|
The Rev. Frank Logue Wise Foolishness
Newton’s apple and his explanation’s for why apples always fell down and not up, was a part of a life in mathematics that produced his three laws of motion and a host of other discoveries. But this will be a sermon and not a mathematical lecture, and so rather than get diverted by surveying Newton’s remarkable life, I want to tell you in the briefest of terms, something of Sir Isaac Newton’s worldview. Newton saw all creation as a vast machine. Newton knew that scientific methods could reveal more about this machine and the preferred method for Newton was that we should study the parts. The more we get to know the parts, the better we will come to understand the vast machine that is the universe. And in Newton’s world, this was not just any universe, but an orderly universe created by an actively engaged creator. He wrote, “Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.” Scientists and mathematicians have spent several centuries working on Newton’s project to come to know more about the universe by studying its parts. This great work of study led to some unsettling discoveries as scientists found beneath the fabric of the Newtonian universe a very different world through what we now know as quantum physics. Hang with me here for just a touch more science. Newton saw an orderly universe running on a few easily definable laws and principles. The change came when physicists looked at the sub-atomic level and discovered some very different facts about the world. One example is that Werner Heisenberg’s work with atomic particles proved vexing. He discovered that if he could describe where a particle was, he could not tell you what it was doing and if he told you what it was doing, he couldn’t tell you where it was. He wrote out a mathematical formula, called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which demonstrated that to observe something is to change it. One more discovery and then I will stop with the science. Physicists found that the universe was far more connected than previously thought. Whereas scientists had noted the emptiness of space, the lack of matter, quantum physics revealed connections. A famous experiment found that when two subatomic particles interacted, they could be separated and a cause on one of the particles had an effect on the other. Separate the two particles as much as you will, they remained connected in some way that could be shown except in predictable cause and effect. So let me sum up where we are so that we can then apply this to our reading from First Corinthians and then move on to see what this might have to do with our lives. Newton described an orderly universe in which the vast machine was the sum of its parts. From his time in the mid 1600s hundreds, scientists embarked on a bold project to understand the parts and so understand the machine. More recent discoveries at the sub atomic level have revealed that though the universe may be a vast machine, you can never understand the world through understanding the parts alone. The connections also matter and perhaps matter even more than the parts alone. The Uncertainty Principle, and other discoveries, showed that to observe something is to change the thing being observed. Furthermore, in our everyday experience, we find that if two balls on a pool table come close together without touching, each has no affect on each other. But at the quantum level of electrons, two particles can become entangled when they come close together, and will affect one another long after they are separated. The way the world works at this sub atomic level is changing the way that scientists see the visible world. While describing these changes briefly in a sermon makes the changes seem tame, for the scientists who have done the work, it is disturbing. They expected the sub atomic world to be just as uniform and orderly as the one in which the apple dropped on Sir Isaac’s head. Instead they found uncertainty and unseen connections, which Einstein labeled “spooky.” These discoveries continue to challenge the worldview of Newton. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul is countering one worldview with another—he takes on the worldview of Greek Philosophers with the wisdom of the cross of Jesus Christ. Paul’s challenge to the wisdom of ancient Greece is not a new and more compelling wisdom, but foolishness. That’s the way Paul puts it, the cross is foolishness. He writes though that, “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” Corinth is in Greece. Though in Paul’s time, it was very much a city of the Roman Empire, all the Empire was infatuated with the Greeks. The city of Corinth is known to this day for a particular style of column with a fancy design at the top. These Corinthian columns held up great temples to the Greek and Roman gods. They were also the product of Greek and Roman thought. This was the sort of wisdom that Paul was seeking to overturn with his proclamation of the Gospel. Paul is writing to Christians. They have already become believers, but the church is facing problems. There are some who feel that they are smarter than others. So smart that they can bend the rules and still be okay. There are others with spiritual pride. And into a church facing these problems, Paul begins with a passage on the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion. We get just the beginning of the case Paul will make in today’s reading. What he is doing is as revolutionary as the change of worldviews I began with and there is a further connection to make once we understand the paradoxes Paul presents. The paradoxes are wise foolishness and weak strength. At first a paradox can sound like an oxymoron. An oxymoron has two ideas together that do not go together, like “entertaining sermon” or “MicroSoft Works.” A paradox is a statement with two apparently contradictory ideas that are somehow truer together. This is wise foolishness and weak strength. Paul tells those who think they are wise that God’s wisdom is very different from their knowledge. He tells those who feel as if they have power, or authority that God’s strength is very different from their ideas of power and might. The paradigm, the example, the key image to explain the paradoxes is the cross of Jesus. He begins, 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. