William H. Willimon - "Fools for Christ" (March 2, 1997)
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Preacher | Last Sunday you heard | 0:11 |
of the ruggedness of the cross. | 0:13 | |
This Sunday you will hear about | 0:17 | |
the foolishness of the cross. | 0:20 | |
For Paul says to the Corinthians, | 0:24 | |
"The cross is foolish." | 0:28 | |
But to those of us who are being saved, | 0:34 | |
it is the power and the wisdom of God. | 0:37 | |
On Good Friday, 1984, | 0:43 | |
Father Carl Kabat donned a clown outfit and a red nose, | 0:45 | |
jumped over a government fence in North Dakota | 0:52 | |
and began hammering on a Minuteman II guided missile. | 0:55 | |
For this act of priestly clowning around, | 1:01 | |
Father Kabat received six years in a federal penitentiary. | 1:04 | |
And yet today's scripture reminds us | 1:12 | |
there is precedent for this sort of behavior. | 1:15 | |
"Do you know my pastor?" she asked me, | 1:20 | |
"He's really your stereo-typical perfect pastor", she said. | 1:25 | |
"He's always late to meetings, | 1:33 | |
"he forgot my sister's wedding, | 1:36 | |
"his car is always a wreck, you get it on the front seat, | 1:40 | |
"he has to remove all his books and papers | 1:44 | |
"and throw them in the back seat. | 1:46 | |
"The other night he called me here at Duke | 1:48 | |
"at 20 minutes after midnight and he said | 1:51 | |
"that God had put me on his mind and he wondered | 1:56 | |
"how I was doing, he is the perfect pastor." | 1:59 | |
And I thought to myself, I wonder-- | 2:04 | |
you have to wonder what this means in the life | 2:06 | |
of this organized, upwardly-mobile, would-be successful, | 2:09 | |
high-achieving kind of undergraduate. | 2:15 | |
What effect this disorganized pastor has. | 2:20 | |
And I remember, a friend of mine, Walter Brueggemann, | 2:28 | |
writing a book on youth ministry, a number of years ago, | 2:32 | |
saying that the primary characteristic | 2:36 | |
for the effective youth minister is to be crazy for youths. | 2:38 | |
Not just crazy about youth, | 2:45 | |
but crazy in behalf of youth. | 2:49 | |
For there is an important kind of pastoral craziness | 2:55 | |
that gives young developing minds room. | 2:59 | |
Room to roam and revision and envision | 3:06 | |
and that's important. | 3:11 | |
Such a pastoral fool may be a living reminder | 3:15 | |
that the gospel is not about establishment | 3:19 | |
but rather revolt. | 3:25 | |
Not settled accomodation | 3:27 | |
but rather destabilization of present arrangements. | 3:29 | |
And thus, Paul writing to the Corinthians, | 3:36 | |
the Corinthians who knew so much about so much. | 3:40 | |
He writes, "The message of the cross is foolishness | 3:45 | |
"to those who are perishing, | 3:50 | |
"but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God." | 3:51 | |
It is written how we'll destroy the wisdom of the wise | 3:55 | |
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. | 3:59 | |
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? | 4:03 | |
The debater of this age has not God made foolish | 4:06 | |
the wisdom of the world? | 4:10 | |
God decided through foolishness to save those who believe. | 4:14 | |
Christ crucified, stumbling block to Jews, | 4:21 | |
foolishness to Gentiles. | 4:25 | |
But Christ, God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, | 4:29 | |
God's weakness is stronger than human strength. | 4:34 | |
"The cross is moria, moronic," Paul says. | 4:40 | |
Most Methodists believe that the Methodist movement | 4:51 | |
stems from John Wesley's stirring, heart-warming experience | 4:56 | |
at Aldersgate Street. | 5:01 | |
But a Wesleyan scholar like our Richard Hudson-Ryder | 5:04 | |
can argue that maybe a significant conversion | 5:08 | |
in Wesley's journey occurred when in his journal he wrote, | 5:15 | |
having been excluded from many respectable pulpits, | 5:21 | |
he wrote, "On this day I submitted to be even more vial | 5:24 | |
and submitted to the level of field preaching". | 5:30 | |
And you can see this proper little Oxford scholar | 5:35 | |
going out into the field to preach to coal miners | 5:39 | |
and the wretched of the Earth. | 5:45 | |
As Bonhoeffer put it, | 5:49 | |
"It is no small thing that God allowed himself | 5:51 | |
