A Divine Foolishness
I Corinthians 2: 1-16
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In Renaissance England aristocrats often employed professional Court Jesters commonly called “Fools”. King Henry VIII had one. Queen Elizabeth had one. Henry’s Chancellor Thomas More had one. When More resigned from Henry VIII’s service, his Court Jester announced More’s entrance into a room by repeating, “Chancellor More is chancellor no more!” William Shakespeare drew upon this long tradition of Court Jesters and Fools in his many plays. In three of his comedies Falstaff provides many a merry prank.
But in the tragedies the Fool takes on a far different role. The Fool alone speaks truth to power; he alone points out that the Emperor has no clothes. The most famous Fool of all shows up in “King Lear”. Now Lear is an ageing British monarch who decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters. To do this he devises a truly idiotic game called, “Who loves me the most?” It is the male version of “mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”
This moronic contest is wrong at every level, from promoting sibling rivalry to inviting lies and exaggerations. Sure enough two of his daughters Goneril and Regan lie through their teeth telling the old man how much they love him. But his youngest and favorite daughter Cordelia refuses to play the game. For that, she is banished. So this truly asinine request sets in motion the dark tragedy that is King Lear.
Now the Fool mocks Lear for banishing Cordelia, the daughter who truly loves him, instead assigning his kingdom to the two daughters who do not. Soon Goneril and Regan show their true colors and Lear is driven mad with anger. When Lear appears to go insane on the heath in the midst of a fierce storm, it is the Fool who urges him to come inside. The Fool is present when Lear then puts on a mock trial accusing his two daughters of duplicity.
So Shakespeare gives the Fool the role of speaking the hard truth to the ageing King who has brought such misery upon himself. In this play we learn the truth about the Fool: he is no fool at all.
In reading our text from I Corinthians 2 the apostle Paul functions as the Fool in a Shakespearean tragedy. He speaks the truth to power, the powers of this world who “crucified the Lord of glory.” Thinking themselves wise in the way of the world, they tried to destroy the best that God could offer us. The rulers of this world sought to silence what could not be silenced, the living Word of God. A word of grace and truth. A word that seems so utterly foolish and weak, yet a word that brings light into our darkness.
For Paul, the cross displays a kind of divine foolishness: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.” Who could conceive of such a plan to win back the prodigal daughters and sons of God? Nothing is farther from our usual conceptions of the power and majesty of God, who spoke the worlds into existence. This astonishing wisdom of God, to empty God’s self of all power and majesty, to become vulnerable to suffering and even death on a cross—no one saw that coming! No one in Jerusalem, no one in Athens, no one in Rome. This is quite literally “inconceivable”!
To which Paul, the court jester for the ruler of the universe, says yes and amen! If you can believe it, this is God’s agenda-to tame human arrogance and humble human pride. God’s mercy and grace are revealed through of all things a cross, something our minds recoil from. But this is the poignant appeal of the divine foolishness, the way God operates upon our hearts and minds. Not from a position of strength or grandeur to overwhelm us, but from a position of suffering and weakness to woo us. God calls us from atop a cross, past those watchful dragons guarding the entrance into our hearts.
So this divine foolishness is in fact the wisdom of God. It shames the wise and lifts up what is low and despised in the world, elevating things that are not to reduce to nothing things that are. It is God’s way of silencing every form of human boasting and hubris, breaking our resistance with suffering love. Human wisdom, the way of the world, is brought to its knees at the foot of the cross.
And what is the “so what” of this reversal of values? Paul insists that we become fools for Christ’s sake, fools that seem absurd and moronic to the world. Paul reminds the Corinthians that he came to them as a kind of “Johnny One Note” knowing “nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified”. Like saying over and over again: “Chancellor More is chancellor no more!” A ridiculous kind of self-limitation, not pretending to master all the world’s street smarts, but proclaiming the only thing that matters-the truth about the One who loved me and gave himself for me. That and nothing else.
So I have been thinking a lot about the Paul’s of this world, those odd pilgrims who would change the world with the “foolishness of preaching”. Imagine how much the poorer would be our world without these fools for Christ’s sake. I think of that wealthy entrepreneur in Toledo, Ohio, who recently promised a group of inner city high school students a full ride college education. But then he insisted that this was not a gift but rather his responsibility, since “to whom much is given much is required.” Is there a kind of divine foolishness in such an amazing gesture?
I think of political leaders who risk standing in their parties or in their home states to vote their conscience and their faith. Doing that in a highly partisan and hostile environment where the social media and the talking heads will indeed crucify you. Is there a kind of divine foolishness in such an amazing gesture?
I think of people who care for the sick or discouraged or lonely or dying. Without fanfare or press coverage, they offer themselves in service, in friendship and companionship. I think of all those health care workers exposing themselves on this day to those suffering with the coronavirus. Or parents who keep praying for their children lost in a thousand different ways, and yet they hang on never losing hope, never turning their backs, never forsaking the ones they love. Is there a kind of divine foolishness in such amazing gestures?
Finally, I think of a woman who has recently captivated my imagination-Simone Weil. If there was anyone who seemed to be a fool, it was this brilliant French woman who lived but 34 years dying near the end of World War II. Coming from a secular Jewish home, Simone went through many stages-atheist, philosophy teacher, political activist, factory worker and farm laborer, participant in the Spanish Civil War and the French Underground Resistance, and always a writer and a thinker. She knew she was exceptional and her manner and her dress showed her disinterest in “fitting” into a middle class lifestyle. Many found her odd and off-putting, but they always knew she was indeed a force to be reckoned with.
It was Simone Weil’s spiritual quest that made her seem so utterly foolish to her secular friends. In 1937 she had a profound spiritual awakening in the church where St. Francis worshiped in Assisi. And from that day forward she began integrating Christian insights into her writings. Even so she refused to be baptized, maintaining her solidarity with all those the church has excluded. Her Catholic friends could hardly understand. Escaping Nazi occupied France, she came to New York City with her family. But she felt called to join de Gaulle’s French government in exile in London. To her family this seemed like a completely foolish decision. In London she insisted upon eating no more than the French underground fighters had available. This probably led to her very premature death of tuberculosis in 1943. Her doctors and friends looked upon her as foolish for engaging in this kind of radical solidarity.
In one of her last letters to her family Simone Weil comments on the role of the Fool in Shakespeare’s tragedies: “In this world only human beings who are humiliated, those considered as deprived of reason-only those human beings have the possibility of telling the truth.” Simone Weil knew that others considered her utterly foolish. But in truth she considered herself a fool for the sake of Christ. And what a witness to Christ she is! Uncompromising, exasperating, demanding, much like the Fool speaking the hard truth to King Lear. And much like the hard truth to which Paul bore witness-the paradoxical and mysterious word of the cross.
Friends in Christ, we have been claimed by a paradoxical and mysterious Gospel, the story “that none of the rulers of this age understood”. It is the divine foolishness of the cross that commands our allegiance and our lives. And so it is no wonder that at times we are called upon to play our part, to bear witness to the crucified and risen Lord of glory. We may appear foolish to believe this utterly inconceivable truth. And we may appear even more foolish to live out this mysterious and paradoxical Gospel. But the truth be told-we are no fools at all. Thanks be God. Amen.