Luke 19: 37When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
38″Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”      ”Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”  39Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”  40″I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

I was at a joyful public event, a demonstration and celebration of sorts last Sunday afternoon. Like Jesus’ Triumphal Entry, it was even in the streets, at the corner of Lake Street and 4^th Ave. It was even a celebration of sorts, even though we were gathered to grieve something tragic and senseless: the death that week of a young man, only 20 years old, James King. He had been walking down Lake Street by First Avenue, just the other side of the expressway, with his sister, when someone rode up to him on a bicycle, stopped and shot him several times, point blank. He died almost immediately. King was not a member of any gang, but word on the streets now is that he got into some kind of argument or altercation with a gang member.

Not to let this tragedy go unanswered, to keep the community from simply accepting this and acquiescing to such things, a public vigil was organized for last Sunday, at 4 PM. Being a member of this neighborhood now, I felt the need to show up, stand up, and be counted among those who said, “This is not right! This we cannot simply accept. This we will not remain silent about.”

The chief organizers were MAD DADS and V.J. Smith, who spoke here several weeks ago. Also present were King’s mother, his sisters and other relatives. Plus members and leaders of her church, members and leaders of some other community organizations, members of King’s graduating high school class, former teachers, friends, members of city council and of community agencies, and finally, neighbors who simply wanted to gather, grieve, and to show up, stand up, and be counted in solidarity with James King and his family.

As sad as the occasion was, with friends and family members weeping and holding each other for comfort, there was also a joyful, lively, and life-affirming feeling to the gathering. Most of the people there were African-American, so the speaking and the singing had the robust and joyfully assertive tone of a traditional African-American worship service. Even with secular city officials present, nobody apologized for speaking or praying “in the name of Jesus.” Some spoke who had also lost sons and daughters and friends to senseless street violence. But with time you can heal, and you can overcome the grief, and the desire for vengeance, they said. Another person spoke up who said that he had once belonged to a gang, and had done jail time, but that he had overcome that and left his past, and anyone else there in a gang could, too. Others spoke and urged people in the crowd not to take revenge, but to come forward with any information they might have about the crime and to report it to the police. Pay no attention to the social code against “snitching,” V.J. said. You get targeted, or you end up in jail, and they won’t be there for you the way we’re here for each other now. Almost all of them said they had found the power to overcome their past and to turn their lives around through none other than Jesus Christ. And everyone here can do so too, they asserted.

But I have a confession to make. There stirred within me during this street gathering some questions and criticisms, mostly along the line of, “What good does this serve? How much good does this do, when the people responsible for this kind of tragedy are probably not even here to hear these messages of hope and of challenge? There’s a lot of good preaching here, but all of it to the choir. Who really thinks that the killer is here to even hear the pain of Mrs. King? Who thinks that any gang member who might have information on the crime would even show his face at an event like this? And if they’re not here, then how will events like this stop future gang killings and catch the killer? How will songs and sermons like what I’m hearing now at this corner near the McDonald’s bring back the businesses and the jobs that would give these young men something to aspire to other than status in a gang and money from something other than selling crack?” I confess that such questions ran through my mind. But I’m glad I didn’t voice them. Sometimes, silence is the better part of wisdom.

Because my thoughts soon ran this week to another time when God’s people showed up and stood up in the streets to be counted for Jesus Christ and to assert their faith, hope and love in the face of fear, despair and hatred. And someone did come to Jesus and say out loud, “Stifle your disciples; can it, cool it, and curb your enthusiasm. What good is all this? Who is this really helping? In fact, isn’t this dangerous and needlessly provocative? When the high priest and the religious establishment have not approved this gathering, when they weren’t even consulted or considered? Don’t you know what kind of authority they have to squash you like a bug under their feet? And if that’s not scary enough, have you bothered to look up toward the top of the tower on the Antonia Fortress, overlooking this very gate? Do you not see there the points of Roman spears, the sun glinting off Roman shields and helmets, and the idolatrous, imperial red banners with the golden Roman eagle? Don’t you think they’re watching every move down here? Don’t you think they might even be taking down names?”

