?

Okay. All right. So I'm going to read 1 Corinthians 1, starting at verse 18. For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. But to those 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 scholar? 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 the proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews ask for 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. Consider your own call, brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise by human standards, and not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not to abolish things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. In contrast, God is why you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, in order that as it is written, let the one who boasts, boasts in the Lord. All right.

Thank you all for being willing to do that. Okay, so just after Paul makes clear that the questions at the heart of this letter revolve around division and quarreling and rivalry, he uses a series of contrasts and a ton of hyperbole to ground the church in some discipleship fundamentals. Corinthian culture would have been steeped in the belief that polished rhetoric and cultured speech and expert knowledge and a pitch-perfect presentation of the self were of the highest value. Indeed, in much of the Greco-Roman world, clever reasoning, the ability to prevent that reasoning in compelling ways was highly prized.

It was a skill into which the educated would have been trained and the uneducated would have aspired to and been familiar with. And what is more, in a society based on honor and shame, to pull off this kind of performance and presentation would have given a person honor. It would have helped move them up the social ladder. And it would have given them status. Last week, I mentioned that Corinth, because of its history, had a large number of formerly enslaved people.

In this passage, Paul points out that most of the church at Corinth are not people who have wealth or power or the privileges of elite parentage. Most of this church is poor. No wonder, then, that the people harbored fantasies about being the one who is wise, the one who is the scholar, the debater of this age, as Paul puts it. Those are the kinds of things that would have given them status. We, too, live in a world that values speaking the right way and having the right words and carrying yourself in a refined manner, being able to present a sharp pitch

to support the image that you yourself want to convey and which you believe will give you privileges. A few weeks back, a friend of mine helped me launch a website where I could house my writing. I thought it was pretty cool until I realized that my Instagram algorithm still keeps constantly dropping me off in accounts that are very clear that I do not talk right. They're very clear. There are these accounts that, have y'all seen these?

These influencers that are all about how do you speak? How do you, no? Okay, it is just me. Okay? They care a lot about elocution.

How do you speak? How do you present? There's this whole industry of people, too, who are saying, here's what you do in the workplace if you want to get ahead. Here's how you present yourself and show up. They tell you that the way to win status in the workplace or in the theological marketplace is through tips and tricks and not character and substance.

There's a reason that the novel I used to teach, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald, the F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel is considered one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century. Because in it, we realize that this polished person, Jay Gatsby, the novel's main character, has spent his entire life transforming himself from a poor boy from Minnesota into an Oxford man. Through his residence in this gigantic mansion, his ability to throw lavish parties and wear the right clothes, he embodies the spirit of the modern and postmodern predicament. Namely, that image is everything. That if we have the right image, we too can be among the elite with all the privileges that carries.

Here at the table, it's easy to think of ourselves as an intelligent church. Some of us come out of spaces that were anti-intellectual or where displaying curiosity was disparaged. So it makes sense that we pride ourselves on the use of our intellect, the ability to convey ideas in ways that appeal to reason and in asking good questions. But I wonder where that good thing might have become an ultimate thing. I wonder where we might need, like the Corinthians, to have our speech gifts and our expert knowledge checked.

I wonder where our deconstruction and our reconstruction might have somewhere along the way left the path, the long and wandering path of seeking truth and veered toward the much easier way of seeking airtight answers. Where we might have traded seeking the mystery for the much more appealing task of seeking mastery. in short, in short, I wonder today, and I think that this passage invites us to wonder about how we might have become entangled with spiritual elitism. it is into such a situation and to such questions that Paul speaks.

