Fools for Christ

The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Lent 3, Year B, 3/3/24

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.

As we approach the halfway point of Lent, there’s a particular spiritual discipline that I’d like to commend for your consideration: foolishness. And not just the variety you may or may not have partaken of on Mardi Gras.

But before you tell your friends that your priest told you to go out and ‘act a fool,’ as they say where I’m from, hear me out. Foolishness is baked into our theological tradition from the very start. We hear St. Paul gesture towards the notion of holy foolishness. In his letter to the Corinthians as he writes: “God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe… for God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, God’s weakness is greater than human strength” (1 Cor. 1:21ff).

What in the world is Paul on about here? Let’s zoom out a bit to understand how he came to settle on these words and what he means by them. First, in referring to his foolish proclamation, he is of course referring to Jesus, the incarnate Word of God and revelation of God’s will for the world. But what’s so foolish about Jesus? To understand this, we need to review some history. You see, if you take out the part about the resurrection, the story of Jesus is really not very unique, historically speaking.

In first century Roman Palestine, messiah figures like Jesus were a dime a dozen. The people of ancient Israel were suffering under Roman occupation and were thirsting for someone to come and deliver them. And history shows that there were countless prophets, magicians, rebel leaders, and faith healers who were eager to meet the market demand for a messiah.

These lesser known messianic figures had their own disciples who also gave reports of their miraculous teachings and deeds, and many of these so-called messiahs met a violent end. The Roman Empire did not take kindly to rabble rousing Jews of any variety and some of them were even crucified, exactly like Christ.

Now when the leader of one of these Messianic groups was inevitably executed by the state, one of two things usually happened. The first outcome was that the movement ended, either because the leader’s followers concluded that their movement had failed or they were afraid of meeting the same end themselves, so they gave up. The other outcome was that a successor was identified to replace the leader, usually the leader’s son or a close disciple, until the movement either lost momentum or was stamped out entirely.

This pattern plays out again and again throughout Jewish history under Rome, and it’s the predictability of this pattern than makes the story of Jesus unique. The story of Jesus is unique because we know that after Jesus died, no successor was chosen, because who can succeed the Son of God, and his movement did not die out, it exploded.

And, more incredible than that, was that Jesus’s disciples claimed that after Jesus’s death, he had been resurrected from the dead, seen by hundreds, and then ascended into heaven where he will be until his coming again in glory.

I’ve preached before that I believe that the audacity of this claim is one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for believing that the story of Jesus is true and worthy of our belief today. Unless they had actually seen and believed it, I can’t think of any other good reason why so many of Jesus’s disciples would have embraced a death similar to Jesus, and gone to their graves joyfully proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ crucified and risen.

And this is where St. Paul’s notion of foolishness comes in. Because, to any rational observer who had not seen Christ risen or been compelled by the witness of those who did, this must have seemed utter foolishness. Why give up your life for a movement which by all conventional measures of success had failed. Why commit yourself to a movement which appeared to be built on weakness, not crushing strength. And those who felt that way would be absolutely right, if it were not for one thing. If it were not the resurrection.

Paul understood this argument better than anyone. As someone who had not witnessed the resurrection firsthand and was formerly a persecutor of Christians until his miraculous conversion epiphany, Paul knew from both sides how foolish it sounded to believe in a God who died.

Yet instead of arguing against these allegations of foolishness, he did a very clever thing. He embraced them and wore them as a badge of honor. He embraced the audacity of the notion that God became human, died like a human, and was raised into heaven for the salvation of all humans. And he continued to live the rest of his life proclaiming the beautiful foolishness of Jesus’s teachings, which defy the wisdom of the world. The wisdom which tells us to care for others, but only to the extent that it is expedient for us. To forgive others, but keep a record of who you’ve forgiven. To go change the world, but don’t get too carried away with it.

The foolishness of Christ that Paul is talking about is to do all those things but without the conditional statements. To really and truly follow Jesus to the point of foolishness. Because being a fool for Christ is not really about being naïve or overly idealistic. Remember Jesus also tells us to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, meaning we shouldn’t abandon strategy or common sense. Foolishness in Paul’s sense is about living your life as a mirror against the harsh realism of worldly wisdom which says that love is practical only to extent. It’s about living and believing in the love of God to its full, foolish extent, and lovingly inviting others to be so foolish with us.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church holy fools who were exemplary in this calling were even given a title, they were called blessed and were revered for their fidelity to following the path of Jesus. 

In an address to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2012, our own Presiding Bishop Michael Curry echoed a similar sentiment by calling for more quote “crazy Christians.” In this address he said:

“We need some Christians who are as crazy as the Lord. Crazy enough to love like Jesus, to give like Jesus, to forgive like Jesus, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God like Jesus.” He said “it might come as a shock, but [we] are called to craziness.”

And this is not just a bombastic statement from our presiding Bishop, it’s scriptural. We, as followers of Christ, are called to something that seems utterly crazy.

And we know it’s crazy because think about the answers we give – or don’t give – to our secular friends when they ask why we go to church. Raise your hand if you’ve ever said you go to church because you believe in a God who loved so much that he was crucified for it, died for it, and was resurrected so that we would never be estranged from love again? I know that I haven’t! But I long to be that kind of a fool for Christ. And we’re all called to that kind of foolish love, in our words and in our deeds.

I know it’s already mid-Lent and we’ve all hopefully taken on our Lenten practices, but if you’re still looking for one. Or if you have one and you’re looking to breathe some life into it. Consider taking on the practice of holy foolishness. Consider practicing a foolishness that is wiser than human wisdom, consider adopting a spirit of humble weakness that is stronger than human strength. Consider following the path of a Messiah who used brokenness and failure as tools for glory. 

For St. Paul reminds us, “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Cor. 1:18). Amen.