Luke tells us it was the Pharisees who challenged Jesus about the propriety of all this allegedly irresponsible noise and celebration, and this party, “takin’ it to the streets.” They were very responsible and restrained people. They always knew the proper thing to do. And celebrating like this was neither a reasonable, realistic, nor responsible thing to do.

To which Jesus could have said, “You know, you have a point there. Sorry about all this noise and this mess. Sorry about all the disruption and disturbance I caused you. Someone will clean up all the palm branches and the coats on the ground, and whatever the donkey dropped along the way, and soon you’ll never know we were even here.”

Instead, Jesus says, “I tell you, that if these people were quiet, the very stones would cry out [for joy].” And that in spite of the fact that the powers and forces of death were looming all around and overhead. Jesus knew that he would be dead within only a few days—he even said so. There was a mother there who would also lose her son: Mary. And some friends who would soon huddle together to hug each other and weep over another promising young life snuffed out in its prime by the biggest, baddest gang around: the Roman Empire.

Nevertheless, within the shadow of the Roman fortress, in the presence of his enemies, with the dragon of death raising its ugly head and baring its teeth, Jesus insisted on celebrating. He evidently thought that celebrating was the reasonable, realistic and responsible thing to do. Twenty centuries later, that’s what lurks in the background and the shadows of today’s Palm Sunday celebration. There’s an aspect of “nevertheless” and “in spite of,” to our celebration and acclamation of Jesus as King, the promised Son of David. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” in spite of the forces and powers of death, depression and despair arrayed around him and that jubilant, exuberant crowd. And around us too, in the forms of gangs, whether they’re street gangs like the Bloods, or bigger gangs like Al Qaeda, international drug cartels, or the cartels and political organizations that peddle the most addicting and destructive drugs of all: fear, pornography and weapons.

So what good are celebration, or worship, or gatherings like the one last Sunday in honor of James King, or even this one this morning? Especially when those who need most to hear what we have to say aren’t even around, but who may now be hatching and carrying out their death-dealing schemes? Well, I can think of three things to say, three reasons why it was more helpful to take it to the streets than not, whether it was last week in Minneapolis, or 2,000 years ago outside Jerusalem:

1)It was good for me to be there at Lake and Third. I think of my presence there as self-care, like prayer and physical exercise. At the very least, it felt good to push back against the forces of depression and despair that would keep us hidden in our homes, with our shoulders hunched, for fear of offending the gangsters, whether they’re local gangs or global ones. For as Abraham Lincoln said, “To remain silent when one should protest makes cowards of men.” Becoming repressed, depressed and cowardly would be worse than anything that might happen for showing up, standing up and being counted. On the back of MAD DAD’s truck is a bumper sticker that says, “History is made by people who show up.”

Secondly, I’d like to believe that my showing up helped someone else who was there. Because everyone else who showed up certainly helped me. And we are all worth the good it did us. By our simple presence we helped each other remember and believe that not everyone is either a gangster or a victim. By the simple decency and courage shown by showing up, we helped each other remember and believe that God is still alive and at work cultivating and encouraging love and hope and faith even in the face of fear and evil. We believers may have our struggles and our doubts, wondering why it is, in God’s good world, such things as a senseless murder of an innocent person may happen. Or why the powers- that-were were allowed to lay their bloody hands upon the Prince of Peace. But if I were a gangster, I would have even more trouble and doubt over the fact that so many people find the strength and the decency not to give in to fear and intimidation and just stay at home and hide. If I were a gangster, I would have an even greater crisis of doubt over the fact that a hundred caring and concerned people are willing to gather in the street, to speak out and voice their outrage and their love for one another and their commitment to make this a safer, better community.

Who knows if, by our presence, we prevented someone else in that crowd from joining a gang and either killing or getting killed? Who knows if there wasn’t a young person there who thought to himself, “There really are other people for me, who will have my back when times get tough, people other than the gangsters who are trying to recruit me. These are the kind of people who will be there for me when times are tough, more so than the Bloods or the Crips.” As V. J. said, “Look around you, young people; these are your ‘homeys’ and not the pimps and the dope dealers. Your real ‘homeys’ are the people who ask you, ‘How’re you doin’? And ‘are you stayin’ clean, going to school, doin’ your homework, comin’ home at reasonable hours of the night?” I’d like to think that each of us being there added up to indisputable evidence that what V.J. Smith said was true.

