“Whad’ya Know I: Jesus Christ Crucified”

August 23, 2009

Jeremiah 9:23-24

I Corinthians 2:1-5

On those Saturday mornings when nothing else is demanding my time and attention, I like to get a second cup of tea and listen to “Whad’ya Know?” on NPR. Are you familiar with this? It is a quiz show, among other things, that is broadcast from Madison, WI. Each week’s show begins with the host taking a humorous look at that recent news. And he concludes by asking in a cheese-headed, folksy way: “Well, whad’ya know?”

The audience then responds as one: “Not much. You?”

It does the Hawkeye heart well to hear all those Badgers admit, “Not much”—something we’ve long suspected.

As the start of the school year approached, I started thinking: “Well, what do we know?”

Our congregation respects questions. We recognize that doubt is a part of faith. And we have a pretty high tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity.

But what do we know?

In Paul’s letters to the early churches he often writes about what he knows, what he hopes to know, and what he tries to know. Paul helps us in our own pursuit of knowledge. He helps us as we seek to live faithful lives whether we are in school or out of school. So in the coming weeks we’ll listen to some of Paul’s answers to the question: Whad’ya know?

In our text this morning from the First Letter to the Corinthians Paul writes: “When I came to you, brothers and sisters…I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (2:1-2)

Now, remember that Corinth was a notorious seaport, well known for corruption and vice. The proverb warned: “Not for every person is the trip to Corinth.” It was a first-century Bangcock, an ancient Peoria.

Paul himself brought the Gospel to the city of Corinth. Through his work a church was established there. (OAB) And this church in the midst of such an infamous city was not in good shape. It was plagued with divisions and dissention, its common life was in disarray, and some members mired in sexual immorality. This is to say that those ancient Christians were not Bible characters. They were real people who knew the confusion, fear, and sin that come with living at any time, even today.

Even with all of their problems, the Corinthian Christians we are pretty self-assured lot. Many thought that they had received a secret spiritual knowledge that set them apart from others. So Paul would write to them later in this letter: “If I understand all mysteries and all knowledge…but do not have love, I am nothing,” adding: “As for knowledge, it will pass away.”

Whad’ya know? Paul is telling the Corinthians that their answer should be: “Not much, really.”

As Paul begins this letter, he reminds the Corinthians that when he was there in person, he did not come with a secret wisdom. He came with in weakness and in fear and trembling. His only knowledge? “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

Think how absolutely astonishing those words are. Jesus Christ crucified shows us God’s ability to act in the world that is beyond all power. Jesus Christ crucified reveals the abundant generosity of God that is beyond all wealth. Jesus Christ crucified—a beaten and tortured human being on a cross—tells us more about life than all our other knowledge.

Let’s be honest—this “Good Friday” knowledge disturbs us. We generally want to avoid this way of knowing.

We Protestants, especially, tend to recoil at Christ crucified. The crosses in our sanctuaries or around our necks are empty, inviting us to look beyond the death of Jesus to his being raised in glory. We recoil at Christ crucified—and with some justification. For we have seen that an emphasis on suffering and death seems to lead only to, well, more suffering and death. We choose not to know Christ crucified. Instead, we like to think of ourselves as resurrection people.

This is the path that those early Christians in Corinth took as well. They went from the cross to exaltation. In his letter, Paul reverses the direction, going from exaltation to the cross. As the German New Testament scholar Hans Conzelmann put it: The result of the resurrection is not that the cross is superseded, but rather that it becomes possible to speak of it.

Next Sunday I’m going to look at what it might mean to know Christ in the power of the resurrection. For now, however, let us walk backward with Paul from the resurrection to see what it means to know Christ crucified.

Greek grammar often helps. The word “crucified” here is a perfect passive participle—and you can ask your Language Arts teacher or someone in the Rhetoric program more about that. It’s a word that describes an action completed in the past whose effects continue into the present. So in Paul’s eyes, the identity of the risen Christ remains stamped by the cross.

And the Cross here is not about some blood sacrifice or the forgiveness of sins. The Cross is that place where God is bringing a new creation into being.

To know Christ crucified is to believe certain things about our lives and this universe. It is to confess that God is present in the depths of human suffering. It is to find that God is made known to us in weakness, anguish, and despair as much as—if not more than—in victory and strength. It is to have a confident faith—or a doubting, struggling faith—that God is making something new even in the midst of great suffering.

Paul does not invite us to wallow in suffering. We know weakness, anguish, and despair, but we do not need to seek them out. Always the way of Christ is the way of life. But the way of weakness and suffering is also the way of God with us. This is the God who takes away all reasons to boast in our wisdom, might, or wealth, stripping away all that we might choose to exalt ourselves. Yet this is also the God who acts with steadfast love, delighting in creation, delighting in us.

Paul made a decision early on that Christ and the cross would be at the center of the picture.

Carroll Hanson recently sent me a postcard from Germany. It is a picture of an altarpiece by the fifteenth century painter Hans Memling. It is a classic triptych. The left panel shows Jesus carrying the cross. The right panel shows both the burial and the resurrection of Jesus. The center panel, the largest panel, shows Jesus Christ, and him crucified. The rest of the work is shaped by the center.

Because I never quote something a member tells me without first getting permission, I asked Carroll if I could tell you what he wrote about his encounter with this work in Lübeck: “Today there was time to visit this museum and see Memling’s stunning altarpiece; I sat there for at least a half hour trying to absorb it.” He said, concluding: “The salvation story is right there!”

As with Paul’s theology, Christ on the cross is the center of the picture.

At the center we do not see correct ideas or right thinking. As the center we do not find certainty. At the center we see Christ crucified, which is, somehow, our wholeness, our life, the salvation that we desire.

Christ and the cross are at the center of the picture. And the rest of life takes its definition and proportion from that center.

Knowing Christ crucified—that is, knowing the God who is with us in our weakness, knowing the God who enters into the suffering of the world, our lives take on a new fullness. We share our knowledge as teachers, we study as students, we serve as professionals, we raise children, we nurture our friendships. We do not say, “I know nothing, and so I didn’t prepare the lecture or I didn’t go to class.” We do our work thoroughly, we love our families and friends with abandon, we act responsibly in the world because these are ways of knowing Christ and him crucified. These are ways of knowing that God is among us in the depth and height of all life.

Knowing Jesus only as crucified is incomplete. We need resurrection for our understanding of God and of life to be complete—and as I said, we’ll come back to this next week. But not knowing Jesus crucified is also incomplete. For in Jesus we see neither tragedy nor triumph, but gospel—the good news that God has come to us, shared our common lot, and invites us to be new people in the new creation that began with the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Whad’ya know?

When Jesus Christ and him crucified is at the center of the picture, we know God with us in all of life, and we know that all of life is lived in God.