The Wisdom of God

The epistle lesson in the Revised Common Lectionary continues through the first chapter of Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. Corinth was an absolute mess. It was a city full of confusion, social change, and unrest. And so its no surprise that the infant Christian community in Corinth had its problems as well. Paul's letters to the Christians in Corinth are largely responses to conflicts that arose in the Corinth community over doctrine and practice.

The text for this week concerns the Church's struggle about reconciling the crucifixion of Christ with God's power and glory. The struggle is understandable, both for the disciples who were of Jewish upbringing and those raised in Greek culture. Persons in Jewish culture wanted God's power to be revealed in signs. Greeks wanted wisdom. New converts to Christianity had difficulty understanding how the cross of Christ was a sign of God's power or evidence of wisdom. The cross seemed to be nothing but a sign of powerlessness.

Paul responds by reminding us that the cross only looks like a sign of powerlessness to us because of our ignorance. When we see the cross through the wisdom of God, we see a revelation of God's power and glory. For Jews and Greeks, the purpose of life was to consolidate power, wealth, and glory within themselves, within their families, and within their nation. Our culture thinks about the purpose of life in the same fashion. The wisdom of God is not about consolidating power and glory, but in giving it away. The cross only looks like powerlessness and foolishness when we are thinking with human wisdom. Through the crucifixion of Christ, God emptied Himself to bring life and redemption to the world. This greatest manifestation of God's glory and power is only perceived as glory and power when we see the cross through God's wisdom.

God's Vision for Us

Ancient Israel had a clear vision for itself--an understanding of what it wanted to be. Israel wanted to be a great nation like the other great kingdoms of the world, or in the words of Isaiah, "for the twelve tribes to be raised up." And ancient Israel assumed that God shared this vision. Ancient Israel assumed that God had the same vision for Israel, and that God was acting to bring Israel's vision to fruition.

As it turns out, Isaiah revealed that God had a greater vision for Israel--God wanted Israel to be the instrument through which God's light would be revealed to all the world and the instrument through which God's salvation would be proclaimed. God did not perceive Himself as Israel's instrument to bring about Israel's vision. Instead, God perceived Israel as God's instrument to bring about God's vision

We have a vision for ourselves and what we want to be. Invariably, our vision for ourselves is limited and, frankly, boring. God has a vision for us and for our lives; God's vision is that we become God's instruments of God's vision. It is greater and more marvelous than the vision that we have for ourselves. God does not see Himself as the instrument to bring about our vision for ourselves, but sees us as the instrument through which we bring about God's vision. God's vision has always been, is, and always will be about bringing light to the world and effecting the world's salvation. This vision was brought to fruition in Jesus, the Word made flesh.

God's Logos

The gospel lesson in the Revised Common Lectionary for this week is John 1.1-18, which is often referred to as the "Logos Prologue" of John's Gospel. Rather than Luke and Matthew, who begin their gospels with stories of Jesus' birth and infancy, or Mark, who begins with the ministry of John the Baptist, John begins with what was according to scholars an early Christian hymn. The central theme of the hymn is the "Logos" of God--typically translated as "Word" of God.

"Logos" had a very specific meaning within Greek culture. In fact, it was one of the central terms of Greek philosophy. Although a term of philosophy, it would have been as well known to John's audience as "capitalism" or "evolution" is to a contemporary American audience. The notion of logos had its origins with Heraclitus, who was a Greek philosopher about 6 centuries before Jesus. Heraclitus' central inquiry was about what made human culture work. Heraclitus lived in an age when all sorts of things were being created and sustained--political systems, economic systems, science, education. Heraclitus reasoned that there had to be some engine that made everything run, just like an engine that drives our car. Heraclitus posited that the engine that makes the world run--central organizing principle, or the "logos" is violence and conflict. For Heraclitus, any human system is created and sustained by conflict and violence--and not the kind of senseless violence that we saw this week in videotapes on the news of parents fighting over toys at a Christmas sale, but an ordered and structured violence. The kind of violence where competing systems struggle with one another, and through this struggle create and sustain functional systems. The way this typically works is for one force to show up and drive another existing force out.

This notion of logos was central to Greek thought. And it remains central to our own. Politics, economics, education, business, law. A cultural assumption that we share as Americans is that the engine that drives these systems is conflict and violence. Once again--not the kind of senseless violence that leads to criminal liability, but an ordered and structured violence.

John begins his gospel by telling us that we have it all wrong. There is a "logos"--an engine that makes everything run. We just got the name of the engine wrong. The engine is embodied in Jesus. The engine is not an abstract principle, like "conflict" or "violence". Instead, if we want to see how everything is created and sustained, we just look to the life of Jesus, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. In this life we see a different "engine" that has always been what drives the world, and will always be what drives the world. That engine is sacrificial love, compassion, mercy, and service.

Notice that John is not saying that this logos is the engine that will drive the world someday when we all get our act together and turn to God. John is saying that this is the engine of the God who is the God of eternity--the God who always has been.

The Church has typically perceived the right God but with the wrong logos. That is, the Church perceives God, correctly, as the creator, and Jesus as the redeemer, but assumes that God and Jesus share the Greek notion of logos--in other words, that the revelation of God in Christ was one of conflict and violence--of something driving something out. Instead, God in Jesus brought an entirely different operating principle that is entirely at odds with the logos of the world. An operating principle that was so antithetical to the world's logos that those operating out of the world's logos found Jesus incomprehensible. And when the world was able to reject Jesus, to drive out Jesus, and to crucify Jesus, the world perceived Jesus as powerless. Of course they did--they were seeing Jesus through the wrong logos.

Giving our lives to Jesus is about more than seeing Jesus as more powerful than the world. It is about seeing that in Jesus, God is presenting an alternative to the way that we think the world runs. What truly creates and sustains all things is sacrificial love, mercy, and compassion. Being God's people is about allowing God's Spirit to enter in so that we can finally start getting this through our heads.