Thirdly, it was good to be there because it was all we could do then and there. And its only by doing what we can do here and now, or at any given moment, that we can affect and improve tomorrow and forever. That’s all we’re capable of; its all we’re responsible for: the little we can do, here and now. I’ve always valued what I read on the plaque of another pastor’s desk, that said, “I will not let the big things I cannot do keep me from doing the little things that I can do.”

And who knows what results will come from the little we can do here and now? In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the story of a wealthy man who left for a trip abroad, after commending parts of his treasure to three of his servants. To one he gave 5 talents of gold; to another 2, and to another 1. When he returned, he found that the one with 5 talents of gold had invested that money and gained another 5, while the one with 2 had gained another 2. To both of them he said, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful in the little things; now I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

So it does no good to stay at home and wring our hands about the big changes that we cannot make in the days to come. No, of course we don’t have the power to guarantee that by next Tuesday all drug and gang activity in Minneapolis will end, and that by the following Thursday there will be no more hunger, war or cluster bombs throughout the world. We don’t even know if we’ll have next Tuesday or Thursday. But we do have today, here and now. And we always have opportunities to do something, somewhere, for someone, here and now.

Back to my original question– What good does this gathering, this celebration, do?– let me turn that question around and ask, “If we pray ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done,’ every week, hopefully every day, and believe that it is being answered, if we believe that God is “making all things new,” that “the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ,” and that “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea,” then who’s really being most reasonable and responsible? Those who cower in fear and despair, or those who show up and stand up to be counted with Jesus at the gates of Jerusalem, and with Mrs. King and V.J. Smith and MAD DADS?

We never know the power of doing the little we can, whenever we can, even if it is but to praise, celebrate and affirm. From Nazi-occupied Russia comes the true story of two Jewish women, living in the forests and hiding from the Nazis, who were captured by a Nazi patrol when they were sneaking into a town for food. They were accused of being partisans, guerrilla fighters, and were threatened with execution the next morning. That night, they had what they thought would be their last meal, a bowl of watery soup with a few pieces of fat floating in it. One woman took out one of the pieces of fat and started using it to polish her shoes.

“What are you doing, polishing your shoes at a time like this?” the other woman asked.

She replied, “My father always taught me that, no matter how bad things seem, do something nice to help yourself feel better and look better. At least you’ll have your self-respect, if nothing else.”

So the other woman removed some of the fat from her bowl of soup and began polishing her shoes too. The next morning, they were brought in before a Gestapo officer for interrogation. The officer looked them over and said to his adjutant, “Release these women; they obviously are not partisans, because partisans living in the woods would never have nice, clean, new street shoes.”

Again, “I will not let the big things I cannot do keep me from doing the little things I can do.” Doing what we can, when we can, with what we have at any given moment, regardless of the obstacles arrayed against us, is always the most reasonable, realistic and responsible thing to do. You never know what God may do with it. And if God has the last word on human history, and if that word is Jesus, and if Jesus is God’s yes and amen to all the prayers of the Psalms and the promises of the Prophets, even God’s Yes and Amen to each one of us, then showing up and standing up, to gather, praise and celebrate, to be counted for Jesus, like those worshipers outside the gates of Jerusalem five days before Jesus died, that is reasonable, realistic and responsible, too.

I Corinthians 2: 6We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9However, as it is written:   ”No eye has seen,    no ear has heard,  no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”— 10but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

The waves and the rising tide carried two starfish into the same little tidal pool, about the size of a bathtub, just a few meters from the edge of the sea. There they stayed after the tide went out. Their little pea-sized brains were big enough to notice the presence of the other starfish, even big enough to calculate that there were not enough clams and crabs in this tide pool to feed them both, and that, when food ran out, one would likely attack and eat the other. So they immediately went on a preemptive attack against the other and were soon locked in mortal combat. Had their brains been any bigger, they might also have understood that the tide which swept them into that pool would soon return and give them a chance to return to the big blue ocean, in which there were food and space aplenty for both of them, and then some.

