Sunday Sermon 3/11/12

In today's readings God gives His commandments in the old testament and allows that He will hold the children of four generation responsible for the sins of the father, Paul, praising God, says "The foolishness of God is wiser than men, God's weakness stronger than man's" and Christ whips the merchants out of the temple. Heredity of sin? God's foolishness? Christ with an edge?

Well, if you are going to have some tough ones, might as well get rid of them all at once.

There are two keys to these problems. First is God's declaration in the first reading that the sabbath is sacred to commemorate God's resting on the seventh day after making the world in six. God was tired? Six days, really? The second is in the earlier part of the Corinthian letter:
"For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made void. For the preaching of the cross to them that perish, is foolishness; but to them which are saved, that is to us, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring nothing to the knowledge of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of our preaching to save them who believe. For Jews require signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

Making the world in six days, rebuilding the temple in 3 days, Christ with a whip--these are not the province of logic or science. Nor is the Resurrection. Minute analysis of this is "the wisdom of the world", which does not see the truth. It is the larger tapestry that is the essence, not the small word or work which is the focus of literalism and atheism.

It is Christ who is "The Disputer of this world." Logic and science will not let Him fit.