"to be pushed out of the world on a cross." | 5:55 | |
Or Paul, "God chose what is foolish, Moria, | 5:59 | |
in the world to confound the wise." Romans 1:27. | 6:06 | |
One of the earliest renditions of Jesus on a cross | 6:13 | |
shows a body on a cross with a head of an ass | 6:18 | |
from the Catacomb of Callixtus. | 6:26 | |
Hebrew says Christ was crucified outside the gate. | 6:29 | |
Outside the gate. | 6:34 | |
And he wasn't just speaking geographically, | 6:35 | |
he was crucified outside the bounds of our respectability, | 6:39 | |
our cause-effect rationality. | 6:43 | |
He came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday | 6:47 | |
bouncing on the back of an ass. | 6:50 | |
He died outside our definitions of success and wisdom. | 6:53 | |
And there was in him, there was in him... | 7:01 | |
Even before the cross, | 7:07 | |
a kind of playful foolishness in his teaching. | 7:08 | |
About the sewer who went out to sew and refused | 7:14 | |
to prepare the ground properly | 7:17 | |
but just started slinging seed everywhere. | 7:18 | |
Or when they asked him about the Kingdom of God, | 7:23 | |
he said, the Kingdom of God is like a man | 7:25 | |
that had a fig tree that was unproductive for three years | 7:30 | |
and he says to his servant, "cut it down", | 7:35 | |
and his servant said, "Oh master forgive, forgive the tree. | 7:37 | |
"Let me dig around it and put some dung on it." | 7:43 | |
And Jesus says sometimes God is like that. | 7:49 | |
It wasn't that Jesus was being unreasonable, | 7:56 | |
it was that he was exercising a different brand | 8:00 | |
of rationality than that of the world. | 8:05 | |
Because after one has made a statement like, | 8:11 | |
"God was reconciling the world to himself in Jesus Christ", | 8:13 | |
then all world irrationals are thrown up for grabs. | 8:19 | |
This gospel today, John opens his gospel | 8:27 | |
with Jesus tearing in the temple, | 8:32 | |
turning over tables | 8:34 | |
and driving out the money changers | 8:36 | |
and screaming at people. | 8:40 | |
Most of the other gospels tastefully leave this | 8:43 | |
toward the end of the story, | 8:45 | |
after we've sort of gotten to know Jesus. | 8:47 | |
John sticks it right up front. | 8:50 | |
It's just a reminder that Jesus is in the business | 8:53 | |
of turning over tables | 8:57 | |
and driving respectable people away from the temple. | 8:59 | |
And yet, I'll admit, and yet there is | 9:05 | |
this sort of tiresome tendency within the Christian faith | 9:07 | |
in our hands to be transformed | 9:12 | |
from sign of outrage and contradiction, | 9:16 | |
sign of insubordination and usurpation | 9:22 | |
to transform it in Tom Wright's words, | 9:27 | |
"to the cement of social conformity". | 9:30 | |
As I have said there is this sort of relentless temptation | 9:35 | |
for the church to degenerate in the rotary. | 9:38 | |
I'm part of it! | 9:46 | |
Couple of spring breaks ago | 9:51 | |
I took a group of random seniors on a retreat. | 9:53 | |
The name of the retreat was, | 9:59 | |
"Jesus For Those Who've Heard Something About Him | 10:01 | |
But Not Yet Ready To Put Their Money Down On Him." | 10:03 | |
And I said on this retreat, | 10:06 | |
I'm going to do everything at my disposal to kind of, | 10:11 | |
wrestle you into discipleship. | 10:14 | |
I'm going to do whatever I can to confront you with Jesus | 10:20 | |
so that your life might be changed. | 10:24 | |
But don't get nervous, I'm a Methodist, | 10:27 | |
it probably won't work. | 10:29 | |
(crowd laughter) | 10:31 | |
But, first night we showed them this tape | 10:31 | |
of Max McLean, here at Duke chapel | 10:35 | |
going through this act, going through the gospel of Mark. | 10:38 | |
Just straight through the gospel of Mark, start to finish. | 10:41 | |
We get through. | 10:46 | |
I could tell the group was moved, | 10:49 | |
just moved by just nothing but this gospel. | 10:51 | |
Guy sitting there, hair down below his shoulders, | 10:56 | |
sitting there, tears in his eyes | 10:59 | |
and he said, "You know Jesus is cool. | 11:01 | |
"I could see-- I knew-- I wasn't surprised | 11:05 | |
"how this story ended, I knew he was going to get killed. | 11:09 | |
"I knew after 15 minutes, somebody's gunna kill him! | 11:12 | |