That, to me, is a picture of what Paul calls “the wisdom of this age, or the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing,” in verse 6. Its the conventional wisdom at the heart of order, status, power, wealth and security in every human society, a way of thinking and acting based on fear: the fear of showing weakness, the fear of scarcity, the fear that there is not enough to go around, not enough by way of love, of honor, dignity, power, security, sustenance, or human worth to share. Therefore, we must fight for our share, even at the expense of other people, like those starfish fighting over their limited little tide pool. One reason there’s a mirror on the altar today is because the cross mirrors back to us this fear-driven tendency to fight over things we think are scarce, when they are not. Like love, dignity and power. That fear drove the religious leaders to hand Jesus over to the Romans, lest he take away from their authority. That fear also drove the Romans to crucify him, because there could only be one king: Caesar. Every time we see the cross, we remember how fearfully the world reacted to its creator, best friend and savior.

That fear also drove the conflicts that Paul was addressing in this letter. We discovered in the previous chapter how the Corinthian Christians were fighting over social class and who was the best teacher and preacher, as some claimed, “I am of Paul,” or I am of Apollos.” Whether in the world or the church, chaos, conflict and competition happen while the kingdom of God is at hand and the tide of God’s grace is rising in the world, with a promise of more than enough for everyone. How ironic.

But “eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the mind of anyone,” Paul wrote, “what God has prepared for those who love him.” There’s no need to fight over the infinite supply of God’s gifts and graces. There’s always enough, and it grows with the sharing. The tide is coming in, not just in the world to come, but even now, in the church. Even in the world, as Ghandi said: “There’s enough for everyone’s need, just not enough for everyone’s greed.” That’s the second way in which the Cross serves today as a mirror. Its a mirror into the very nature of God. On it we see the depths to which God will go, the price that God is willing to pay, and the passion that motivates God to give and to guarantee his unlimited and eternal supply of covenant faithful love to us.

But it takes, as Paul says, some maturity to understand that, to even want it, and to trust in God’s abundance. The vast scale of God’s abundance and generosity is not readily available to the un-spiritual, unconverted eye. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be so much by way of war, poverty or oppression going on in the world. “We do,” Paul says, “speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” That message of wisdom, as we have seen in the previous chapter, is the message of the cross. The stark, stunning, and confrontational cross.

And that’s the third way in which the cross acts as a mirror today: it mirrors to us something about true Christian, spiritual maturity. If the cross comes across to us as only so much disgrace, dishonor and foolishness to be avoided and downplayed, as just a tragedy of weakness and defeat, then we’re still captive to the wisdom, so-called, of this world, and of the rulers of this world. But the more we see in the cross the nature of God, the triumph of God, and the pattern for our lives, the more it can be said that God’s Spirit has revealed to us this heavenly wisdom, and the more we have received it, and the more mature we therefore are.

This maturity is not what we often think it is. Nor is it what Paul’s Corinthian audience probably thought that spiritual maturity was. There’s even a sense in which Paul here is talking to his friends tongue-in-cheek, using their own words, but with different meanings, words like “wisdom,” “secrets” or “mysteries” “secret wisdom” and “mature,” which can even be translated as “perfect.” These are the Corinthian’s own words that he’s reinterpreting back to them. We know that because we’ll see these words often enough in this letter to realize that they are the evidence of another clique in Corinth: what I call “the magical, mystical enthusiasts.”

We’ll run across more evidence of these “magical, mystical enthusiasts” as we proceed through I Corinthians. Later on in I Corinthians we’ll hear Paul taking them to task and calling them out for things like dominating the worship services by speaking in tongues with no one to interpret, or giving prophecies with no chance to discern their truth, or not. It doesn’t edify anyone else, but it makes the speaker feel important and impressive. Worship then becomes show and tell: to show off before others and tell them how much more spiritual one is than they are. That is how one can be spiritually gifted and yet be spiritually immature.

