“Un-Conventional Wisdom”
Rev. Rachel Lewis Cooley
Eternal Hope UCC, Fort Walton Beach, FL
February 6, 2022
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
15 Now I want you to understand, brothers and sisters, the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2 through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.
3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures 4 and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you believed.
Will you pray with me? Living Christ, Christ Resurrected in me,
I ask today that the Spirit of the Lord would be with each one of us here at Eternal Hope, that we may indeed place our trust in you and know that we are each invited to come to the resurrection story with whatever feelings and doubts and struggles we may have with it. May we be encouraged that we are part of the story, and that we are can own it and journey with it in different ways, however we are called, in whatever ways call us into new life with You. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on us. Amen
Good morning, church It is a good morning, because it’s always a good morning to hear the gospel, which means good news. Say it with me : “good news!” For this news of Jesus and of God’s work in the world –this gospel—is always meant to be good news. Good, freeing, hopeful news of new life and a new world. “Good” can be our guide, though I know that our world and anxiety in our lives and fear of our doubts can sometimes make us feel like we don’t believe enough, or we can’t have God’s goodness for ourselves – we have to put it off till we’re worthy enough. But I truly believe that right here, right now, however you are – the good news is a gift from God for you. Say with me again, “good news!” Say it three times!
So if you’ve ever been in a church or a conversation where this scripture or others are held over your head as a test of belief you’ve got to pass in order to be saved, you can say “wait a second, this is not what this is supposed to be about!” I promise you there is another way. And there is no test to fail.
This scripture can feel like a list of things you’ve got to believe, a mandate so impossible to argue with that we wind up feeling guilty if we have any doubts about what exactly raised from the dead and “appeared to” so many really means. And it is true that in our context, where so many churches write up and repeat such fundamental belief statements, and use them to evangelize, making them part of the requirement to be a member of the community, we might feel scared about this scripture and Paul’s statement of belief. I felt nervous about it too, and wondered what hearing this Scripture might do to the air in the room when we all heard it together. But, taking a deep breath, I knew we were called to it this week. Because in Paul’s context, writing to this church at Corinth, this passage was about love for all members of the community, and togetherness in shared witness. Paul was reminding these squabbling church members what their community must really be about, about the good news and what it really means, and what it doesn't. Just as I say that today, good news isn’t about right belief, Paul says it’s not about right gift. Just as the good news is not about who “believes” the most or has the most faith or does the most good works, Paul is saying the good news is not about who preaches the most powerfully or who testifies the loudest. Instead, the good news is about coming together around joy in resurrection, and sharing the story of resurrection in all the different ways it can be told and lived and shared and experienced. It is about love, so let’s keep the main thing the main thing, as Pastor Booth reminded us last week. For God is love, many people say. And the wisdom and path of love is very different than the conventional wisdom of the world, which ranks and stacks us all in hierarchies, which compares and finds wanting so many of us.
In Marcus Borg’s powerful book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time - I’ll say that again, because what a title, right? Meeting Jesus Again (For the First Time) as if we’ve heard so much about Jesus before in our Southern US culture and churches but we also can learn so much more and so much new about him all the time. I was surprised by Scripture stories about Jesus I didn’t know about Jesus and his disciples just this week, and I know I and we can keep being surprised by this teacher and prophet and miracle worker and healer and the stories about him, whether or not we literally believe everything they say happened in actual historical reality. We are allowed to keep being surprised by the truths contained in what we hear of Jesus’s life and teachings.
But I digress. In his powerful book Meeting Jesus Again (For the First Time), Marcus Borg draws our attention to conventional wisdom of the world, which is taught to us by culture, whatever culture we are in. Conventional wisdom “is intrinsically based upon the dynamic of rewards and punishments,” Borg says. It’s the idea that “You reap what you sow; follow this way and all will go well; you get what you deserve; the righteous will prosper—these are the constant messages of conventional wisdom.” It’s in the capitalist “work hard and you will succeed” mantra. And to be clear, conventional wisdom can be found in all cultures, not just the Jewish one of Jesus’s time or the ancient past represented in the Old Testament, and not just in non-Christian cultures. For the unfortunate things is that conventional wisdom is so pervasive, so poisonous and sneaky that it gets into our churches and houses of worship too, even if the religious traditions have teachings to counter it. Our subconscious egos are taught the lessons of hierarchy and conformity and societal values of success and supposed righteousness so well that we begin to create conventional wisdom ourselves, making it more powerful for ourselves and others. We’re told that any other way of looking at the world is foolhardy and naïve. We are forced into an anxious life of striving to perform – often we want to be outstanding in the things our society most values. Like those in the Corinthian church, we want to be the best speakers, the most outgoing, the most creative in those areas we’re taught to value. It is completely true that I get nervous over my sermons because of conventional wisdom having told me again and again that having the mic is the most important and I better perform well – be bold and loud and move people emotionally and whatever else – yall know what I’m talking about because you live in this conventional wisdom, hero-model world too. But Paul is telling the Corinthians that the best preaching or the best prophesying is not the point. We don't have to be anxious about performing. For the point – the good news! - is in Jesus’s reversal of conventional wisdom, both in his life’s teachings and in the story of the resurrection.