"You do not let people, you do not let a guy say | 11:16 | |
"that kind of stuff about people, who doesn't get killed. | 11:18 | |
"So, I knew he was gunna get killed. | 11:22 | |
"And I also can understand why he attracted a crowd, | 11:25 | |
"because anybody that strange | 11:29 | |
"is going to have people interested in him." | 11:30 | |
And I said, "Good, good, yes, yes". | 11:35 | |
He said, "one thing I don't understand". | 11:37 | |
I said, "well what is that? Maybe I can help you with it". | 11:40 | |
He said, "I can understand how he got killed, | 11:43 | |
"I can understand why people followed him, | 11:45 | |
"but I do not understand, you know, | 11:47 | |
"how you get from that, like, Jesus, | 11:49 | |
"to over here, like, church. | 11:52 | |
"I can't understand how you start out with somebody | 11:56 | |
"like Jesus and end up with most of the Christians | 11:58 | |
"I know that are so damned boring." | 12:00 | |
(crowd laughter) | 12:02 | |
And I said, "You know, now I'm remembering | 12:06 | |
"why it was not a good idea to take people like you | 12:08 | |
"out on a retreat like this!" | 12:10 | |
(crowd laughter) | 12:12 | |
There is a certain kind of foolishness required | 12:16 | |
in any creative thinking. | 12:20 | |
A playful willingness to roam, | 12:22 | |
to revision, | 12:25 | |
to seek odd connections between things | 12:27 | |
that were not there previously. | 12:30 | |
I sometimes wondered, one reason maybe mainline Christianity | 12:36 | |
appears to be in death throes, | 12:40 | |
it's the kind of people we attract to seminary. | 12:45 | |
It's-- we just, we seem to have in our leadership | 12:50 | |
a high proportion of those who want to keep house. | 12:54 | |
To confirm and conform and too few who want to play | 12:58 | |
and confront and disrupt and revision and envision. | 13:04 | |
As Paul says, "God chose what is foolish in the world | 13:10 | |
"to just confound the wise." | 13:14 | |
Or else we're, in first Corinthians, | 13:17 | |
he says, "We're fools for Christ's sake. | 13:20 | |
I ran into this man awhile back, | 13:26 | |
he's the president a thriving corporation | 13:28 | |
and he told me that a man that was a member | 13:31 | |
of my former congregation, | 13:34 | |
he had just made into vice-president of marketing | 13:37 | |
in his corporation. | 13:40 | |
And I said, "Gosh that's amazing, | 13:42 | |
"he's really then gone up the ladder then." | 13:45 | |
"Yes, yes, yes." | 13:47 | |
And he said, "You know, he's somewhat of a fool." | 13:48 | |
And I said, "Well now we knew that at church, | 13:52 | |
"but I'm surprised that you knew that. | 13:56 | |
"And I'm also surprised you'd make a man like that | 13:59 | |
"your vice-president of marketing." | 14:03 | |
And he said, "Yeah, he's a fool," he said, | 14:05 | |
"he's got about one good idea | 14:07 | |
"for every 10 ideas he comes up. | 14:09 | |
"About nine out of 10 of his ideas | 14:11 | |
"are some of the stupidest things | 14:14 | |
"I've ever heard of in my life." | 14:15 | |
And I said, "Well then that just makes it all the more odd | 14:17 | |
"you would make someone like that vice-president." | 14:20 | |
He said, "Wait a minute, he's the only guy I got | 14:22 | |
"that ever comes up with one good idea!" | 14:24 | |
(crowd laughter) | 14:26 | |
Tom Wright in a sermon on this passage | 14:34 | |
suggests that we honor St. Simeon of Salos, | 14:36 | |
a Palestinian monk of the sixth century | 14:39 | |
who came into a Good Friday service eating a sausage | 14:42 | |
and then proceeded to throw nuts | 14:50 | |
at the candles on the alter during the service. | 14:52 | |
Lest in even our repentance we take ourselves too seriously. | 14:56 | |
St. Francis of Assisi was often called the new fool | 15:05 | |
because he stripped down and cut free | 15:13 | |
and roamed beyond the bounds of convention. | 15:15 | |
Staying at the home of Sir Thomas More, | 15:20 | |
Erasmus penned, "Encomium Moriae, In Praise of Folly". | 15:24 | |
In which Erasmus says that he gets right into the heart | 15:32 | |
of the Christian faith when he talks about | 15:35 | |
all the kinds of moronic foolishness we humans engage in. | 15:39 | |
He talks about the foolishness of people | 15:45 | |
