I used to be an Inn Keeper.
Not the usual sort of Inn Keeper. The folks who staid in my Inn were mostly homeless men in alcohol and drug addiction recovery in Washington DC. A rough crowd.
The rules of the Inn were very strict. To choose to break the rules was to choose to be locked out and thrown back onto the street.
The first rule was to never use or be around drugs or alcohol.
Sometimes the residents of the Inn would go through elaborate deceptions to get away with “using” again. But they always overstepped and were caught.
It surprised me who would relapse and who would stay clean.
It was the smart ones, the most educated, the most well spoken, the ones with the most potential who almost always relapsed, who deceived everyone so easily, they lied so well they deceived themselves.
That made a huge impression on me.
The ones who were the most down and out were the only ones who could face the truth of their own weakness.
One man when he was passed out in a drunken stupor had gasoline poured over him and his face was literally burned away.
Slowly during his stay at the Inn his face was reconstructed.
He was the most miserable of the residents when he began and he had the most successful recovery from his addiction, as his new face slowly and literally emerged from a blank mass of scar tissue.
He faced the truth of his own weakness.
The apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians was writing to a community full of people who were awfully impressed with themselves, and because of that they were a divided community trying to be more wise, more spiritual, more eloquent than each other.
Paul held up the Cross of Christ and simply said God’s wisdom is most fully known only in weakness and failure.
“God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
“The cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Power is not what we thought it was.
Weakness is not what we thought it was.
Wisdom is not what we thought it was.
Foolishness is not what we thought it was.
Success is not what we thought.
Failure is not what we thought.
Paul holds up the Cross of Christ and says this changes everything, it changes how we see the world, it changes what we strive for, it changes what we hope for, it changes how we live.
A dead man on the cross shows us who God is, what is truly wise.
We see God’s weakness.
And it is foolish to those who are perishing.
And to those who are being saved, notice how Paul says being saved, not saved, but being saved, on the way to being saved, they see the power and wisdom of God.
In the cross are we confronted with our own weakness?
In the cross are we confronted with our desperate need for God?
In the Cross do we see that we have nothing to boast in?
Do we see that in and of ourselves we deceive ourselves all too easily?
In the foolishness of the cross do we see that we take ourselves all too seriously, all too gravely, that our graveness pulls us down like gravity. Some say that Satan fell by his own graveness, his own gravity.
We can boast in God.
Boasting in anything else is deception.
Our human standards of evaluation have been overturned.
I like knowing things. I like being educated and smart and competent. I like trying to say clever things (sometimes I even succeed) and I like being from a successful family and having a family that thrives on curiosity and learning.
But, how often am I aware of my own weakness? My own desperate need for God? Is this what I build my life around? Is this how I raise my children?
Do I conform my life and my family around the foolishness of the Cross or around being successful and comfortable American consumers?
Our human standards of evaluation have been overturned.
God’s foolishness stops us short.
A dead man on the Cross.
We have been interrupted, by a sign of judgement.
All that is false is being burned away.
Our faces are slowly being reconstructed into God’s image, into God’s foolishness.
The Cross.
The mystery transforms us.