These past few weeks, we have been working our way through the opening of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians.
In today’s installment, Paul asks a question that always piques my interest: “Where is the debater of this age?” See, I used to do debate, sometimes called policy debate or cx debate, in high school and college, traveling all over the country to tournaments. So, when Paul talks about debaters, I notice.
His question here, however, is not a serious question. In the Roman world and the Greek world before it, debate was popular, all forms of oratory were. And all educated people, of which Paul is certainly one, would have been trained in the art of debate. Paul knows exactly where to go to find a debater in that age. No, this is not a serious question, it is a rhetorical question designed to mock. Ultimately, he is trying to set up an argument for why the faith we proclaim is better than the values of the world.
Debate is ultimately about wins and losses, and you are to strive for the wins. Victory and success. The whole point is to convince the audience or judge or judges that you are right and that your opponent is wrong. This was as true then; it still is today. In debate, there are winners and losers.
To win, to persuade people of your rightness, every debater would have used Aristotle’s three-fold approach to persuasion, found in the book Rhetoric. Everyone would have read this book in school, Paul most certainly read this book in school. In Rhetoric, Aristotle argues that you need to use some combination of your own ethos (your presence, expertise, position), the pathos of your audience (their worries, fears, anxieties), and your logos (your words, the carefully structured logic – logos/logic – the carefully structured logic of your words). Ethos, pathos, and logos.
But the logos Paul really cares about is not the logos of our arguments, but the Logos of God. Logos means Word. In the beginning was the Word, the Logos, and the Logos became flesh and lived among us. Paul points to the true Logos. Not the debater’s logos, not Aristotle's logos, but the true and ultimate Logos, the incarnate Logos, the incarnate Word: Jesus Christ.
And the image of the logos with which Paul starts the argument of this letter is the Logos hanging there on the cross. "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God." This is counter to everything that the debater - of Paul's age, of our age, of every age - cares about. Losing instead of winning; failure instead of success.
The cross: that shameful tool of execution of the Roman State, designed to make a point to the whole body politic by publicly humiliating the victim. The cross: the ancient equivalent of the electric chair or the lynching tree or the gun used in a summary execution by an agent of the state on the street.
The Cross - this horrendous thing - is the foundation of true wisdom, true knowledge, true discernment, true boasting. The cross is the foundation of Paul's argument – remember we are just starting this letter, he is still laying the foundation for his argument that will unfold – the cross is the foundation of the argument that is going to take him into his wild claims later in the letter about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, a baptized member of the Body of Christ - when he will claim that even the weakest, lowliest member is not only necessary, but often the most valuable - and his audacious claims about the primacy of love over every other gift.
This argument is an echo what Jesus proclaimed from the mountain that we heard in the Gospel today: blessed are the poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry, the thirsty, the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers, the persecuted. Jesus lifts up the lowly and proclaims that they are blessed.
What kind of blessings are these? Certainly not blessings as the world understands blessing. These are not things that the typical debater is going to use as evidence of blessing. But these are the way of Jesus. These are the blessings of the way of the cross. "Foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God."
Winning is seductive. Success pulls at us constantly. Power is like the siren calling out to Odysseus. And yet, as Paul reminds us, winning, success, and power are nothing compared to God. The foolishness of God is greater than our wisdom; the weakness of God greater than our strength. Winning, success, and power are all useless in the light of the cross.
This argument is also an echo of Micah in our first reading trying to plead his case before the mountains. And yet, proclaim he must and proclaim we must, to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.
What foolishness it is to do these three things in our world that seems to delight in injustice, to love meanness, and to run arrogantly from our God, run arrogantly as if we were God. All foolishness. But it is the foolish wisdom of God. And we have to keep proclaiming this foolish wisdom.
Keep proclaiming justice, kindness, and humility. Keep proclaiming the love taught in the words of the Beatitudes. Keep proclaiming the cross. These are the way of Jesus. Do not weary of this of this proclamation. Even as the world calls you foolish for prioritizing service over power, humility over arrogance, love over fear. Do not weary. For that power of God will carry you through to the end. Amen.