Enthusiasm in all things Christian is good. May God grant us all the gifts of His Spirit. May we be endowed with power to recognize and confront the powers of Satan over people and communities. May we too be given what the enthusiasts sought and boasted about: wisdom, insight, maturity and power. But every gift has a shadow side. Every gift comes with a temptation to misuse it. The shadow side of spiritual power is spiritual pride. How easily we forget that the honor for any spiritual gift goes to the giver, to God. How easy it is to forget that God’s spiritual gifts are given to unite people, not to divide them, to create community, not chaos and competition.

Paul takes their language of “secrets, maturity and wisdom” and uses it to redirect their attention. You want secrets and mysteries? I’ll give you a mystery: “God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden, and that God destined for our glory before time began” in verse 6. But there’s nothing secretive about it. It’s God’s work of redemption on the cross. And it’s public knowledge available for the reading and hearing by everyone, not just those with special access to mystical secrets. Its the kind of wisdom that levels the playing ground.

If that’s not secretive enough, Paul quotes the Prophet Isaiah to say, “‘No eye has seen,  no ear has heard,  no mind has conceived what God has prepared’ for those who love him–but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” But the Spirit is available to all believers, just in different ways, with different gifts. And those inconceivable, invisible gifts, and our inconceivably wonderful destiny, are again are for everyone who believes, and not just for a gifted few.

Or is it maturity, or perfection, that you claim? Look to the cross for the measure of maturity, Paul is saying. Because a mature Christian character, if it reflects God in any way, will have a cruciform shape to it. There has always been a cross in the heart of God, even before the cross itself. In his gospel, John described Jesus as “the Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world.” For sacrificial self-giving love has always been at the heart of God and of God’s nature. Giving himself away for the life of the world is how God fights evil and restores creation.

Its also how Jesus’ disciples are also called to engage the world and each other. Such cruciform love is the true sign of maturity. “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love,” Paul told his Roman friends. And “Honor one another above yourselves (Rom. 12:10).” If they’d done that in First Century Corinth, those disciples would be competing, if anything, not to get honors, but to give honors. Such a community would be “cross-shaped” or “cruciform.”

Christ still calls his disciples, as he did 2000 years ago, to “take up your cross and follow me.” In fact, there is no way of getting through this world without some cross, some costs, disappointments and difficulties, especially not for anyone with a vision and a desire for the kingdom of God. The shadow of the cross will fall on every life. Some suffering, sacrifice and sorrow is unavoidable in this world. Not all of our needs can always always be met; not in this life at least. A sure sign of maturity then is that we don’t waste our fears, our sorrows, sacrifices and sufferings, but that we cooperate with God in making something redemptive of them, that we allow God’s Spirit to make of them bridges that unite us with others, when we can both serve and be served by other fellow sufferers and strugglers.

Like two other creatures in that tiny little tidepool were doing, just a few inches away from those two fighting starfish that I mentioned. They were inching away from the scene of battle, just slowly enough not to get noticed. At first you would have thought there was only one creature, and a strange one at that. A kind of multi-colored, wavy, tubular looking oddity that looks like a cross between a mushroom and a mop head, only more colorful: a sea anenome. Usually a sea anenome is rooted to a rock or to coral, and there it spends its life in the same place, waving its poisonous tentacles in the water until a fish or a shrimp gets caught in them, poisoned and paralyzed, and then ingested. But the sea anenome in that embattled tidal pool is actually moving. Look closer and you’ll find that its rooted to a shell. Under that shell is a hermit crab, creeping along, because he very desperately does not want to be found by either of those star fish.

But no starfish would look for him there, because they don’t like sea anenome venom any more than do the killifish and the shrimp in that tide pool. But the hermit crab is in no danger from the sea anenome. The stingers are on top, well above him. And besides, the sea anenome gets new hunting territory as the hermit crab carries him around, in exchange for not killing and eating the crab, even for hiding and protecting him from other predators like the starfish. Protection and a hiding place are what the crab gets in return for carrying the sea anenome around.

