August 26, 1979

There is an old story about a man who had a flat tire while driving by a mental hospital. When he stopped to change it, some of the patients walking on the hospital grounds came over to the fence to watch. Not knowing just what these patients' particular emotional problems were, the man became a bit nervous. So nervous, in fact, that he lost track of the lugs which rolled into the grass. . Unsuccessful in finding them, a look of confusion and fear came across the driver's face. A patient called to him: "Hey, Mister, why don't you take one lug off of each of your other wheels and use it on the changed tire. That way you can get to a service station." Amazed, the man said: "Hey, that's a great idea! How did it come to you?" To this the patient retorted: "Look, we may be crazy in here, but we're not stupid!"

Today, I want to struggle with just what is stupid and just what does make sense in this world. What ways of living bring joy and meaning; which ways of living turn out to be short cuts to dead ends? To do this, something Paul said in the year 50 AD to the new, struggling church in the Greek city of Corinth helps me. "...we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ (is) the power of God and the wisdom of God.' Who is he talking about? Paul is referring to the two basic sources of opposition to the Christian way in the early days of the church. The Jews were on one side and the non-Jew Gentiles such as the Greeks were on, the other side. The very idea that Jesus represented God or that he showed what life is really all about was offensive and stupid to both groups.

We need to know what's going on when Paul says that Jesus crucified is a stumbling block to Jews and folly or foolishness to the Greeks. A quick New Testament word study will help here. The original Greek word Paul used for "stumbling block" was "skandalon". We get our English word "scandal" from this word: a scandal is something shocking and offensive, Paul's Greek word for folly, or better, foolishness, was "moria" or "Morian" from which comes our word "moron": a moron is someone who is mentally deficient, stupid, not playing with a full deck. To the Jews who wanted power, the affirmation that the crucified Jesus was their messiah was outrageous and scandalous. They wanted a powerful General Patton to come and put them on top in the world and kick the Romans in the seat of the pants, say that this weakling, dreamer who had gotten himself strung up was the messiah was "skandalon". Furthermore, he irritated them because he called into question their neat answers about what God is like and how he wants humans to treat each other. As for the Greeks, we must understand that they were the intellectuals of the ancient world, the center of both philosophical and scientific knowledge. Their aim in life was to be smart. To say to these seekers of wisdom that country bumpkin Jesus from Podunk-Galilee had any thing to teach them about the way life really is and ought to be lived, well, that was just ludicrous, "morian", stupid, and foolish. "Jesus Who?", they must have asked. "What can he tell us who are descendants of Euclid, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle?"

Yet, Plucky Paul says to those power hungry Jews, crucified Jesus brings real power to your life. To the knowledge seeking Greeko, he affirms that bumpkin Jesus brings true smartness about what makes life worth the effort. All this is not that far from the street where you and I live. Like those Jews and Greeks we are still anxious for the power and smartness we need to live. We desire the power of money, physical health and attractiveness, not to mention the power of status and prestige. As a nation we seek powerful weapons to secure us in the world. And how does all this power come? Why from the pursuit of knowledge and technology. Education is a key for success. Whether we admit it or not, most of us also want the crafty kind of smartness so we can figure the angles, turn a buck, and use situa- tions and people to our advantage. So, like those people in Corinth, Paul makes us, who think we know it all, face the question of just where true strength and smartness comes from.

Where do we get the resources we need to face our living and our dying? And the way of Jesus still questions our easy answers about the strong and smart way to live with each other and with ourselves. He makes us face what is wrong with what seems so right, and what is right about what seems to be so stupid and wrong.

(1) Let's take a look at some of those scandalous, foolish things Jesus taught about a life worth living. First, by word and action Jesus taught that what's important in life is not so much what you GET but what you GIVE. He told the rich young man to sell his possessions and give them to the poor. To a person who asks you to go a mile, go two. If someone wants to borrow your coat, give him your sweater also. He commended a poor widow for giving her last cent at the temple and castigated the well-heeled Pharisees for tossing in token leftovers. Finally, not just with his words but example, Jesus taught that people have to be willing to give their lives away in order to have them in the end. Now, all that stuff sounds neat and sweet in Sunday School lessons, but we find those ideas a bit irritating and unrealistic when we face that Jesus meant it for the ways we live in our families, in our businesses, and in our society. These ideas are crazy and outrageous so says the Jews, Greeks, and us.