Jesus told countless parables that turn conventional wisdom upside down and shake it all around till we somehow shake out of it, coming to in the wisdom of God, the wisdom of resurrection into the kin-dom. You may remember the story of the prodigal son, who is celebrated though he shirked his duties and spent his father’s money and lived in what was considered an unclean state for years and years. Yet when he returns, his father throws a party for him, and we are invited to consider how the responsible, hardworking, older brother who’s stayed home feels. We are invited to reject his cynicism, and refusal to go to the party, even if we honor his hurt and see him in ourselves. We are invited to reject the conventional wisdom which gets him so up in arms, so upset as he tries to defend it.
Jesus says the kin-dom of God is like a mustard seed – which though it is the smallest of the seeds, will sprout bountiful branches where birds can nest safely. The mustard plant was considered a weed in Jesus’s day – how could it be like the kin-dom of God! Surely the true messiah would bring swords and jewels and horses and an army to conquer the kingdoms on earth. A mustard seed?!
We often react with surprise and dismay at Jesus’s teachings, if we are honest, because we are steeped in conventional wisdom. But Jesus invites us to sit and stay a while, pondering what he’s said, the freedom it could bring. He invites us to consider our own lives, and what we see of God’s kin-dom already here around us. In giving our lives over to relationship with God’s Spirit, we lose our lives to the world but we find them in God’s kin-dom. We die to the ways of the world, we let the conventional wisdom within us die, and we are raised to new ways of being, new life in God’s kin-dom.
Conventional wisdom says that the person who “believes” the most, or has the deepest faith on some sort of one-to-ten scale is the one who will get rewarded, while Jesus said he came for the sinner, and We know we do not have to believe or declare a certain way to be welcome at this church. We live resurrection wisdom in our radical welcome, whoever you are and wherever you are on life’s journey.
Conventional wisdom says that folks with addictions will never recover or that people with criminal records are to be shut away from society for they will never do any better … while God’s wisdom says each person is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done and the wisdom of resurrection says each may leave their past behind and have a new way of being.
Conventional wisdom says that “the homeless” are bums, lazy, addicted, miserable. God’s wisdom invites us to walk with them, as Lindsey Krinks does and writes about in her book Praying with our Feet. Her resurrection wisdom witnesses to us that she found healing and wholeness, by going to the underside of the city.
Conventional wisdom says that gender is a strict binary, and that gender roles are inescapable. God’s wisdom says we are never limited by identities that create hierarchies and set rules on freedom. Resurrection wisdom says that we may be born again into sexual and gender exploration, into creating the lives most true and beautiful to us here on earth. Our trans and non-binary and queer siblings witness.
Conventional wisdom says the story is over when someone dies and that those who came before are dead and gone forever. But God’s wisdom says that our ancestors matter and their stories do impact us, for better or worse. And resurrection wisdom says we get to heal the wounds our parents and our parents parents had, and we get to cling to and embody the faith and hope they also had for good living and good futures for us.
I know that my brother-in-law Richard who died is in fact still here – he’s here in me, he’s here in my family each and every day. And every day we live his astounding generosity toward others, we live his resurrection. I am his resurrection in my call to ministry, which I first experienced as I healed from the grief and trauma of losing him suddenly. I sat desolate, depressed, and lost to myself and the world for a time in that grief when then I felt God, I felt God in a church community where I was welcomed, embraced, and called forth. And then my resurrection to new life in suddenly seeing my call to ministry and eagerly, immediately, following it. How else could I respond to such good news but with resurrection! And What an astounding gift from Richard, my brother-in-law, for me, from him, for the world.. from God, for the world.
I know you have stories of resurrection like this one too. I know you’ve recovered and found gifts and healing from hardship. I know you’ve felt the call of God to good news even when surrounded by conventional wisdom of the world. And I long to hear your stories. Paul is reaching out in this scripture, across the centuries to say “tell your stories!” Find those moments of resurrection in your life – the big ones and the small ones. Walk with each other and with God to keep being people of the Resurrection. I’ve come to accept that whatever I think happened with Jesus after his death all those years ago, I believe in the resurrections I see in the world around me. Witnessing to the ways God is still moving and Jesus is still showing up to invite us to God’s wisdom and to new life in the kin-dom is more powerful, I believe, than making loud declarations that Jesus was literally raised from the dead in his body. Whether you believe that or not, I know you can witness to resurrections here today, in your life. Paul urges us to let those stories center us in community, to share those stories, to know that God’s grace is more than enough, is big enough to allow even deaths to create new life. Paul tells us that the risen Jesus appeared to him, meaning he experienced resurrection in God’s kin-dom and he completely changed his way of life. He was blind and now he sees.
So, Eternal Hope, people of the resurrection: what do you see? Tell about it. Witness to it. Share it. And remember that with evangelism, we don’t have to beat anyone over the head with a stick about it. This is “good news,” for all people. In a world where conventional wisdom says the number of butts in seats and donating members of a church is where “success” is, we insist that there are other ways – ways of God’s wisdom, born of new lives. We journey with God, though we do not see where the future might lead. We trust it will be good news. We commit ourselves to continuing to let old ways die, to forgive the past, to find the freedom of new life.
I remembered a song, yesterday, as I walked and thought about this sermon. Maybe yall know it, about the good news.