He is aware that Jews seek manifestations of deliverance signs because they are oppressed people inside of empire. not unlike many disabled, BIPOC, and queer folks. He knows that Greeks desire rational proofs because that is what they have been enculturated into. Not unlike many of the white Christians I know. Yet Paul says, but we proclaim Christ crucified.

a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, the power of God and the wisdom of God. In a situation in which the Corinthians are beginning to capitulate to the standards of the world that give honor and status, Paul lifts up the cross. The cross which would have been a scandal, this repulsive, dishonorable, ridiculous thing, this scandal utterly. And yet the very thing that shatters the world's reasonable, perfectly presented and logically compelling accounts. The cross is what matters.

I find it interesting here that Paul chooses to use the Greek perfect tense when referring to Christ is crucified. A tense which conveys past action that continues into the present. As one scholar puts it, for Paul, Jesus is forever stamped by the cross. The glorious truth that Jesus is risen does not change the foundational identity of Jesus as the crucified one, as the lamb who was slain. and because of that and because of that we can understand Christ crucified as a pinnacle of God's revelation about God's self.

This is a God who chooses what is foolish, what is weak, what is low, what is despised, who draws us toward a future that is beyond our most airtight imagining in order to abolish the death-dealing powers and patterns of the world. For us who are so far removed from the indignity of the cross, it's helpful to consider an ancient piece of graffiti. Somewhere around 200 CE, someone scratched this image. Do we have the image?

Yes, okay. Someone scratched this image into the wall of an ancient building inside of the Roman imperial complex. one of the earliest depictions of the cross in history. Many believe that a guard or, you know, maybe a child that was being educated in the imperial household scratched this graffiti on the wall. It depicts a person facing a cross.

And on that cross is what appears to be a donkey. And under the images and inscription that many translators translate as Alexa Manos worships his God. Alexa Manos worships his God. Whoever created this piece of graffiti meant it as a mockery of the worship of the crucified Christ. Yet, Paul is clear.

God has chosen what others mock. What others find stupid and shameful. At the heart of our faith is nothing less than a complete reversal of values. Nothing less than an epistemological evolution and revolution. Which is just a fancy way of saying that we have to count as sacred the knowledge and experience of the Nancy Ambroses.

After all, just as she ceded the theological vision of Howard Thurman who ceded the theological vision of Martin Luther King Jr. It is the Nancy Ambroses of the world who are most equipped to teach us. Not with eloquent speech or polished presentation but with the spirit and with power. The only question is are we table church prepared to reject the world's standards of knowledge standards by which we would be rejected anyway? Because as I imagine Paul saying to us in our day not many of us are straight enough not many of us are thin enough not many of us are white enough

not many of us are eloquent enough not many of us are educated enough not many of us are well-traveled enough to be what those with the right answers want anyway. I imagine Paul saying to us baby just stop trying stop trying to be what they want boast which is just another way to say glory which is just another way to say rejoice rejoice go on ahead and just rejoice in the Lord Paul knew what we still need to know today that it is all too easy to use our head knowledge and our correct words sometimes as weapons sometimes as armor it is all too easy to know all the facts about our world Paul insists that our excellent answers cannot get us to excellent love that encounter with God as revealed in Christ is far more critical than any status we might gain from our own techniques

of mastery Paul knew that the romance of this relationship is far more important than being able to analyze the dynamics of connection that being acquainted with the scent and texture of our faith is a far greater need than grasping for any science behind the art trusting dependence is everything the God revealed in Christ is everything just as Paul makes God the subject look back at this passage and you'll see this just as Paul makes God the subject of the majority of the sentences in the passage it is God this foolish God in which we are to boast and that's what undercuts our claims to status our doctrinal correctness our pure morality or our proper politics and partisanship all of which are the roots of division in the church when God begins all of our sentences all the sentences of our lives faithfulness will not look like human

wisdom it will look like the wisdom of the cross it will look like that piece of graffiti which read Alexa Manos worships his God and yet in a room next to that piece of graffiti archaeologists have also found another inscription perhaps penned maybe days later or years later even it writes back to the first image and says simply Alexa Manos is faithful friends may our fellowship be established on the foolish wisdom of the crucified Christ may we too be found faithful Amen