Biologists call that kind of relationship “symbiosis,” in Latin, literally, “together life.” Such life together is, to me, a parable in nature about the wisdom of the cross that Paul wants the Corinthians to see, and the gifts and riches that God is giving to the world through His Spirit and the wisdom of the cross. For the Corinthian Christians, their differences in class, outlook, spiritual gifts and ethnic backgrounds were serving as reasons for boasting and competing. But they could be gifts and riches that complement and enrich each other, the way the crab and the sea anenome do. These gifts and riches are for relationships; they even are relationships. Relationships that benefit everyone, but which also require of everyone some sacrifice, humility and cooperation. Even though I’ve said that the world runs on fear-based, scarcity-driven chaos and competition, you still also find examples of this symbiosis in the world, such as in the grocery stores around here that are run by, and cater to, people of both the Somali and the Mexican communities. There may be no pork tamales, but you will find Mexican candies for Christmas, or for the end of Ramadan.

The church of Jesus Christ is called and created by God to give the world glimpses of this wisdom, and of that glory to come, in which “’no eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor has it even entered the mind of mortals,’ what God has prepared for those who love him.” Again, this glory is all about relationships. We see glimpses of it in the Wednesday lunch time inter-denominational prayer gathering of some pastors in this neighborhood that I attend many weeks, if not all. And as one long-term pastor told me, who has served a local church for twenty-plus years, no Christian church or service agency survives very long on its own here.

What’s true between churches is just as true within them. We are on a life-long journey of ever-deepening conversion from worldly wisdom to heavenly wisdom. That worldly wisdom, as the cross shows us, is homicidal and even deicidal. God suffered with us on the Cross of Calvary. But the cross also mirrors to us the self-giving nature of God and his love. And through the cross God has revealed a divine wisdom that leads us to riches, relationships and mature Christian character, that are beyond worldly understanding. As we are called to a lifelong journey of conversion to the wisdom of the cross, so are we called to display it to the world.

What the cross says about wisdom, power and peacemaking.

I Corinthians 1:18For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19For it is written:  ”I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;  the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”  20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.

They were only arguing about shuffleboard. Not about any of the deep questions of belief or behavior that sometimes divide churches. Nor any of the big-ticket moral or theological matters that we’ll find were dividing the churches in Corinth, when Paul wrote these words to them.

Maybe you’ve seen the Jurassic Park movies. I wimped out and had to return the book to the library halfway through trying to read it. Paul was dealing with “Jurassic Church.” As we get further into this letter, we’ll see that cliques of members were dividing and attacking each other over some serious matters like whether or not Jesus actually rose from the dead. Or whether Christian faith had anything to say about responsible sexual behavior. Or if and how Christians of different social classes could be brothers and sisters. So when an American church more recently had to deal with a difference among members over whether or not to paint shuffleboard lines on the floor of the downstairs fellowship hall and let children and youth play down there, you’d think that would be a piece of cake. But sometimes differences over issues are about more than just the issues.

So it probably was in the First Church of ancient Corinth. Their differences were about more than their differences. They were about bigger things than the issues themselves. And to help them out, Paul took them back beyond their questions and issues, even back beyond their own time and place, to a rocky hill called “Golgotha,” or “Calvary,” to a rude, wooden and bloody Roman execution stake, for a look at their very world view. When Paul writes in verse 22 that “Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom,” he is not only commenting on an interesting difference between two groups of people, he is putting his finger on the very source of their fractious factionalism. He’s naming the root of their problems.

The problem with Greek notions of wisdom was what the Greeks would have considered their strength: they started their reasoning with the world as it appeared to them, according to self-evident, conventional wisdom. So the Greek way of wisdom was all about finding one’s way through the world on the world’s own terms. One school of philosophy at the time even focused on what you could or could not logically, reasonably, expect of life, and what life should or should not expect of you, depending upon your station and status in life. So if you were a slave, you could reasonably expect this, and you could be reasonably expected to do that. If you were a slave holder, by contrast, then you could expect something else, while being expected to perform different kinds of duties. But it never seems to have occurred to many of them to question the whole matter of slavery, status or station, as far as I can tell. Kind of like two Amish men in a casino discussing how to behave themselves there as simple, humble, plain and peaceable, without asking themselves a more important question: “What are we doing in this casino in the first place?” For those Greeks, Peace was a matter of understanding and accepting the customary duties and rewards of your status or station.

