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1 Corinthians 1:18-31
A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
When we have funerals here, we expect that some of the friends of the deceased who come will not be Christian but people of other faiths or no faith.
A Lutheran church in the Twin Cities anticipates this situation, and their pastor begins the service with this greeting:
“All are welcome . . . If you are not Christian, we greet you with deep respect. We give thanks to God for the many ways that divine mystery is named and practiced.”
Their greeting is a way of saying: “In the past Christians said there is no other name by which you may be saved, but we are not like that anymore. For us Christianity is just one of ‘the many ways that divine mystery is named and practiced.’”
Whoa, that’s not right, but there sure is a lot of pressure to go that way.
To be sure, we live in a pluralistic world. We rub shoulders with people of other faiths on the job and at school, and we don’t go around saying: “You are lost and damned.”
At the same time, we didn’t just fall off the turnip truck either. We know that even the early church lived in a pluralistic world. We know there is something deeply wrong about that church’s funeral greeting.
For example, we know that Islam doesn’t mean “peace;” it means submission, and the more dominant in a society Islam becomes, the more the intolerant Muslims dominate. Even in Indonesia, which has many “moderate” Muslims, a recent survey (the Center for the Study of Islam and Society), reports that 56% of the population is opposed to allowing any non-Muslim places of worship to be built. Despite millions of “moderates,” a hardcore fundamentalism prevails.
Or consider Buddhism. Buddhists are generally quiet and tolerant, yet they say: “We’re the ones who accept everything, but it has to be understood our way.”
When you study religions of the world, you find that every religion has its own self-identity as a way of saying: “It’s ‘this,’ and when you say it’s ‘this,’ it also means it’s not ‘that.’” In other words, every religion is exclusive.
It’s also not true that if you take off the doctrinal husk of each religion, you find a common moral kernel shared by all. In Muslim enclaves, Sharia law determines morality, not the mores of the Judeo-Christian West. And in a Buddhist worldview, suffering in this life is regarded as the just punishment for evil done in a past life.
The scripture lessons for today might seem to support the view that what matters most is morality and doing good. The Old Testament lesson from Micah 6 asks: What does the Lord require of you but “to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.” Many have taken this to mean that what matters is good works.
And in the Matthew text we have the Beatitudes which seem to imply that Christianity is about doing good. But we know that the law shows us that we don’t and we can’t love as we are commanded to do, and that to go that route is really to fall constantly into the ditch of spiritual pride on one side, and the ditch of despair on the other.
It also doesn’t work to say that God is good so you don’t need to worry about judgment and sin because everybody will be saved no matter what. You don’t need to worry about being eternally lost. In this view whatever happens in this world is not serious because God saves everyone anyway.
But if that’s true, then then there is no justice.
It’s important to see that in the New Testament there is one Lord and one way of salvation. This may seem intolerant but when we say there is one Lord and one way of salvation, we are not claiming to have God figured out. Nor are we saying who is saved and who is damned. Not at all.
What happens to those of other religions and those Christians who fall away? Are they all eternally lost?
We say three things:
First, the cross is God’s “No” to figuring God out. In Romans 9 to 11, Paul struggles with the election of the Jews, the coming of Christ, and election through the cross alone. He can’t figure it out. How does it all work? Finally, he throws up his hands and writes in Romans 11:33: “O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”
In other words, who is saved is God’s business, not ours, and we truly leave it up to him. We can’t figure it out. We really do not know. We do not wink and say: “God is love; therefore, everybody must be saved.”
We also do not announce: “Many will be damned.” That, too, is God’s business. We leave it up to the Lord. We live by faith alone.
And we let God be God. We let him run the universe. We let the Lord work out the mysteries of evil and salvation. It’s his business, not ours.
Second, we don’t say or do anything that diminishes the cross. In the early church the authorities tested Christians by asking them to burn incense in front of the image of the emperor because he was understood as a god among gods. It may seem trivial, but many refused to do this and were executed because they said: “We are not doing that.”
Today when fellow Christians say: “There are many ways the divine mystery is named and practiced,” and I agree to that, I’ve sold out. I am diminishing the cross.
Or when someone says: “What matters is doing good,” and I go along with that, I’m selling out. I am diminishing the cross.
And that brings us to the third and final point: A Christian points to Christ alone: The cross alone is our salvation. This is our identity, our salvation. It’s not just our identity for the sake of having an identity, but because there is salvation in no one else, and salvation is at stake.
You may or may not have heard of an ex-Muslim named Faridi Mohamed. He is now a Christian and President of Iran Christian International. He was born and raised as a Muslim. Like all Iranian young men, his service in the army was mandatory, and that service includes an intensive religious bootcamp where soldiers were drilled in the highest virtue: Killing Jews and Christians and dying for Allah.
Faridi had a close friend, a very religious Muslim, who was medically exempt from military service, and so the two only got together when Faridi was home on leave. On one such occasion, when the two friends were hanging out, Faridi sensed his friend was somehow different than before. Faridi asked: “What’s up?” And his friend said that he had become a Christian.
Faridi said: “He told me that Jesus died for my sake, and that I don’t need to die. He was nailed to a cross to give me life.” Faridi: “It was the best thing I’d ever heard in my life.”
That’s what it’s about.
In 1 Corinthians Paul writes: “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (I Cor 1:20).
The Lord has solved the problem of sin and death, not according to our ideas of wisdom and miracles, but his way, through the cross and resurrection.
That is not a lecture about love or worldly wisdom. Rather, it is pointing to Christ and him crucified, as Paul did for others, as Faridi’s friend did for him.
Paul writes: “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 . . . so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption; therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord” (I Corinthians 1:28-29).
To be sure, there are questions we can’t answer, many things we don’t know. We don’t boast of our knowledge or trust in works and miracles; but we do boast of him, Christ, the only Son of God, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God . . . crucified for us and our salvation. He will come again to judge of the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
Amen