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Paul quotes here from the Prophet Isaiah. As a good Jew, Paul wants us to see that this is not a new idea, but one predicted by the prophet long ago, that God would overthrow the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning. Paul would have known the context for Isaiah prophecy. The leaders of Israel were facing a much superior Babylonian army. God called Israel through Isaiah to fight Babylon not just on the battlefield, but to take the fight to their own homes. Isaiah called on the people to return to the Lord. To put their faith in the God of Israel and let God sort out Israel’s salvation. But those words of trusting God alone when an opposing army was on the march seemed like folly. Israel did not listen to Isaiah. Instead they used their wisdom to make plans. Israel created an alliance with Egypt and trusted that military pact to save them. It seemed like the smartest course of action. God responded through Isaiah that the wisdom of the wise would be destroyed. When push came to shove, Egypt did not have Israel’s back. Babylon won, Israel was taken captive. For Paul this situation is happening all over. The Corinthian Christians are not putting their faith in God alone, but are leaning on that old Greek standby, human wisdom. Paul sees this as something overturned in the crucifixion. Because as Paul notes, the cross is folly. The idea of God suffering and dying was ludicrous. A suffering and dying God was an oxymoron at best and an affront to reason and wisdom to be sure. Anyone knew that if there is a God who created all that is such a powerful God could not be harmed by mere humans. But with wise foolishness, God did not just sit back and watch the drama of the creation unfold. In Jesus, God became man and entered into creation. In doing so, God became vulnerable in Jesus, the Son. This action on God’s part is not just some new teaching or clever idea, the Incarnation is a world-changing intervention into human history. By reason alone, it would have been utter foolishness for the One who could be above and beyond the creation to enter in. By reason alone, Jesus’ death revealed his weakness. But when we see by the light of faith, that Jesus had a choice, he did not have to be faithful unto death. Jesus could have fought the violence of Rome with violence all his own. Instead, Jesus paid the price for his love for us in enduring the death that we humans dished out in return. And the Holy Trinity subverted all of human wisdom and power in overturning death with Jesus’ resurrection. I began with the comparison between Newton’s world and a Quantum universe and I want to bring that analogy back. For Paul the difference between relying on Greek thought alone and relying on God was just as extreme. Notice that in Newton’s way of seeing the world, we were a vast machine of separate, though important, parts. This way of viewing the world ended with people feeling very separate, very isolated alienated from one another. In a quantum universe, as spooky as the mathematics of it may have been to Einstein, essential connections were revealed. Rather than being lots of empty space, the universe is full and connected and the connections matter. This is the paradox on which the building blocks of the universe stand, that despite the fact that we do not see the connections, all is connected. This we see even more clearly in the cross of Christ. We do not see a disconnected God off distant in the heavens. We find Jesus having emptied himself, being born as a human and suffering and dying on a cross. God was more essentially connected to us than we had ever imagined. And in the cross of Christ, this wise foolishness, we find how strong was God’s love, that God would be willing to take on human weakness and would continue to love rather than fight back. It is a love that God calls you to enter in. This love of God is the connection that binds together all creation. Paul knew that this would sound like foolishness to some, but that to those of us who found that connection would experience as wisdom. This is why Jesus distilled all of Jewish law to Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. He knew that love was the very real connection already binding us together. Paul taught us a worldview with that strong weakness and wise foolishness of the cross at its center. This undying love of God is the building block on which the universe stands. Amen.
|
|
One
summer’s afternoon in 1665, Isaac Newton took tea amid the apple trees at
his family’s garden in Woolsthorpe. At just the right moment, an apple
stem’s dwindling hold on the tree branch could no longer withstand the pull
of the earth. The apple dropped. Newton got bopped in the head and a series
of thoughts was set into motion that ended not just with gravity proven out
mathematically, but with a whole world view described now as Newtonian. 
