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Seventh Sunday after Epiphany

1 Corinthians 3
10 By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.
18 Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”[a]; 20 and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”[b] 21 So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas[c] or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.


Two of the most learned people in the Bible don’t seem to have much time for the wise.

St. Paul, of course, will have his moment to tell us that the wisdom of the world is foolishness in the sight of God, but we begin with Luke, Paul’s first biographer. St. Luke, the physician, oddly the patron saint of both surgeons and butchers, is the other wise person who has little time for the wise.

We learn this most clearly when Paul gets to Athens, the city of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and is taken to Mars Hill, also known as the Areopagus. Luke tells the story in the usual way, as a travelogue, but can’t help but add some commentary:

19 Then [the philosophers] took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

Sounds idyllic. A hilltop hangout for people who do nothing my debate new ideas? But Luke is dismissive. And what follows is a record of one of the most clever bits of contextual theology found in scripture, as Paul points to their own statue TO AN UNKNOWN GOD and tells them about the God who made the heavens and the earth, and does not live in human temples.

Acts 17 concludes with a description of the resurrection and some sneering. Paul doesn’t win the crowd that day at the Areopagus, but he does win a couple of converts—Dionysius, a member of the council, and a woman named Damaris—and the church in Athens in born.

It may be this early visit to Athens that informs his view of the wise, and we certainly see echoes of it in 1 Corinthians 3, as Paul once again picks up the theme of temples and buildings. Our passage starts with Paul describing himself as “a wise builder,” the one who founded the church at Corinth and now must guide them through some conflict.

It seems that factions have developed, some following Paul the founder and others following Apollos the leader that picks up where Paul left off, and Paul writes to straighten them out. “I planted the seed,” he says, “and Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.” Then he drops the plant metaphor and returns to buildings:

I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Back to Athens for a moment, it’s easy to imagine what Paul had in mind when he was meditating on temples and human achievement. At the time of his visit the Parthenon was already over four-hundred years old, already an icon of the ancient world, but actually dwarfed by another tourist attraction—the Temple of Olympian Zeus. The temple to Zeus, like the subway to York University, had been under construction for nearly 500 years when Paul was there, and would not be complete for another hundred.

And such was the temporary life of temples. They are built, then fall down. If not fires or earthquakes, then conquering armies or English antiquarians. Paul expands the idea found in Acts 17—that God does not live in human temples—and names us as God’s temple, the true dwelling place of God.

And then he takes on the wise:

If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”[a]; 20 and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”

It turns out Paul is making a case for following God in Christ rather then human leaders, but he does it by taking on the wise. Debating which church leader to follow makes you no better than the idlers on Mars Hill, when Paul, Apollos, Peter and the rest are all just Christ-followers doing their best to live the Gospel. You are the wisdom of God, Paul says, because you are Christ and Christ is of God.

Speaking of the wisdom of the world that is foolish in God’s sight, we have been studying remits. Remits, you will recall, are set by church leaders who gather at a national meeting every three years and try to chart a course for the future of the church.

And sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they amend things that need amending, and sometimes they correct the past and find a new path. Other times, unfortunately, then seem to forget the wisdom of the past and try to build something that experience tells us may not last.

They follow trends, some might say fads, and do it all with the very best intentions. I can call them fools for Christ because I was one of them, and have gone to the General Council more times than I care to admit. Like the church at Corinth, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.” But we did our best.

If Paul were alive today he would be called a blogger, a letter-writer who was happy to have his material read by others. His letters were meant to be passed around, and he made his comments general enough that his “wisdom” could apply to most churches who took the time to read.

I read a lot of blogs, mostly because the form has an immediacy and a kind of free-form honesty that you don’t always get in books. Books are the result of a longer process, often careful editing, where blogs reflect thinking in-the-moment and at a particular time. And based on this timeliness, there are often trends.

One of the trends I see in various church-related blogs is a “grass is greener” longing that comes as people reflect on their own tradition. Liberals church bloggers wish they were more like the evangelicals and evangelical church bloggers wish they were more like liberals. Some bloggers take occasion to yell at their peers, or elders, or just the world out there. Again, the emphasis is on immediacy, not a record for the ages. Having edited a book for blogs for publication, I can tell you that half-formed thoughts and contradictions are part of the magic of blogs.

So this week I read a blog with the alarming and somewhat provocative title “59 Percent of Millennials Raised in a Church Have Dropped Out—And They’re Trying to Tell Us Why.” Okay, Sam Eaton, writer, speaker, and founder of a mental health ministry, you have my attention. As he writes it is obvious that he is coming from an more evangelical background, and his advice is surprising:

Listen to the millennials (people in their 20s and 30s) in your church (if you can find any).
Stop writing mission statements (stick to love God and love you neighbour).
Spend less time on meetings and Bible study and help the poor instead.
Stop blaming popular culture for the world's problems.
Open your church to strangers.
Spend money on those in need and not yourself.
Talk more about controversial topics.

In other words, our wisdom (“O if we only be more like those evangelical churches”) is foolishness, and the foolishness of the young evangelicals (“O, we should be more like the progressive churches”) might be wisdom. Or might not. Whatever is wise and whatever is foolish, the best advice is Paul’s: You are the wisdom of God, Paul says, because you are Christ and Christ is of God.

So we try to follow Christ, to live in his way, and to reinterpret what that means in each new generation while honouring the past. It is not an easy task, but the answer is always the same, always God’s wisdom, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 7:32 AM