We know what's smart and makes you powerful in this world: what you can get. Measuring

ourselves and others by clothes, houses, cars, and tax brackets goes deep. Give all you can?

Oh, no, if you are strong and smart in this world then you have to get all you can, while

you can, anyway you can. Give? Why no one ever gave me a thing, I had to work for every-

think I have.... Well, you know how that line goes.

Yet, in recent years, we 6% of the world's population who use almost 50% of the world's

energy have had to face that all of our getting and using is not so smart. And we learned

very well this summer during the scramble for gas that we aren't so strong. Maybe the

foolish, irritating Christian idea that getting and using all you can does not bring

happiness makes more sense than we thought. Previously, we have thought that getting the

biggest house and most cars we could possibly afford was real living and worthy of status.

But is it really? Perhaps the church should take the lead in changing our society's value

system. Isn't it time that people who can afford bigger houses and fancier cars but who

choose smaller, more efficient ones in order to conserve and share be given respect and

status. I think Christian status should be for those who live on less when they could

afford more. Christians have always been crazy enough to be concerned with sharing with

others be they in the world now or in the coming generation. We may think the energy we

try to save in our homes and cars inconsequential. But then again Christians have always

been foolish enough to want to be a little part of the solutions than a big part of the

world's problems. Maybe there isn't much status at all in getting more when we can live

quite well on less.

Edgar Jackson is a UMC minister and theologian who has done a lot of writing on the grief and aging process. I was reading the other day about his notion of "the joy of skillful giving". Retired now, he recounted how much pleasure he had received during his career buying rare and first edition books. At this point in his life, however, near 70, Jackson says he gets more joy from finding people to give a volume or two from his 500 rare book collection, people who he thinks will appreciate a particular author or subject. I wonder if many of us who have given so much of our lives to skillful getting ought not look into the joys of skillful giving. What you could do for your family, community, and church might bring more satisfaction than you know. Of course, this is a foolish Christian idea to a world dedicated to the joys of getting and consuming.

I have a true story that you may find hard to believe. Not long ago, a Methodist ministerin Birminghan received a call from a member of his church. If I said the man's name, you probably would recognize the family business. At any rate, he told his minister that he was coming to believe more and more in the things his church was doing: it’s inspiring worship, Christian education for the children, its attempt to relieve world hunger and other forms of suffering. He invited the minister to lunch. During the meal he said: "I used to be excited when my business did well over what I could get with the money, now I get more joy out of the money I make because I can give it." With that he handed his minister a sealed envelope. When the minister returned to his office, he found a check for $25,000.00 in the envelope for the church.

You and I have to decide what makes sense for our lives: getting or giving. For Christians,

it is time for us to put our lifestyles and money where our know-it-all mouths are.

(2) A second foolish thing Jesus taught about real strength and power in life is this: it's not whether you SUCCEED or FAIL but whether you GROW. To people like us who live in a society that almost worships success, it is hard to understand that there is no word for success in either the Old or New Testaments.. Jesus spent most of his time with people we would probably term losers: half-breeds, prostitutes, cripples, and others. He was not concerned with whether people made it big in the Jerusalem stock exchange or won the Miss Galilee Beauty Contest. His call to people was to grow in their ability to trust God with their living and dying, to grow in their willingness to care for each other, to grow in their awareness of God's evil and death defying love for them.

Perhaps the most important thing we need to ask ourselves in life is not have I won or

succeeded, but have I grown. It's funny how nothing seems to succeed like failure in

helping people to grow. When things are going our way, there is no reason or time to take

stock of what our way of life is doing to us and people around us. An occasional brick wall is

is never fun, but they may be that which makes us stop, check priorities and relationships,

and make changes.

