Homily for the Sixth Sunday, Feb. 13, 2011
Intro The Greeks were fascinated by wisdom. Last week Paul told the
Corinthians he did not want to base his gospel on the wisdom of their world, but
on the power of God. But today he asserts that the gospel does contain wisdom,
but one quite different from the wisdom of their Greco Roman world.
Greek wisdom covered a wide range of positions. Their economics was built on
slavery and a system of patronage which increased the gap between the urban
rich and the rural poor. Their ethics largely was the Stoic apatheia, a detachment
from the changes of the world that left humans at peace with whatever happened
in their lives. Thus their bloodless ethics was far from the compassion for others
that Jesus made the center of his Christian ethics. Their religion ranged from the
follies of the Olympian gods to the State religion which worshipped the Ro man
Emperor who proclaimed himself the savior of the world. By sacrificing to these
gods, Roman citizens enjoyed the benefits of the fertility and prosperity that they
brought. And of course they valued rhetoric, which could persuade others to
follow the path that led to life as they saw it.
The basic error which underlay most of their thought was their thinking that this
material life is all there is. When they thought of an afterlife without the vitality
of their bodies, they thought it not much better than death itself. And so all their
thinking was given to the clinging to, and perseverance in their life here on earth.
They had no real conception of an eternal community of saints, and so the ethics
of laying down one’s life for another was achieved by few.
Paul does not name any of these errors, but he clearly sees the difference
between the so-called wisdom of the world and the wisdom of the cross. The
Greco Roman culture avoided death by clinging to this life; but Jesus and
Christians laid down their lives in order to achieve a greater life. What the
Greeks and even the Jews would think of as the folly of the cross, was in fact the
true wisdom which leads to eternal life. Paul calls it a mysterious, hidden
wisdom of God by which God decided before all ages to send his only Son to
correct these false ideas and false values. If the Romans, or even the Jews, had
known the wisdom which Jesus was preaching, they would not have crucified
him who is the Lord of glory.
Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount saw God’s desires as going far beyond the
Jewish wisdom which the Pharisees had constructed on the Old Testament Law.
The Jews honored the 5th Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” but they did not
address the underlying rage and hatred which led to ridiculing and even
ostracizing others. Jesus says that nourishing a murderous hatred against your
brother, is the same as killing him, because it will ultimately lead to killing him,
one way or the other.
The Jews honored the 6th commandment which forbade adultery, but they did not
attack the underlying lust which leads med to fudge their marital commitments.
Jesus says that desiring a woman lustfully will lead to adultery, or at least to the
breaking down of the marriage bond which is supposed to be a covenant of
exclusive faithful love.
The chief fudge, of course, was divorce, which in the more strict rabbinic
interpretation was allowed for a sexual indiscretion by a woman, and, in the “socalled” more “liberal” interpretation, could be had for any reason, such as
burning the soup. Jesus opposed divorce because it was the breaking of a solemn
commitment, and because it forced divorced women, who had no civil rights or
protection as single women, into adulterous unions. They needed a man to be
protected physically and civilly in their society.
Finally The Jews honored the 8th commandment, which forbade false oaths, the
kinds taken by laying one’s hand on the Bible, or on the temple treasury, or even
on one’s physical life. (“Cross my heart and hope to die.”) But that left all kinds
of other promises and statements not under oath to be deceptive. Jesus opposed
all oaths, because his disciples’ speech should always be truthful, not in need of
external reinforcement by swearing on God’s word or on his throne.
In short, Jesus stands for honesty, for integrity, for faithfulness.
The Meaning Today: Jesus understood that following his way was sacrificing
one’s ego to a larger world of good. Letting go of your anger against those who
have wronged you is giving up on a justice which you think you deserve. But in
fact, it is breaking open the husk of your self-interest to care for the salvation of
your oppressor. It is the folly of carrying his cross. In a sex-saturated world,
concentrating on the inner beauty and goodness of your spouse is letting go of
imagined or illicit pleasures. But that cross, too, leads to greater joy in an eternal
union. Being faithful through the shaky spots in a marriage means crucifying
your own desire for an illusory perfect marriage in favor of an eternal union built
on self-sacrifice. Telling the truth can make you vulnerable to others’
exploitation of you, but is the way to the authentic reality of yourself and of our
world.
The wisdom of our world is not going to lead you to this integrity. Our world
glorifies violence, in the sports we watch, in the destruction we wreak on nature,
In he wars we wage. And that violence leads us to, and is nourished by vengeful
anger. Our world glorifies the body beautiful as the goal of life and creates false
images of it through our films and our pornography. Our world holds up as
models coaches who break their contracts, stars who divorce their way through
serial adultery. And this has always been true. The United States entered into
over one hundred treaties with Native Americans and broke the terms of every
single one of them.
If you are going to be faithful in a faithless world, you will have to carry a cross,
because people will take advantage of you. If they crucified Jesus, the Lord of
glory, they will also make you pay for your fidelity. But if you live as Jesus did,
not only are you a better person, but so is our world. If you refuse that cross, and
act as others do, you make the world worse. In that way, the wisdom of the cross
is the only way to the salvation of the world. That is what St. Paul means when
he says that the wisdom of the cross seems foolish to the so-called wise of this
world; it is a mysterious and hidden wisdom which God has predetermined
before all ages, for our glory.
Ultimately we carry the cross because we know in faith that it is the way to a far
greater life. As the cross led Jesus to eternal life, so it will lead us to his risen
life, what Paul calls the weight of eternal glory. So the cross reveals the truth
that our world obscures. By committing ourselves to the deepest desires of our
immortal souls, which hunger to be in union with God, we grow now, in the
integrity, and even the quiet joy, of that authentic human life which is eternal
bliss.
Thirdly, how do you get this integrity? By coming to hear the stories about
Jesus’ own integrity, and how it enabled him to triumph over sin and death. By
receiving the Body and Blood of Christ which strengthen you with Jesus’ life, his
resolve. And finally by watching other Christians make Jesus’ wisdom the rule
of their lives. All of this is possible for you, in Christ Jesus.
His cross is the good news.