Scandalous behavior!
Commentary
Note: This piece was originally published in 1994. It is currently featured while we await the 2018 installment.
When Paul wrote, "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Gentiles," he knew there was an offensive side to Christian faith. More importantly, Paul knew that there was no way faith could be genuine until that offense was squarely faced. Christian faith is trust over and against that which would make it seem unbelievable.
The words "stumbling block" could more simply be rendered, "scandal." There is a scandalous dimension to the Christian faith. Unfortunately, for many of us, however, that scandal has been minimized. Accustomed as we are to the tenets of Christian belief, nurtured in the atmosphere of the community of faith, and knowing the truth of the gospel message, many of us have become numbed to just how scandalous is God's action in Jesus Christ.
Søren Kierkegaard said it well for his age. He suggested that in a culture that is predominately Christian, we tend to make pabulum of Christianity. We reduce it to the most easily digested form possible! The readings for this Sunday offer the preacher the opportunity to say that unless one is scandalized by the gospel message, she or he can never embrace it with authentic faith. So long as we remain blind to the truly radical character of the Word of God made flesh and of a suffering and dying messiah, we have not completed that process which is the road from unbelief to faith.
The familiar words of the Exodus reading shows both the graciousness of God who has delivered the Hebrews from bondage, and the radical response that God demands. The commandments to have no other Gods, to make no idols, and to never take God's name in vain, calls believers to make a definite break with the world around them.
In the Corinthians passage, we are reminded that Christianity revolves around a cross. Yet for many people, the cross points to death and defeat, to disruption and discord. They are filled with revulsion against the sordid spectacle of Calvary. So far as devout Jews were concerned, the cross proved Jesus an impostor. To the sophisticated Greeks, hospitable enough to Christianity if it appealed to them intellectually, the idea of deifying a dead carpenter seemed more than a little foolish. What a scandalous thought that a cross might actually produce new life!
The scandalous nature of our faith is revealed in the gospel lesson when Jesus refuses to perform a sign. The scandal is that Jesus asks us to believe him and accept his authority, even though there is no sign which proves or gives absolute certainty that he is who he says he is. Jesus will not authenticate himself beyond doubt; he simply will not give us the kind of certainty that will make our faith in him easy. Jesus is known only by surrendering the security of certainty in the risk of faith.
OUTLINE I
The choosy God
Exodus 20:1-7
A. vv. 1-2: The preface to the commandments reminds us of how God came after Israel, finding her in slavery and bondage, delivering her from her enemies, and leading her into newness of life in the Promised Land. God still comes seeking us, choosing us to be the people of God, and calling us from the second-rate deities that we so easily embrace.
B. v. 3: Luther once said, "Whatever your heart clings to and relies on is your god." Like ancient Israel, there are many gods in the modern world to whom we can give our hearts. This commandment calls us to a single-hearted allegiance to the living God who has claimed us to be a holy people. It calls us to make a radical break with the gods of American culture.
C. vv. 4-6: These verses warn us against an inadequate conception of God. For example, in our society, it is so easy to elevate the impersonal over the personal -- to think that real life is to be found in the abundance of our possessions. But trying to live without a personal relationship with God is like trying to have a love affair with a department store dummy.
D. v. 7: To the Hebrews, the name signified the very essence of the person. This commandment calls us not to take God's name casually. We so often do that by our irreverent and insincere speech. But what comes out of the mouth is a reflection of what is in the heart.
OUTLINE II
The scandal of the cross
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
A. vv. 18-25: An agnostic poet once said, "Let us forget once and for all the Christ of Calvary; his anguish ceased long ago. Let us remember only Jesus of Nazareth and seek to follow his sublime teaching and example." Such is the scandal of the cross to the unbelieving mind. There is nothing new about this sense of revulsion against the spectacle of Calvary. In every age, people have questioned the necessity of a cross.
There had to be a cross, because it was the logical outcome of our Lord's ministry. Someone once said of Jesus: "The principles he adopted for his life led inevitably to his death, and his death revealed and summed up the purpose of his life." The scandal of the cross is that Christ and his cross are indissolubly bound up together, and each one can only be explained in terms of the other.
There also had to be a cross, because the cross has always been God's way of dealing with sinners. What God did on Golgotha, God has been doing since the beginning of time. God has always been breaking into our human lives, following us wherever we stray, standing beside us in our shame, loving us when we did not deserve to be loved, and delivering us from our sin when we were powerless to change. Without a cross, there would be no gospel. Remove the cross from Christianity, and you remove the one decisive factor that makes it a religion of pardon and grace.
OUTLINE III
The scandal of belief
John 2:13-22
A. vv. 13-17: The location of this story by John at the very beginning of our Lord's ministry gives us a kind of digest of what is to come. Just as our Lord's ministry may well lead off with a chapter in a book that gives the reader a gist of what is to come, John describes what to the Jewish leaders is scandalous behavior on the part of Jesus. Clearly, in placing the cleansing of the temple where he does, John is letting his readers know that much of what follows involves the conflict of Jesus with the religious tradition of his time and his people. Jesus will challenge the religious establishment in the tradition of the great prophets of Israel. The temple cleansing is prophetic action.
B. vv. 18-22: The establishment will in turn confront Jesus and demand that he authenticate himself with some sign from God. What the religious leaders are asking of Jesus is some work of wonder which will convince them that Jesus has the right to purify the temple. But Jesus refuses to perform such a sign! In many ways the request of the religious leaders is a reasonable one, but Jesus scandalously tells them, "Believe in me without any such documentation!" We are a people trained to look for scientific proof even before we trust our teeth to a particular brand of toothpaste. Yet, we are asked to trust this Savior -- to trust him with our very lives -- before we have certainty about him. That is the scandal of belief in Christian faith.
