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Scripture for Sunday, Oct. 22: 1 Corinthians 1:17-25
Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 37: What do you understand by the word, "suffered"?
Last Sunday, we worshiped Jesus Christ, the one mediator between God and people. We considered how claiming Christ as the "one name under heaven by which we must be saved" gives rise to our struggle with the scandal of particularity: Can so many people outside the Christian faith really be eternally lost?
We saw that a deep and honest look at different religions shows us that they are foundationally different. They cannot all be true. And the kinds of claims Jesus makes about himself and that others make about him aren't relative. The scriptural witness makes Jesus' status as the Son of God clear. Either Jesus is God-in-the-flesh, the way to the Father, or he isn't. He is a lunatic, a liar, or Lord.
There is nobody like Jesus, who not only reveals God's path back home but is himself the path back home. So we respond to the call to pray for "all people," praying that they may come to know this Lord whose perfect justice and perfect mercy will be shown in an ultimate way at the end of time.
This week we turn to another scandal about Jesus: The scandal of his suffering.
The Scandal that is Hard to See
If you have been a follower of Jesus for a long time, it's hard to think about salvation as coming in any way except through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. That's a given, something we remember often with thankfulness but entirely without surprise.
But for the young Corinthian church, apparently even among believers the message of a crucified Messiah was a "stumbling block."
"We preach Christ crucified," Paul says, "A stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:23-24).
The word translated "stumbling block" is "skandalon," the root of our English word "scandal." The Jews--Gods chosen people, who knew his works and his ways--were completely scandalized by this kind of Savior.
Wasn't the Messiah expected to rule and reign with power, in the same mighty way that God had led his people out of Egypt? It was unfathomable that God's Anointed could be someone whose ministry ended with an execution in the common criminal way, a way that evidenced not God's blessing but his curse (Deuteronomy 21:23).
An accursed Messiah? Impossible. Oxymoronic. Preposterous.
For the Gentiles, the idea of a crucified Christ was madness. What kind of God gets himself killed by his enemies? How foolish.
But scandalous as a Suffering Savior was, unpopular as it may have been, incomprehensible as it seemed even to those who were taking steps in Christian faith, what is Pastor Paul's approach? Does he whip out a clever marketing strategy that will persuade the "wise" Greeks? Does he seek to demonstrate to the Jews how the suffering of the cross was really powerful, just in an imperceptible way?
No. Paul names the alternatives that keep the Corinthian believers looking for God in expected but erroneous places: In miraculous signs and in arguments from human wisdom (1 Cor. 1:22).
Such idolatries were clouding true worship of "Christ crucified"--a God who saved on his own terms; a God who did not consult humans on his plan to save the world; a God whose 'saving through suffering' not only blew away human categories but also saved our lives.
This idea of a suffering savior, a God-Man who died a nasty death at the hands of unclean people is something Paul is eager to re-assert and establish as bedrock. It is astonishing. And ugly. And painful and overwhelming, when you stop to think about it.
It is also the reason for our very great hope.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion:
1) From the Sermon: Rev. Hoogeboom identifies two forms of idolatry that are temptations for the Corinthian church and for us. What idolatrous tendency poses more danger to you? How might the foolishness and weakness of Christ's cross respond to that temptation?
2) On the Scandal/Surprise of the Cross: Can you identify a time or a way in which God's way of saving caught you by surprise?
(I think of reading a book on the Incarnation in my teenage years that suggested Jesus had acne as a teenager. Our perfect Savior?! Blemishes? Impossible!)
Reflect on your stories of surprise about God's method of saving, and how they impacted your life of faith.
3) Read 1 Corinthians 1:25. How do you conceive of the strength of "the weakness of God?"
With a nod to the Jewish tradition of reciting the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5), today some Christian believers will communally recite the Greatest Commandment (in which Jesus quotes the Shema and expands it--Matthew 22:37-39) with an upraised pinky finger. The gesture reminds them that God delivered his people from Egypt with the power not of his mighty hand or his outstretched arm, but with just the power in his little pinky finger.
Even God's pinky is strong! And his strength is revealed in the ultimate weakness of Christ's cross.
How does 1 Cor. 1:25 give you hope and comfort in the challenges you face?
4) Read 1 Corinthians 1:26-31. What circumstances were you in when God called you to belong to him? Perhaps you have been a Christian your entire life; perhaps not. We are all on a journey of being made new in Christ (sanctification)--and hearing others' stories of faith can encourage us along.
5) Where have you seen God among things that are "lowly and despised" (v. 28)? In what ways have you seen God use adversity or painful circumstances in your own life as a place where your Suffering Savior draws near?
