Foolish Victories

1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12

I love a good upset victory.

Love it when the team or contestant that’s obviously the underdog, the one who shouldn’t even be in the contest in the first place, pulls off a surprise victory, and no one’s ready for it.

 

And that’s what Paul’s got for us today.

Here’s the dominant team, team Wisdom, who win spiritual insight, and righteousness with the divine, by logic, philosophy, and reasoned debate. They face no serious opposition in the Greco-Roman world; everybody else in the game plays by Team Wisdom’s own house rules.

Until Paul introduces us to Team Foolishness.

 

Foolishness fails every reasoned debate, stammering over half-formed descriptions of transformed hearts in the face of Wisdom’s clean, logical proofs. 

Foolishness puts the very weakest possible players on the field, a team of obvious losers, the ones the rest of the world laughs at or ignores. 

Foolishness celebrates defeats – proclaims that crucifixion – the defeat that basically erases the person – is actually the shining example of the triumph of God.

 

You have to laugh at Team Foolishness even thinking about taking on Team Wisdom.

 

Wisdom, after all, works hard, hires the best coaches, strives for success. 

Doesn’t depend on fuzzy spiritual values but teaches us to get life right so we can earn our own love, freedom, happiness, security and access to heaven without having to depend on unknown, unmeasureable mercy and gifts from God.  

Team Wisdom counts how many people are in the pews and how solid our budget is, and how respected or famous our preacher is, to measure our “wins” as a church, and tells us that’s the only way the game is played. 

No use for foolishness there!

 

But Paul looks at his friends in Corinth (and maybe at his friends in New Jersey, two thousand years later) and tells us that whether we notice it or not, Team Foolishness actually wipes the floor with Team Wisdom when God enters the world.

 

Because when the wisdom of the world (the proponents of Not Rocking The Boat) nailed Jesus to the cross and romped off the field, God’s foolishness took over, reaching into every human failure, every place we’re broken inside, every deeply-buried hope and holy yearning we’ve given up for lost, every one of the mistakes you or I might be too embarrassed to remember, every single loss, taking those painful little deaths into the tomb with Jesus, and bringing them back to us full of the potential for abundant life and generous love.

Team Foolishness takes our secret burdens of shame, our unspoken fears that no one loves me, loves you, for ourselves, on to the cross where the fears suffocate and burdens expire.
And then Foolishness bursts out of the tomb with the absolute certainty that God’s love cannot be blocked or broken by even the worst we can think of ourselves or others.

Team Foolishness invites you and me to romp onto the field ourselves, to drop every certainty that we don’t know what we’re doing or how to win the game, and just revel in the victory we did nothing to win, but that God is absolutely determined to give us.

 

I’ve struggled with that a bit this month. 

I’m stepping away for the next two months to do something I honestly don’t know how to do. To take sabbatical – a time of actually stopping work, of saying “no” to being busy, “no” to being recognized for my accomplishments. 

A time to try to do, actually, nothing.

I’m…still not quite sure I’m ready for that. It seems, well, a little irresponsible. Maybe even foolish.

 

I know this is something I need to do, but it’s contrary enough to my training and habits – to the wisdom that’s supported me so far in my life – that I haven’t been sure how to look forward to this time for rest and renewal.

And when some of you have asked me if I’m excited about sabbatical, and my travels, I’ve sometimes shared with you instead my anxious efforts to be sure everything is in place here, that every bit of knowledge, capacity, and strength I can manage is transferred to other people so that nothing goes wrong. 

That effort and care is the right thing to do. The wise thing. I want nothing more than for Trinity to be so well cared for and successful while I’m away that you barely miss me. 

 

But where the wise thing fails is where it’s been blinding me to the holy thing – the sheer exuberant joy of God’s invitation to do something unproductive. God’s invitation to rest. To trust Jesus and you with one another. 

Blinding me to the opportunity to embrace the possibility that something failing to work the way it “should” while I’m away is a wide-open door for God’s creative, loving power to do something I never dreamed of.
Blinding me to the opportunity to share your delight in my potential adventures.

There’s a whole absurd, wonderful, foolish, loving joy that’s been hovering right around me, and I was missing it.

 

Paul would be furious with me.

 

For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is greater than human strength. God doesn’t choose the prudent, successful, confident, respected, and competent to save our souls, or our community, or to make God’s love visible in the world. 
We heard Jesus say something about that today. About God’s blessing, the spotlight of God’s love, falling on the apparent failures: the imprudent losers, the meek and powerless, the hapless optimists and those too burdened by grief to “be strong”. 

That’s who God chooses, Jesus tells us. Paul tells us.

Wisdom – the basic common-sense consensus of the world – drops us when we fail, scolds us when we don’t quite measure up to the standard of success.
God’s foolishness picks us up, hoists us on God’s shoulders, and celebrates the victory of unconditional love over prudence, logic, and common sense.

 

We’ll talk about this more at the annual meeting, but your Vestry, Wardens, and I know that we’re going to be navigating a year at Trinity that calls for all the wisdom that we’ve got. Calls for a solid effort to determine a responsible, realistic plan for how we worship and work together as a strong community when it looks like we could fail, with fewer of us together on a given Sunday morning, a shift in our congregation away from the usual measures of success like overflowing Sunday School classrooms and a cash-rich budget.

 

At a time like this, it not only seems rampantly foolish for me to go away on sabbatical;

it seems especially foolish to ask you all to join me in resting, in seeking renewal, when we are looking at a budget shift that demands our attention, our work, our pulling together and sorting things out – not just from a few of us, but from many if not all of us.

 

But that’s what God’s foolishness is for – for renewing our hearts in rest, trust, renewal, play, so that God’s love is victorious in steering the present and future of Trinity.
So that we don’t get twisted up in the foolish “wisdom” of doing it all ourselves rather than keeping our eyes peeled for God bringing absurd generosity and love from unexpected places [while we do what’s right in front of us].

 

God’s foolishness invites us to rest, trust, renew ourselves, and pray even while we are fully committed to the work before us, so that we don’t wear ourselves out past the point where we can rejoice in God.

 

If this doesn’t feel easy for you – as, I admit, it doesn’t feel easy for me – I want to invite you to try something next month as a spiritual exercise in foolishness. On February 12, before you tune in to watch the Eagles take on the AFC, find and watch the Puppy Bowl or the Kitten Bowl.

Ignore the commentators, whose job it is to invent some kind of rationale for what you’re seeing, and just watch the silliness. Watch what happens when the rule-filled, effort-oriented, success-striving field is turned over to foolishness. To the possibilities of uninhibited joy, play, rest, and delight.

 

And see what happens when you carry that experience with you to Trinity the next week. To work or school on Monday. To the demands of your daily household life.

See what happens when you carry that experience to your reading of scripture and your personal prayer.

See what happens when you look around the world for God’s foolish, uninhibited joy and play and rest and delight and love in your neighbors, in yourself.

 

I love a good upset victory.

I bet you’ll find one.