When Paul wrote, "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Gentiles," he knew there was an offensive side to Christian faith. More importantly, Paul knew that there was no way faith could be genuine until that offense was squarely faced. Christian faith is trust over and against that which would make it seem unbelievable.
The words "stumbling block" could more simply be rendered, "scandal." There is a scandalous dimension to the Christian faith. Unfortunately, for many of us, however, that scandal has been minimized. Accustomed as we are to the tenets of Christian belief, nurtured in the atmosphere of the community of faith, and knowing the truth of the gospel message, many of us have become numbed to just how scandalous is God's action in Jesus Christ.
Søren Kierkegaard said it well for his age. He suggested that in a culture that is predominately Christian, we tend to make pabulum of Christianity. We reduce it to the most easily digested form possible! The readings for this Sunday offer the preacher the opportunity to say that unless one is scandalized by the gospel message, she or he can never embrace it with authentic faith. So long as we remain blind to the truly radical character of the Word of God made flesh and of a suffering and dying messiah, we have not completed that process which is the road from unbelief to faith.
The familiar words of the Exodus reading shows both the graciousness of God who has delivered the Hebrews from bondage, and the radical response that God demands. The commandments to have no other Gods, to make no idols, and to never take God's name in vain, calls believers to make a definite break with the world around them.
In the Corinthians passage, we are reminded that Christianity revolves around a cross. Yet for many people, the cross points to death and defeat, to disruption and discord. They are filled with revulsion against the sordid spectacle of Calvary. So far as devout Jews were concerned, the cross proved Jesus an impostor. To the sophisticated Greeks, hospitable enough to Christianity if it appealed to them intellectually, the idea of deifying a dead carpenter seemed more than a little foolish. What a scandalous thought that a cross might actually produce new life!
The scandalous nature of our faith is revealed in the gospel lesson when Jesus refuses to perform a sign. The scandal is that Jesus asks us to believe him and accept his authority, even though there is no sign which proves or gives absolute certainty that he is who he says he is. Jesus will not authenticate himself beyond doubt; he simply will not give us the kind of certainty that will make our faith in him easy. Jesus is known only by surrendering the security of certainty in the risk of faith.
OUTLINE I
The choosy God
Exodus 20:1-7
A. vv. 1-2: The preface to the commandments reminds us of how God came after Israel, finding her in slavery and bondage, delivering her from her enemies, and leading her into newness of life in the Promised Land. God still comes seeking us, choosing us to be the people of God, and calling us from the second-rate deities that we so easily embrace.
B. v. 3: Luther once said, "Whatever your heart clings to and relies on is your god." Like ancient Israel, there are many gods in the modern world to whom we can give our hearts. This commandment calls us to a single-hearted allegiance to the living God who has claimed us to be a holy people. It calls us to make a radical break with the gods of American culture.
C. vv. 4-6: These verses warn us against an inadequate conception of God. For example, in our society, it is so easy to elevate the impersonal over the personal -- to think that real life is to be found in the abundance of our possessions. But trying to live without a personal relationship with God is like trying to have a love affair with a department store dummy.
D. v. 7: To the Hebrews, the name signified the very essence of the person. This commandment calls us not to take God's name casually. We so often do that by our irreverent and insincere speech. But what comes out of the mouth is a reflection of what is in the heart.
OUTLINE II
The scandal of the cross
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
A. vv. 18-25: An agnostic poet once said, "Let us forget once and for all the Christ of Calvary; his anguish ceased long ago. Let us remember only Jesus of Nazareth and seek to follow his sublime teaching and example." Such is the scandal of the cross to the unbelieving mind. There is nothing new about this sense of revulsion against the spectacle of Calvary. In every age, people have questioned the necessity of a cross.
There had to be a cross, because it was the logical outcome of our Lord's ministry. Someone once said of Jesus: "The principles he adopted for his life led inevitably to his death, and his death revealed and summed up the purpose of his life." The scandal of the cross is that Christ and his cross are indissolubly bound up together, and each one can only be explained in terms of the other.
There also had to be a cross, because the cross has always been God's way of dealing with sinners. What God did on Golgotha, God has been doing since the beginning of time. God has always been breaking into our human lives, following us wherever we stray, standing beside us in our shame, loving us when we did not deserve to be loved, and delivering us from our sin when we were powerless to change. Without a cross, there would be no gospel. Remove the cross from Christianity, and you remove the one decisive factor that makes it a religion of pardon and grace.
OUTLINE III
The scandal of belief
John 2:13-22
A. vv. 13-17: The location of this story by John at the very beginning of our Lord's ministry gives us a kind of digest of what is to come. Just as our Lord's ministry may well lead off with a chapter in a book that gives the reader a gist of what is to come, John describes what to the Jewish leaders is scandalous behavior on the part of Jesus. Clearly, in placing the cleansing of the temple where he does, John is letting his readers know that much of what follows involves the conflict of Jesus with the religious tradition of his time and his people. Jesus will challenge the religious establishment in the tradition of the great prophets of Israel. The temple cleansing is prophetic action.
B. vv. 18-22: The establishment will in turn confront Jesus and demand that he authenticate himself with some sign from God. What the religious leaders are asking of Jesus is some work of wonder which will convince them that Jesus has the right to purify the temple. But Jesus refuses to perform such a sign! In many ways the request of the religious leaders is a reasonable one, but Jesus scandalously tells them, "Believe in me without any such documentation!" We are a people trained to look for scientific proof even before we trust our teeth to a particular brand of toothpaste. Yet, we are asked to trust this Savior -- to trust him with our very lives -- before we have certainty about him. That is the scandal of belief in Christian faith.