Now to be fair, we can thank these ancient Greeks for giving us early experiments in democracy—at least for slave-owners–as well as methods of questioning and exploration that have now enabled us to fly airplanes and fight cancer. So neither Paul nor I are advocating ignorance nor the rejection of scholarship, science or education. But as we’ll see later in this letter, Paul will use the upside-down, counter-intuitive wisdom of the cross to challenge the whole Greek and Roman type of wisdom, that different rewards and privileges and honors should come with different stations and status in life. Of course it looks so logical from inside, especially if our station is full of rewards and privileges. But if you step outside that world view and view it from the hill called Calvary, if anything, the cross turns such notions of worth and status upside-down and elevates not only The Crucified Christ, but the very people who might have ended up on crosses—the poor and slaves. Peace, from the vantage point of the cross, means coming to terms with and accepting the great and surprising reversal of wisdom and power and status that the cross signifies.

As for the Jewish understanding of power, I have even more sympathy. Of course they longed—and many long still– for the promised Messiah to come and blow away the oppressive world order of militarism, terrorism, poverty and injustice, and to make Zion the fountainhead of world peace and order, as the prophets promised. We pray for such a New Zion every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer. But so few of Paul’s comrades understood that God would do so peacefully, non-violently, even anti-violently, by absorbing the world’s violence on the cross and returning it with all- triumphant and forgiving love, as God had also promised through the prophets.

As different as Jews and Greeks were, they had this in common: Both groups started their reasoning with the world’s top down, one up, notions of power and worth, and sought to master and dominate the world on its own terms, by its own means, by measurements of success that the world would recognize and value. But this is not the wisdom by which God has chosen to act nor reveal himself in the world. Instead, into this self-enclosed way of thinking comes the cross, like a bolt out of the blue. As Paul says, of course the message of a crucified Messiah is “foolishness to Greeks and weakness to Jews.” That’s what the clown’s mask [or dunce cap?] on the altar signifies.

The First Church of Corinth was made up of people from both these backgrounds. When differences open up among any group of people, its common for these old, habit-formed, pre-gospel, cross-free understandings of power and wisdom to rise up and offer themselves as weapons by which we might seek to defend ourselves, to seek advantage over others, and even attack them, verbally and emotionally, at least. But they only turbo-charge the conflicts, making them wider, deeper and harder to solve.

Even though they should have known better, that’s what happened in the matter of shuffleboard, of all things, in that church basement. The idea started with the youth group and its sponsors. And for the best of reasons. Recreation and play are proven ways to build up relationships and community among people. And if children can have a space and time designated for play, perhaps they’ll get more out of time and space designated for listening and learning. To those who opposed the idea however, that very space where kids would be playing was also the space where they had attended many dinners after the funeral services of their friends and family members. It was also where many of them gathered to quilt once a week for many, many years. Most of them had grown up being taught that church was the place for children and youth to learn reverence and restraint. Let them play outside. If it sounds like a generational difference, I suspect that it was.

So who was right? Sometimes, that’s the wrong question. Or, at least the wrong question to ask off the bat. More importantly: What is the right way to approach a disagreement? What is the right viewpoint from which to start discussion and seek discernment? Let’s follow Paul as he takes the competing and conflicted Corinthian Christians back to the vantage point of the cross. The cross challenges the very notions of power, wisdom and winning that were turbo-charging that church conflict.

More than just a symbol, to Paul the cross even becomes a way of thinking and acting in the world. In fact, it is God’s stunning and surprising way of acting in the world. Because the cross says, in its powerfully symbolic language, that God engages the world not from the top down but from the bottom up. That God does not overpower us, or seek advantage over us, but rather, God identifies with us. That he identifies with us even in the lowest depths of shame, rejection, defeat and humiliation. There on the cross he also demonstrates his commitment to us by going with us even to the lowest of the lowest places, symbolized by the Roman way of execution, for the lowest of society. Therefore, Jesus’ disciples are to engage the world, each other, and their differences, in the same way, not from the top down, to see who has the most power to impose their will on weaker people, but from the bottom up, by identifying with each other on the lowest level of our common needs, our common hopes, our weaknesses, our limits and our vulnerability.