I think we parents need to be so very careful in our desire for our children to do well in school, sports, and life in general. I'm afraid that we give them the idea sometimes that our love for them is based on how well they do instead of because we simply love them. In one of our United Methodist family-marriage study books a distinction is made between achievement oriented families and growth oriented families: "(1) Achievement oriented homes produce children who find themselves liked only when they please their parents byexcelling or achieving. Life in this kind of family means that mom and dad give affection or praise only when John or Sue have won sone award, made some kind of grade, or excelled in some particular way. John and Sue rarely hear from their parents that they are loveable just the way they are. In achievement oriented families, children seldom learn that love comes about simply because they are human beings. In these kind of families, children always have to earn their love. (2) Achievement oriented families tend to destroy child naturalism. Children are delightful and creative human beings. But when they are pushed they begin to act like little adults. They lose their delightful, childlike qualities...their creativeness, their spontaneity.... Achievement oriented families expect second graders to act like third graders; eighth graders to act like ninth graders; ninth graders to act like college students.... Childhood is a...time of freedom, spontaneity, and day-dreaming. To such parents, dreaming. Yet achievement oriented parents find such things intolerable. In addition, children are to become responsible little adults to please their parents:" I might say, Moms and Dads, husbands and wives, also need to hear and experience that they are simply loved not just because they do wonders around the house and bring in the cash but because they are just who they are.

It sounds foolish to say that it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, succeed or fail,

but whether you grow. But is happens to be Christian.

(3) Third, Jesus taught with his words and life another shocking, crazy thing.

be faced not so much with TERROR as with TRUST. This is not to say that Jesus was wild

about the idea of dying. His struggle in the Garden of Gethsamne makes that clear.

he was not so worried about death that he was paralyzed by it, missing the joys of living

and oblivious to the needs of others. Because he wasn't worried so much about his own.

neck he trusted God with it - he was free to really live every inch of his life.

Yet Don Shockley, formerly chaplain of Birmingham-Southern and now chaplain of Emory University, has a term for this Christian ability to grow in overcoming our terror about death with has a trust in God: "divine nonchalance". His notion is that Christians can trust God with their living and dying so that they aren't so afraid of dying that they never really live. Christians with divine nonchalance don't claim they know what exactly happens after death, They simply trust that God does. where it is or what it's like.

Albert Schweitzer (or Albert Schweetzer as my son says) mirrored this overcoming the terror of death with trust. Most of you know his story. He was an accomplished musician and theologian. In fact we used some of his books on New Testament study in seminary. Yet in his early thirties he went back to school and trained as a physician. Although he could have done great things for humankind in the comfort of Paris, Berlin, or London, he chose to go to a hot, insect infested place called Lambarene in what was then French Equatorial Africa. There at Lambarene for many years he ministered to the minds, bodies, and spirits of the native people. Late in his life, an enterprising, reporter made his way to Lambarene to interview the doctor about his life. The reporter recounted to Schweitzer some of the hardships he had endured and pleasures he had forgone. He said this: “Dr. Schweitzer, for you to give us o much and dune so much on earth, you must really know what heaven is going to be like and how good it will be.” The old doctor with his hand twitching and his droopy mustache said: "No, I really don't know. But whatever God does will be alright.” That's divine nonchalance, the overcoming of the terror with trust.

That's what Paul had in mind when he said: "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, what the

Father has prepared for those who love him.” It must have propelled him as he faced

beatings, jailings, shipwreck, and finally execution. I think we hear it when he says:

"There is nothing in life or death or anything else in all creation that can separate us

from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Christians are God's fools who are enabled

to change some of their terror about death into trust. And trusting God with your dying

helps you to trust him with your living.

We read about Abraham in our Old Testament reading today. He was an old man in a place called Haran. Evidently, he had done well and accumulated a lot. But the old guy got the idea that God wanted him to move to some unknown place called Canaan. He even got the crazy notion that he and his old wife Sarah would have a child and that he would have millions of descendants. It was outrageous and foolish, but the old man moved. I’m not sure that you and I need to do any geographical moving in our lives today - sometimes that kind of moving is a way to dodge the real kind. But we all need to move from our getting and success worship and from our terror to the giving, growing, and trusting that brings real strength and wisdom to our living.

“...we preach Christ crucified, a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those

who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ (is) the power of God and the wisdom of God...”

Okay, chose your foolishness. Are you going to be God's fool or just a plain fool?