Preaching Christ Crucified

Matthew Walker asks if we’re trying too hard to fit in

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Let me start by asking you a question: what is the gospel? How would you answer that? What kind of things would you say? In fact, before you read on, think about it for a moment. Done? OK, you can start reading again.

What did you come up with? Did you think about hope, about security for the future, about happiness? Did you think about a friend who never fails you, who knows and understands all your problems, who is able to guide you on the journey we call life? Praise God that these things are true of Jesus!

Did you think about the cross? About the pain of betrayal, mockery, injustice and humiliation? About the agony of death and the wrath of God? And if you did, was it the first thing you thought of, or the last? Was it the main thing?

Now suppose it wasn’t me that asked you, but your lab partner, or your housemate, or that girl in your seminar group, or the cleaner in your block. Would that change your answer? Would you mention the cross? And would you mention it briefly before moving on to talk about the other things you thought of?

I suppose what I am really asking is (and please forgive the lack of subtlety), are you embarrassed by the cross? Do you ever listen to someone talking about it and wonder if it would mean anything to your friends? I sometimes do. I remember walking through the centre of Leeds, hearing a guy preaching in the open air about the cross and being embarrassed by it. It just sounded so out of touch with the people around me, busy going about their shopping. Isn’t it all a bit out-of-date? Does the iPod generation really care? Isn’t it all just nonsense to them?

If you’ve ever been tempted to think that the message of the cross is foolish, you’re in good company. So did Paul. Yes, that’s the Paul, as in Paul the Apostle (oh go on, call him St. Paul if you must.) Surprised? Don’t believe me? Look at what he wrote to the church in Corinth:

Jews demand miraculous signs and the Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

1 Corinthians 1:22 — 24

Why does Paul call the gospel “foolishness to the Greeks”? To understand this, we need to know a bit about the society of Paul’s day. I want to suggest that in fact his experience was not so different from ours.

He moved in a culture that was basically Greek. Since the conquest of the Near and Middle East by Alexander and the subsequent dynasties of the ‘diadochi’, Greek culture and language had dominated the Mediterranean. It was a culture with a rich heritage. The Ancient Greeks were (and still are) renowned for their advanced civilisation. Their developments in mathematics and other sciences were foundational, and their philosophy was extremely complex. Literature and theatre were popular, as were music, sculpture and other art forms. Their architecture is still copied and admired. They were at the forefront of civilisation in the ancient world. Trade and commerce were valued, and there was a cult of ‘leisure and pleasure’, at least for those who could afford it. Combine all this with political intrigue, class distinction, a love of sport and mild feelings of cultural superiority and you have a society not too different from 21st Century Britain.

There is one more similarity I want to highlight: syncretism. The Greeks had always been open to influence by other cultures, and nowhere was this more clearly seen than in matters of religion. It became even more obvious when combined with the Roman philosophy of tolerance, which amounted to ‘you can believe what you like as long as you worship the Emperor’ (Jews and Christians, who could not bring themselves to worship a mere human, were outside the bounds of this toleration.) Pick’n’mix religion? Sounds like post-modern Britain to me!

So given the sophistication of Greek culture, why does Paul preach a message which he knows full well to be “foolishness to the Greeks”? Why does he not adapt his message to be more appealing, more acceptable and relevant to the Greek world? Why does he persist with his message that flew in the face of their basic presuppositions about the nature of the universe and the human soul? The reason is that Paul knows that this message, foolish though it sounds, is the power of God. This is God’s gospel, his good news, and in his hands it is powerful. Frankly, to the Greeks it was a joke, going as it did against their basic ideas of soul and body, and unbelievably simplistic compared to the sophistication of their philosophies. To the Jews this message was a “stumbling block”, or, more literally, an “offence” (σκάνδαλον, skandalon; they were ‘scandalised’ by the idea that God’s Messiah could die on a Roman cross.) Hardly a promising reaction from an audience! Yet Paul will go on preaching this message because it is God’s message of salvation. His faith is in the God whose message it is (2:4–5), not in how people perceive that message (1:23). The Greeks may laugh, but Paul is unashamed.

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For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength

1 Corinthians 1:25

I think this has something to say to us today, as I have already hinted. There is a danger that we are so eager to appear ‘relevant’ that we sell out on the gospel. We can shy away from the ‘question of the cross’ for fear of sounding fanatical, old-fashioned or just plain foolish. Yet to do so is to miss the very point Paul is making. We may indeed be able to preach a form of gospel that appeals to peoples’ taste or fashion, but is it the genuine article? Is it, so to speak, all style and no substance? Do we simply appeal to peoples’ emotions or do we offer them the truth, the truth that sets free?

At this point I feel the need to add a few comments by way of balance. Firstly, as Christians we are not called to kiss our brains goodbye. Paul himself engaged in reasoned debate and discourse with both Jews and Greeks (Acts 17:2–3a; 18:4; 19:8 etc.) We live by faith, but not blind faith. Christianity is eminently reasonable (have you read ‘Mere Christianity?’). Peter urges us to be ready to give an answer for the hope we have.

Secondly, we are certainly not to ignore the culture we live in, as if the church were meant to exist in some kind of vacuum or time warp. We live in the 21st Century, not the 19th (or 17th, or any other for that matter- not even the 1st!). We need to engage with our culture and the issues it raises and faces, not bury our heads like the proverbial ostrich. Besides, isn’t the glorious gospel of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, exactly what our world needs to hear? Nor do I wish to downplay the reality of our relationship with Jesus here and now. Our faith is not “pie in the sky when you die”, it is real and meaningful now. Jesus does bring fulfilment and meaning to life, meaning that cannot be found apart from him. It is not wrong to use this language when talking to people about Christ. Yet this is not the be all and end all of the gospel, nor is it even the main point. The main point is “Jesus and him crucified”. How we balance these things is a matter worthy of lengthy discussion — it is certainly the topic of many books! But the necessity of engagement and relevance does not lessen the force of Paul’s argument, nor its importance to the church today.

Let me say too that I think this is incredibly encouraging. When anyone comes to faith in Jesus, Paul elsewhere describes it as a “new creation”. Creation is, a priori, an act of God, so that a person’s coming to Christ is literally a miracle! The power of the gospel is not in the messenger (that’s just plain old you and me), it’s in the Holy Spirit who demonstrated that power in raising Jesus from the dead! Surely that is something we can confidently put our faith in?

Think again about the question I asked you earlier. Are you embarrassed by the cross? Are you tempted to downplay it or ignore it altogether? Do you think it is irrelevant to our society? It could hardly be more relevant! Let’s have the faith Paul had. Do you feel inadequate for the challenge? Do you feel that you don’t have the ‘gifts’ for spreading the good news? It doesn’t matter! Paul was neither eloquent (2:1) nor courageous (2:3), but he firmly believed in the relevance of the gospel he was preaching. In and through that gospel God displays his mighty saving power. The question is, do we have the faith to believe that?

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, and then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written, ‘The righteous will live by faith’.

Romans 1:16,17

Matthew Walker