For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
"How foolish is the cross?
I read this quote recently by a Christian writer/podcaster I admire, Mike McHargue. (AKA Science Mike). He said this:
"The cross was not God's invention. It was ours. In all our need for an eye for an eye, I have to wonder sometimes if God listened to our cry for blood, and offered his own son - if Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was not to sate God's wrath, but to show God's response to ours."
How much is revenge a part of our system?
How much is blood and war and death a part of how we seek retribution?
It wasn't different in the first century, when human beings made the cross an instrument of horrific death.
And the foolishness is that God turned that very item of horrific death into a means of salvation and hope and even new life.
It does sound foolish when you try to explain it rationally to someone who doesn't believe.
And yet it is the thing I - we - cling to for hope and a promise that is bigger than ourselves and even our world.
We said "Here is our instrument of death."
God said, "OK. Fine. But wait til you see what happens next!"
Lord, we wait for what happens next. But in the meantime, help us to walk alongside Jesus this week in hope and humility. Amen.
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