Had my friends with the shuffleboard conflict taken that approach, they might have asked each other questions like, “What is it that you hold most sacred?” One group might have said, “That we treat God reverently and respectfully by treating this facility that way; after all, its where I learned of God and often experienced God over the sixty or seventy years of my life, and where we gathered to commit scores of my friends and relatives to eternity, including my parents and a child.” Another group might have said, “I want youth and children to feel welcomed and included.”

Underneath those differences on the surface, can we hear what sacred things both groups have in common? Like how special church is to each group? Like how much both groups want their children and grandchildren to be part of the church?

And maybe they could have asked each other, “What is it that you fear?” One group might have said, “I’m afraid that this sacred space might be abused and denigrated; that children and youth will not learn to revere God adequately; and that quilters and people who come for memorial services will find their experience degraded by lines and numbers and scuff marks on the walls and the floor.” Another group might have said, “I’m afraid that children and youth will feel excluded by a church culture that says ‘children should only be seen and not heard’ and will eventually leave the faith because of such rigid expectations.”

Again, can we hear the similarities in their fears, as well as the differences? Like, How will people of different generations experience God together? What kind of faith will future generations have?

What if both sides really heard each other’s hopes and fears, and not with the intent to jump back in with a winning argument, but with the intention to really hear each other and honor each other, with the kind of commitment to each other that God demonstrated to us on the cross? And what if they really heard each other with the willingness to identify with each other, as the complex, vulnerable, scared and yet hopeful human beings that we all are? We can’t always agree with each other, but even in conflict, we can always identify with each other. At least with our basic humanity. Because the same needs, fears, weaknesses and hopes drive all our actions and opinions, even when they drive us in different directions. After all, even while we were yet sinners, God went all the way down to the cross to identify with us.

If the members of that church had started there, I still don’t know how the issue would have been resolved. I still don’t even know how it should have been resolved, whether there should be a shuffleboard court down there or not. Sometimes, the way we handle a conflict is more important than the outcome of the conflict. Unfortunately, the shuffleboard conflict came down to a my-way-or-the-highway kind of stand-off, to be resolved by a vote. That may be good enough for secular democracy. But when you’re talking about the future of relationships, voting is not always the best way to display the kingdom of God.

The pro-shuffleboard group won the vote, and several families left the church. One person even demanded several years’ worth of offerings back. And nobody plays shuffleboard down there, young or old. But quilting and fellowship meals still happen, with nobody even noticing all those lines and shapes and numbers on the floor.

The gospel peace position that we teach in the Mennonite church is not based on worldly notions of power, wisdom, and on how to win friends and influence others and achieve whatever you want, only with less mess and stress. If anything, the cross teaches us that when we love our enemies the way Jesus did, and the way he teaches us to do, we could very well end up carrying our own crosses with him. The gospel peace position is about demonstrating God. It only shows its strength as we learn the world view, the wisdom and the power of the cross. Yes, as Paul admits, it all looks backwards and upside-down, even weak and foolish to the world. Yes, it takes faith to believe that God is triumphing over evil by absorbing it and forgiving it, rather than by returning it in kind. But the alternative business as usual requires a lot of faith too, that currently looks unfounded to me.

The cross is the symbol of God’s world view, God’s wisdom and God’s power that we are called upon to communicate to a skeptical and scoffing world. But our most compelling witness to Christ anymore is in the cross-shaped ways that we relate to people, in and outside of the church. Not by the absence of differences or conflict—what planet does that happen on?– but by the cruciform ways we address differences and conflict. Our peace witness to the world begins in the church. In fact, a major part of our peace witness to the world IS the church.

So in this season of Lent, with its theme of holding on and letting go, can we let go of the emotional and relational swords we carry and invert them for crosses instead? Can we let go of the normal, business-as-usual preoccupation with who’s up, who’s down, who’s ahead? Instead, can we replace that with the wisdom of the cross, the wisdom by which we identify with others, and commit ourselves to others, even if we can’t always agree with others? If so, we will better understand and express the surprising peace-making power and wisdom of God, displayed on the cross of Jesus Christ.