Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: 1. Corinthians 1,18-25. 5. Sunday after Trinity

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

1. Corinthians 1,18-25 3616

5. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 050

Jeremiah, Prophet, 629-580 bc

26. Juni 2016

1. О Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, who has given us Your Holy Word, and has bountifully provided for all our temporal wants, we confess that we are unworthy of all these mercies, and that we have rather deserved punishment: But we beseech You, forgive us our sins, and prosper and bless us in our several vocations, so that by Your strength we may be sustained and defended, now and forever, and so praise and glorify You eternally. Amen. (Veit Dietrich for the 5. Sn. n. Trinitatis)

2. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: »I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.« [Isaiah 29,14] Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

3. The Apostle Paul writes in his epistle: »The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.« Why is the word of the cross foolishness? To understand that question, we have to look back to before the cross became the identifiable symbol of the Christian faith. The Romans crucified Jesus, and this crucifixion was a means of execution in the Roman Empire. „The punishment of Roman crucifixion was chiefly inflicted on slaves and the worst kind of criminals. Crucifixion was considered a most shameful and disgraceful way to die and condemned Roman citizens were usually exempt from crucifixion“ (http://m.tribunesandtriumphs.org/roman-life/roman-crucifixion.htm). „Probably originating with the Assyrians and Babylonians, it was used systematically by the Persians in the 6th century BC. Alexander the Great brought it from there to the eastern Mediterranean countries in the 4th century BC, and the Phoenicians introduced it to Rome in the 3rd century BC. It was virtually never used in pre-Hellenic Greece. The Romans perfected crucifixion for 500 years until it was abolished by Constantine I in the 4. century ad“ (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/14750495/). Furthermore, the Romans used crucifixion to curb the populace from committing serious crimes, like sedition against Roman authority. The Greeks generally opposed using crucifixion as a means of capital punishment.

4. The cross is foolishness to unbelievers because they merely see it as a form of capital punishment akin to lethal injection or the electric chair. In their minds, it’s unreasonable to glorify a method of execution as the symbol of one’s religion.

5. But the Christians co-opted something from their Greco-Roman culture. In ancient Greece and Rome, people would set up a trophy (τρόπαιον; tropaeum) as a monument to commemorate a victory over one’s foes (Wikipedia). Typically this took the shape of a tree, sometimes with a pair of arm-like branches (or, in later times, a pair of stakes set crosswise) upon which is hung the armor of a defeated and dead foe (Wikipedia). The τρόπαιον was then dedicated to a god in thanksgiving for the victory (Wikipedia). The Church made the cross and the crucifix her trophies, for the Church rightly saw the cross as Christ Jesus’ victory of sin, death and Satan. Moses had taught: »A body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God« (Deuteronomy 21,23), thus the Apostle Paul proclaimed: »Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree« (Galatians 3,13), and again: »The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved the word of the cross is the power of God.«

6. The Prophet Isaiah proclaimed: »There shall come forth a Shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a Branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of Yahweh shall rest upon Him. With righteousness He shall bring justice to the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. In that day the Root of Jesse shall stand as a signal for the peoples, and the nations shall inquire of Him and His resting place shall be glorious« (Isaiah 11,1-2.4.10). Jesus Christ is this promised Root of Jesse, and in Him the Gentiles hope (Romans 15,12). A root grows into a tree, and Jesus is the True Tree of Life that grants everlasting life. Christ our Lord was crucified on the cross whose beams were carved from a tree; He became the world’s τρόπαιον as the Victor who redeemed all mankind back to God the Father. Jesus won your hearts on this cross and His fruit is righteousness (Proverbs 11,30). The tree of life stood in the middle of the Garden, and Jesus is the Great Central Tree who stands in the middle of the universe as the True Yggdrasil. He is the Axis of the world, the World Tree who holds up the skies, and the Tree of Life. He unites and separates the heavenly realm where God dwells in His great hall and Middle Earth where we live in our smaller halls (Murphy 8). The cross stops stop the mouth of the dragon-snake Satan by providing for the resurrection of the dead (Murphy 15). The cross becomes a tree of life that extends its Fruit, Jesus Christ Himself, for us to partake and live forever. The curse of the tree of knowledge is overturned, death yields to life, sin yields to righteousness, and all this through Christ Jesus.

7. Christ now stands once again in the midst of the reign of God, and He bids you to go and partake of this Tree of Life. Do not be tempted by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for its fruit cannot give you righteousness. The wisdom of this world cannot grant you salvation. Your own merits cannot earn you forgiveness. Only Jesus the Tree of Life can give you the righteousness that He would have you receive. Seek Jesus and His righteousness, and you will have eternal life as He intends for you to have. His balm is for your healing. His Providence flows from His righteousness and He will satisfy all your earthly needs.

8. St. Paul proclaims: »Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.« God the Father gives the Jews their sign: it is their crucified Messiah. God the Father gives the Greeks their wisdom: it is God dying on the cross to redeem fallen mankind. Many will stumble over this sign and be turned off by its foolishness, but the cross is the sign and the wisdom of salvation.

9. „Crux sola est nostra theologia. The cross alone is our theology. These are the words of Doctor Luther and, too, of every Lutheran sermon. If the cross is not in the sermon, it is not a Lutheran sermon. Or if you take the cross out of the sermon, and it can get along just as well without it, it is not a Lutheran sermon. As Lutherans we preach Christ crucified: “For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). Still more Lutheran–“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:30)“ (Nagel 290-91).

10. The cross stood at the axis of the world, and on that cross Jesus, who is True God and true man, was crucified, suffered and died. Friedrich Nietzsche once philosophized in 1883: „Gott ist tot! God is dead! God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned had bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?“ (Nietzsche § 125). Nietzsche was not professing the crucified Christ in his statement. Rather, he was putting forth a view that the Christian God is no longer a credible source of absolute moral principles. To say God is dead is to say that human beings are no longer able to believe in any such cosmic order because they themselves no longer recognize it. The death of God will thus lead to the rejection of absolute values themselves. We are now living in a society and a culture that is making this the new philosophical reality in America.

11. We Christians had been saying Gott ist tot 1800 years before Nietzsche twisted that phrase around. We still confess it today in our Creed: I believe in Jesus Christ who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. That confession locates where God was when He saved the world, and it is at the cross and on the cross where we see the Glory of God manifested in power and wisdom. „The cross is the δοξα [glory] point, and it has time/location–“under Pontius Pilate,” we say. Jesus said, “The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified …. but for this cause came I unto this hour” (John 12:23-27). This is an enthronement word, and His throne is the cross. That is the δοξα point. “Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other.” There is God. There for you, and not only for you but also for everyone. Or, better still, for everyone and also for you“ (Nagel 291).

12. The Church does not stop at saying Gott ist tot. There’s the second part of that phrase in the Creed: Gott ist auferstanden. God is risen. So we rightly confess: I believe in Jesus Christ, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried, and the third day He rose again from the dead.

13. The crucified and risen Christ is the power and wisdom of God. It seems weak and foolish to human reason, but God’s weakness is stronger than man’s greatest strength and God’s foolishness is wiser than man’s most profound wisdom. The glory of God is manifested in His crucified and risen Son for us and our salvation. Amen.

14. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, You have made known Your salvation and have revealed Your righteousness in the sight of the nations so that we receive that gospel for our deliverance. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

✠

All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science.

Grace Evangelical-Lutheran

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Thursday, June 30, 2016

1. Corinthians 1,18-25. 5. Sunday after Trinity

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