who go to war to bring peace. | 15:47 | |
Of people who accumulate material possessions | 15:51 | |
in order to feel secure. | 15:54 | |
Of people who foolishly fall in love. | 15:57 | |
Erasmus says you should thank your parents | 16:02 | |
for being such fools, or you wouldn't be here. | 16:04 | |
Because any rational person sitting down to think about | 16:09 | |
all the trouble that love brings | 16:12 | |
and the difficulty of children | 16:13 | |
would go into a monastery at once. | 16:16 | |
But then Erasmus says there are no fools greater | 16:21 | |
than those who give away all they have to the poor. | 16:24 | |
Who suffer slander and injuries | 16:31 | |
and overlook wrongs and abuse. | 16:34 | |
And consider the goal of their life to be a cross. | 16:41 | |
Erasmus says no wonder Festus thought Paul was mad | 16:47 | |
and no wonder the world's first judgment upon the church | 16:51 | |
is in axe to their drunk. | 16:55 | |
Fools for Christ's sake. | 17:02 | |
And there is in me, God help me, | 17:09 | |
the tendency to reduce the gospel, | 17:12 | |
the playful gospel foolishness to social accomodation. | 17:15 | |
Even to stand up and preach is to imply | 17:23 | |
that the gospel is more reasonable than it really is. | 17:27 | |
How many Sundays I stand up, | 17:31 | |
we've read some perfectly ridiculous passage of scripture | 17:33 | |
and I can almost feel it, as the scripture is being read, | 17:38 | |
I can almost feel you getting tense, everybody tensing up. | 17:41 | |
And I stand up in the pulpit | 17:44 | |
and I say give me 20 minutes and I can explain this to you. | 17:46 | |
He didn't really mean hate your mother, all right? | 17:51 | |
He meant, put the old lady in proper perspective. | 17:55 | |
He didn't mean go give away everything you've got, | 17:59 | |
that would be irresponsible, how could you pay tuition? | 18:02 | |
(crowd laughter) | 18:05 | |
He meant to just scale down to a Toyota or something. | 18:08 | |
That's what he meant! | 18:13 | |
See, you've got no problem here, all right? | 18:14 | |
Everybody feel better? | 18:17 | |
We can go home and have lunch. | 18:18 | |
But no, we are walking here, we are moving here, | 18:24 | |
just a couple of weeks to a cross. | 18:29 | |
And there's just no way to kind of crank that down | 18:36 | |
to fit into the available rationalities. | 18:39 | |
Well I met her her freshman year | 18:47 | |
and she was gorgeous and intelligent and privileged | 18:49 | |
and all might have been well, | 18:56 | |
but she went on one of these Duke Chapel mission teams, | 18:58 | |
went down to Honduras, met him down there, | 19:03 | |
he was also a Duke student, they hadn't met. | 19:07 | |
He was president of his fraternity, he was pre-med, | 19:10 | |
they were down there in Honduras. | 19:12 | |
When they came back, someone got a hold of her, | 19:14 | |
she was different, she was discontent, | 19:17 | |
she was troubled, she was also in love with this person. | 19:22 | |
And at graduation they announced that they were going | 19:29 | |
and giving themselves to running an orphanage | 19:33 | |
down in South America for street children. | 19:37 | |
And I saw her mother over commencement weekend | 19:42 | |
and her mother said to me, | 19:50 | |
"I've got a bone to pick with you! | 19:52 | |
"What do you think about what my daughter | 19:55 | |
"is going to do after graduation?" | 19:58 | |
And I said, "I just think it's wonderful, | 20:01 | |
"it's just a, it's a real sign of her Christian commitment, | 20:02 | |
"you should be proud." | 20:07 | |
She said, "Well how would you feel | 20:08 | |
"if it were your daughter?" | 20:09 | |
I said, "Oh I'd be terrified!" | 20:10 | |
She said, "Well thanks!" | 20:12 | |
(crowd laughter) | 20:14 | |
And she said, "When I think of her ability, | 20:18 | |
"when I think of the money spent on a Duke education | 20:21 | |
"when I think of the possibilities. | 20:25 | |
"I'll tell you what I think, | 20:28 | |
"I think she, for the first time in her life, | 20:29 | |
"as long as I've known her as my daughter, | 20:33 | |
"I think she's being a fool!" | 20:34 | |
And I said, "For Christ's sake." | 20:41 | |
(crowd laughter) | 20:44 |
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